Page 10 - Flight Controls News Today

Something is going to go terribly wrong. but i think that during that descent, they may not have had any questions about it, other than why are we descending but the point of impact, my point is there was no suffering, no painfulness. it was within seconds, within a second probably. that is when this occurred. i dont think there would have been pain and suffering at least. >> david, other crashers, twa flight 800, they basically reconstructed the entire aircraft. in a situation like this where y...

>> even with oscillations in height from, say, eight to four, if you were hand flying an aircraft into that descent, how challenging would that be? >> well, it depends upon the circumstance that im facing. if i have an emergency situation thats affecting my flight controls or im running through a checklist and i get distracted with certain items i have to accomplish on that checklist, it may take away from the subtleties of maintaining the vertical speed. >> youre looking for, wheres the energy?...

Certain service-like issues where they have to double check the limitations being met by various avionics the elts, all these things have to be checked periodically everywhere that mant to every 90 days or so. theres various checks that are done throughout the year. >> jay, is this a difficult plane to fly? >> the airbus is reported to be an excellent aircraft in all respects. there are some people out there who have an issue about the fly by wire that this aircraft is designed. fly by wire is a...

Where we with dig deeper into the aircraft itself. well look at the engine and flight controls and various items. >> the supreme court well, its hearing a free speech case today. high court will decide whether the state of texas was wrong to reject a specialty license plate featuring the confederate flag whether it is the government of drivers who are speaking on specialty license plates and well drill down on the issue of confederate flags on license plates in the next half hour. robert durst...

Much better. at the time that this plane was coming in there was snow and freezing fog, 26 degrees, only a quarter-mile visibility winds north at 9 miles per hour. it would be up to the faa, correct, to give pilots the information they need to choose whether or not they want to land at laguardia at this time? >> yes, the tower controllers and the automated systems provide weather information for the pilots as theyre approaching the airport. they also indicate which runway is active and the condi...

Maintain control during that transition phase from flight to a land vehicle. the flight controls become less effective the slower the airplane is moving down the runway. now they rely more on the rudder control, which controls the nose wheel, and you just simply have two tires controlling this entire aircrafts direction. and if it hits an icy patch and it had a quartering left tail wind it could very well weather vane into the wind. >> frightening. >> absolutely. thats exactly why theyre investi...

Reaction and what he was thinking at the time of the accident which would indicate there was some kind of panic or that he wasnt acting appropriately to it. the third thing thats really important about this is that the cockpit voice recorder not only keeps track of the input, the movement towards the aircraft and whats sent to the computer but it also has information and sensors on each of the flight controls that will tell fit he wants to climb and he pulls back does the flight control make the...

>> its a gruesome process, especially for the families that have to deal with this identification process. but the way it plays out is that the two boxes, the black boxes we refer to all the time, one is digital flight data. that has all sorts of information. flight controls, altitude, speed, trajectory. it has thousands of parameters. that will be combined with the cockpit voice recorder, which not only gives all the voices from the cockpit and transmissions to air traffic control, it also prov...

The ambient pieces of information that lead clues, give clues. >> les, let me ask you, human versus machines they can really fly themselves once theyre up at altitude. so when does the pilot make the decision to override and in autopilot for example to take control themselves and is there any push and pull between what the computer wants a plane to do and what the pilot wants to do? >> its a good question but we strive to work in conjunction with the automation. we have most of the airplanes and...

Leah: and in this particular aircraft, it had fly-by require which weve talked about that, essentially, you put controls in, a computer decides what to do with those control inputs, and it could potentially fight the pilot. the computer system might actually say no, im not going to let this plane climb any higher because its already going outside its operating end slope. >> i think thats a great point and thats one of the fundamental differences between a boeing and an air bus aircraft is that a...