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ANALYSIS: IS THE AIRBUS A320 TOO HI-TECH TO HANDLE?
>From Charles Bremner in Paris
The Times, UK
May 3 2006
Severe weather was blamed by Russian officials as the likely cause of
the Armenian airliner crash off Sochi and an air traffic controller
is under investigation.
Such storms create the violent wind shifts and bad visibility that
have led many an airliner, both old and modern, to disaster on the
approach to landing.
However the crash may revive questions about the high-technology
design of the Airbus A320 and the crew's ability to handle it.
The short-to-medium haul A320 was the first all electronic
"fly-by-wire" airliner. With over 2,700 produced since 1988, it has
proved one of the world's safest airliners. Before the Sochi disaster,
11 fatal A320 accidents had killed 327 people.
However four fatal crashes in the first five years of the A320 prompted
concern that its Flight Management System (FMS) was so sophisticated
that it could lead pilots into danger.
On Tuesday, a court in France began hearing criminal charges against
Airbus and transport officials over the 1992 crash of an Air Inter
(now Air France) A320 on the approach to Strasbourg, killing 87. The
crew was officially blamed with mis-entering data into the FMS but
relatives of victims are partly blaming its crew interface, which
was later modified by Airbus.
In 1993 the A320 design was blamed for the late deployment of the
brakes on a Lufthansa A320 when it ran off the runway in Warsaw,
killing two.
Since the early 1990s there has been no common thread to incidents
with A320s or the larger Airbus family, which in recent years has
overtaken Boeing as the biggest selling make. Boeing's airliners
since the 777 have used fly-by-wire technology but it is not quite
as automated as Airbus.
In 2000, pilot error was blamed for an approach-to-landing disaster
involving a Gulf Air A320 which killed 143 off Bahrain. That crash
occurred in good night-time visibility, but it otherwise resembled
yesterday's accident because the crew were turning back over water
after a first missed approach when they came to grief.
The relatively inexperienced crew lost their bearings, apparently
misunderstood information that they were receiving from the FMS and
flew the airliner into the sea. Some aviation experts at the time
questioned the role of the automated system.
>From Charles Bremner in Paris
The Times, UK
May 3 2006
Severe weather was blamed by Russian officials as the likely cause of
the Armenian airliner crash off Sochi and an air traffic controller
is under investigation.
Such storms create the violent wind shifts and bad visibility that
have led many an airliner, both old and modern, to disaster on the
approach to landing.
However the crash may revive questions about the high-technology
design of the Airbus A320 and the crew's ability to handle it.
The short-to-medium haul A320 was the first all electronic
"fly-by-wire" airliner. With over 2,700 produced since 1988, it has
proved one of the world's safest airliners. Before the Sochi disaster,
11 fatal A320 accidents had killed 327 people.
However four fatal crashes in the first five years of the A320 prompted
concern that its Flight Management System (FMS) was so sophisticated
that it could lead pilots into danger.
On Tuesday, a court in France began hearing criminal charges against
Airbus and transport officials over the 1992 crash of an Air Inter
(now Air France) A320 on the approach to Strasbourg, killing 87. The
crew was officially blamed with mis-entering data into the FMS but
relatives of victims are partly blaming its crew interface, which
was later modified by Airbus.
In 1993 the A320 design was blamed for the late deployment of the
brakes on a Lufthansa A320 when it ran off the runway in Warsaw,
killing two.
Since the early 1990s there has been no common thread to incidents
with A320s or the larger Airbus family, which in recent years has
overtaken Boeing as the biggest selling make. Boeing's airliners
since the 777 have used fly-by-wire technology but it is not quite
as automated as Airbus.
In 2000, pilot error was blamed for an approach-to-landing disaster
involving a Gulf Air A320 which killed 143 off Bahrain. That crash
occurred in good night-time visibility, but it otherwise resembled
yesterday's accident because the crew were turning back over water
after a first missed approach when they came to grief.
The relatively inexperienced crew lost their bearings, apparently
misunderstood information that they were receiving from the FMS and
flew the airliner into the sea. Some aviation experts at the time
questioned the role of the automated system.