Now I see why you always mod me down; you're an Air Force guy who hates pilots...

And millions of people are under-impressed by the fact that Obama signed us all up as customers for giant health insurance companies instead of actually doing something to ensure that people get something useful out of the venture.

If by that you mean you would have preferred a single payer approach, I would agree. This was a result of compromise (a concept not well understood by House Republicans, BTW) due to the exhaustive lobbying efforts of the insurance industry, and is a prime example of the need to remove money from politics.

Every military person I've known have done it for the free college money they give out.

During the Regan expansion, I chose to sign a contract with the Navy. My path did not involve any contribution on their part towards my college education; AOCS is not a scholarship program, and like a fool, I decline to participate in the GI Bill.

People are inherently selfish but I will admit there are a small percentage that do things because they mean well and desire nothing in return. A dying breed for sure.

I truly did it because I thought it would be exciting (it was, mostly), but we were not (formally) at war with anyone until Desert Shield/Storm came along. As an added bonus, I learned to fly and got to play with really fascinating machinery- "something in return". I would concur that my motivation was indeed selfish from a strict interpretation, but not exclusively so. And most of my peers came from the same frame of mind. Despite a minority that saw it as a path to the airlines, most of us "mean(t) well and desire(d) nothing in return" save the pay and adventure. I would conclude the percentage might not be that small, even today. OTOH, I would strongly encourage my son to choose any branch other than Army or Marine Corps as the chance of getting fired upon is much greater than in the others.

He must not have ever heard of Jon Burge. There are corrupt cops out there and "Anything you say can and will be used against you."

BTW, James Duane's video does not argue the merits of the 5th Amendment. It merely argues that one should exercise this right to the maximum extent possible.

Would you want to fly in the back of one? Pilots do more than push buttons. They're paid for their judgement and experience- something an autopilot will never replace. I've got 25 years of what I contend is priceless professional experience the majority of which is not related to manipulation of flight controls- that's what you you should be filling the cockpit with.

With judgment and experience, a pilot can know whether a climb is better than a descent, what route is best to avoid, if taking extra fuel is more harmful than helpful, understands winds aloft, tropopause, and orographic phenomenon and their effect on turbulence, and a myriad of other vital information.

Most importantly, incidents like AF447 would be more likely and recovering from that type of upset would be impossible by remote pilot.

Not sure of the specifics of this incident (VMC or IMC), but there's no "structural problem" with automation and visual approaches. It is more likely simply an issue of training- about limits of automation and flying a visual flight path.

The automation can be used as a aid during a visual approach, but one must be familiar with how to set up the FMGC/FMC. Training costs money. Sim time is a limited and costly resource and managers are always looking to save a buck. Safety and profit are often opposing metrics.

You make it sound as though every contingency can be eliminated by engineers, by picking the obviously perfect design. I think you're ready for pilot-less commercial transport.

Read my other posts, no need to repeat my self.

I'll do this one at a time. The incident lasted roughly 4 1/2 minutes. They had no visual reference to the horizon (IMC) and it was night time- these initial conditions made for a greater degree of difficulty in general. Their first mistake was in failing to avoid the weather by a wide enough margin. The second was in stall recovery. I can attest to the difficulty in recovering from stall in a heavy, swept wing aircraft at high altitude from my sim training. It takes patience and airspeed- the air is very thin. The less experienced pilot (PF) raised the nose at one point to beyond 10 degrees up which greatly reduced their energy state. Setting pitch attitude is distinctly complimented by vertical speed indications which were absent. Level pitch would be 2.5 degrees. He had total time of less than 3000 hours- low from my perspective but enough to be qualified.

The pilots were challenged by degraded systems: no air data meant they had no information about airspeed, vertical speed or altitude. It was attitude only during night IMC. No information was "withheld", per say, some simply wasn't available to them. They were all trained to standards, including stalls, and alternate law. Alternate law means that most protections are lost: pitch and roll limits, overspeed and stall prevention- you cannot stall newer Airbus in normal law, it won't let you. The aircraft still "flies" the same way. Boeing's cockpits are smart too, but are most definatley not immune to failures and connected yokes is not Here's a summary of Airbus flight control laws: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm

Like picking a surgeon or hospital, pick an airline that has quality training and experienced pilots. I would suspect that AirFrance has revisited their stall training for the better. Low pilot pay usually indicates low experience and poor training. High paid executives is a meaningless metric.

Boeing doesn't present AOA either- it is not deemed relevant anymore with advanced flight display systems. Stall warnings (derived from AOA) are considered relevant and they did receive stall warnings: "At around 2 h 11 min 42, the Captain re-entered the cockpit. During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped, after having sounded continuously for 54 seconds." As for alternate law, I suspect your view of it is overly complicated. Direct law, however, is much like flying a paper airplane. The pilots will always be advised of what flight law the aircraft is operating in. Nonetheless, to get into that state requires multiple failures of redundant systems. With out any electrical power, the airplane cannot be flown- battery only is a greater emergency than fire.

