A good example of "the holes in the cheese lined up"
Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2024 10:10 pm
Mentour Pilot is a Youtube channel providing excellent walkthroughs of aircraft accidents, the latest video out up I think is a particularly good example of how an improbable chain of events can almost lead to catastrophe. In this case it was during base training for trainee pilots with an Airbus A320 in Estonia, and it is a tale of oil with a too high of a viscosity in a piston, manipulating the trim wheels during touch and go's, design logic of the flight computers*, and some dubious judgment on the part of the training captain which together nearly killed everyone aboard.
Here's the video, 43 minutes but as with all videos on the channel it's worth a watch:
https://youtu.be/04M63B1sv_Y?si=r5dE_hqXhR-w-04b
*As a note here I had no idea that Airbuses have got a "manual" mode that sits below Direct Law in the Normal Law - Alternate Law - Direct Law scale, which is entered when all four computers have cut out and allows the plane to be controlled (with significant difficulty) through manual trim and throttles. It seems like this is not commonly known.
Here's the video, 43 minutes but as with all videos on the channel it's worth a watch:
https://youtu.be/04M63B1sv_Y?si=r5dE_hqXhR-w-04b
*As a note here I had no idea that Airbuses have got a "manual" mode that sits below Direct Law in the Normal Law - Alternate Law - Direct Law scale, which is entered when all four computers have cut out and allows the plane to be controlled (with significant difficulty) through manual trim and throttles. It seems like this is not commonly known.