Never. Its meant to be one stick at a time- just as pilots are trained on yokes. If the other pilot is fighting me on a yoke, I am the aural warning: 'I have the controls". In an Airbus the computer is the warning. We still must communicate on either plane.

Never intentionally. That's why the system alerts them aurally and with a red warning light which can't be canceled and won't go away until the dual input is resolved. Few things trigger an aural voice: stall, TCAS, config warnings, and GPWS- all of which are "bad".

Last pressed gets priority. If one stick were to malfunction, holding the priority switch long enough latches priority.(i.e.until and unless the either button is pressed again). When priority is taken you hear "priority right (or left)", when locked out, red lights go away replaced by green. The AF447 pilots didn't fight each other on the controls the entire time: "At 2 h 11 min 37, the PNF said "controls to the left", took over priority without any callout and continued to handle the aeroplane. The PF almost immediately took back priority without any callout and continued piloting." This failure to communicate could happen on a Boeing. As the PNF didn't receive a "dual input" he knew he was not making an input at all.

It's good that your thinking like an engineer and a pilot. Studies have shown that people under stress "stop hearing" things, and they lose sense of time. I have no idea how much R&D went into the design, but I suspect it was given a lot more thought than you are giving Airbus credit for. Boeing has chosen a different design philosophy. Philosophically, neither is right or wrong, flawed or perfect.

Look, I'm not arguing that pilots, humans, aren't capable of panicking and melting like butter. But the profession is not meant to resemble the movie Airplane. Nothing stops the scenario you describe from occurring in a Boeing with the yokes fixed to one another, with both pilots overcome like knuckleheads, pulling in opposite directions. This is why you want well trained and experienced pilots at the helm. Again its not a flaw, its a philosophical choice. Either way, the humans need to be trained to operate the machine.

We do indeed have access to and benefit from mishap reports. Procedure are often altered as a result of information obtained during investigations. AF447 resulted in a change to stall recovery requiring idle thrust and de-emphasizing altitude loss. I disagree, but that was Airbus' recommendation. In fact, at the end of every NTSB report, conclusions are made as well as recommendations to prevent further disasters. They are not always implemented. If medicine embraced the same philosophy, we'd lose fewer people to medical accidents.

True dat. Yet here I am on /. talking aviation stuff on a day off.

Aircraft often earn nicknames. B777's are known as Bigfoot for the main gear (the aft two wheels on the truck pivot during turns). B787 has become known as "Sparky"- you can guess why.

All the alarms and blinking lights are listed in the actual accident investigation report here:http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp090601.en.pdf To sum up, they unwisely flew into an area of weather that they were painting on radar. Lost air data systems (not attitude or inertial info) that provided airspeed, vertical speed and altitude, the autopilot which relies on this info disconnected leaving the aircraft to be flown by the only entity capable- the pilots, who then allowed the aircraft to stall from which they never recovered.

Aircraft design is a collaborative effort that includes pilots among many others, not just engineers. Not sure what your point is. If you're suggesting that they were overwhelmed by warnings and such, I would concur. That is the point of training and systems knowledge. All ECAMs are prioritized to allow the pilots to deal with the most pressing emergency (as a user, I think it fails from being needlessly complicated and unintuitive). This notwithstanding the fact that one must "fly the airplane first" at all times. The parent's point that Airbus have design flaws because the sticks are independent, is as I said, incorrect. He could say he he has issues with design philosophy, but its not a flaw to have independent sticks, and no machine yet can make judgments on what info the pilots need about systems failures. Perhaps you are advocating aircraft have a neural connection to the pilot's brain- sadly that is only science fiction as yet.

Yes I do know. I think I'm qualified to make the argument that this is not a "flaw", or make observations on the AF mishap. I have over 7700 hours on Airbus and over 14000 total flight time as a commercial pilot, including training in stall recovery in large swept wing aircraft, and I've heard this argument made many times.

Mr Gatwood, I commend you for your insight. I suspect that the lack of glideslope information will become an important factor during the accident investigation. BTW, how did you know this. Navaid outages would normally be disseminated via NOTAMs and are not generally known by non-flying public. I received this information only within the last two weeks from my company and union about the impending construction.

BTW, in addition to inop GS, they also did not have any visual approach path indicators as the PAPI is out of service: ILS RWY 28R LOCALIZER/DME U/S RWY 28L ILS LLZ/DME U/S RWY 10L/28R CLSD RWY 10R/28L CLSD RWY 28L PAPI U/S

Incorrect, there is no design flaw. As designed, if both pilots make a flight control input simultaneously, they will receive an aural warning: "Dual Input". They will know about it and either pilot can take priority over the other by pushing a button on the stick which will lock out the other.

Not sure what information you have that leads to this conclusion. Improper landing configuration (flaps not set, gear not down) sounds a warning that cannot be silenced. The cause will be determined in due time. There may well have been pilot error, but there are parallels between this and BA38 in LHR that was attributed to fuel freezing in the fuel control.