I ran across this recently, and although it may be old news to many of you by now, I offer it FYI.....

Subject: Airbus = Crap...... It's Boeing or not going!

Below is from a commercial pilot

"I never flew the Airbus series of airliners, and I have always believed
that Boeing built the best airliners in the world.  Boeing believes
that the Captain should have the last say in what happens.  Here is an
example:  The 777 would stop trimming before the pilot could either
stall the aircraft, or exceed max speed, but the fly by wire control
system would let the Captain do either if he wanted to!  If the pilot
exceeded 35 degrees of bank, the flight control system would rock the
yoke, and a voice would come on saying: "Bank Angle", "Bank Angle, but
would not stop the pilot from rolling to any bank angle he desired.  
Once again, Boeing believes that the pilot should be the final
authority in deciding what the aircraft should do.  Not so wit
h the
French built Airbus fleet.  The pilot is just a voting member in the
control of the aircraft.  It is possible that the A320 that went into
the Hudson river, could have continued flying even after the ingestion
of one or more birds, if the Captain Sully had full authority over the
engines.  One engine continued to run at 35% N1 RPM providing
electrical and hydraulic power to the aircraft.  It would be
interesting to see what the NTSB investigation learns.  It will also be
interesting to see if the public ever finds out about it, if the either
of the engines was still capable of providing enough thrust to sustain
flight, had the computer logic built into the Airbus by the French
allowed the Captain to use it!  Below are the comments of a
retired Airbus A320 Captain."


Remarks made by a retired USAir pilot about the A320>>>>


"Most airliner ditchings aren't very successful since they take place on
the open ocean with wind, rough seas, swells and rescue boats are hours
or days away.  This one happened in fresh smooth water, landing with
the current and the rescue boats were there picking people up while
they were still climbing out of the airplane.  It also happened on a
cold winter day when all the pleasure boats were parked. =2
0Had this
happened in July it would be pretty hard not to whack a couple of
little boats.  Sully did a nice job but so would 95% of the other
pilots in the industry.  You would have done a nice job.

Don't be surprised if the Airbus fly by wire computers didn't put a
perfectly good airplane in the water.   In a older generation airplane  
like the 727 or  737 300/400 the throttles are hooked to the fuel
controllers on the engine by a steel throttle cable just like a TBM or
a Comanche.  On the Airbus nothing in the cockpit is real.  Everything
is electronic.  The throttles, rudder and brake pedals and the side
stick are hooked to rheostats who talk to a computer who talks to a
electric hydraulic servo valve which in turn hopefully moves something.

In a older generation airplane when you hit birds the engines keep
screaming or they blow up but they don't both roll back to idle
simultaneously like what happened to Flt. 1549.  All it would take is
for bird guts to plug a pressure sensor or knock the pitot probe off or
plug it and the computers would roll the engines back to idle thinking
they were over boosting because the computers were getting bad data.  
The Airbus is a real pile of s_ _ _.  I don't like riding on them.  
Google Airbus A320 Crash at the Paris Airshow in 1998.  Watch the video
of an airbus A320 crash into a
forest because the computers wouldn't
allow a power increase following a low pass.  The computers wouldn't
allow a power increase because they determined that the airspeed was
too low for the increase requested so the computers didn't give them
any.  Pushing the throttles forward in a Airbus does nothing more than
request a power increase from the computer.  If the computer doesn't
like all the airplane and engine parameters you don't get a power
increase.   Airbus blamed the dead crew since they couldn't defend
themselves.  A Boeing aircraft would still be flying."

expat wrote on Feb 4^th, 2009 at 1:58pm:

Yeah I saw a video on that and you could hear the engines try to power up but it looked like they didn't at all from the altitude not going up and they said not everyone died either.

Im pretty sure im thinking of the same one was it an Air France airliner?

steve s wrote on Feb 4^th, 2009 at 2:42pm:


Nothing against you or your father. I would imagine that fact that he did not comment probably says more than if he did. What you posted was something that we can have a lively discussion about, nothing more

Matt

expat wrote on Feb 4^th, 2009 at 1:58pm:


I was going to mention what you said, but to piggy back:

When taking off, that is the worst time for any thing to go wrong, you loose a motor, or damage the 2nd in this case from what was said, you are going to go down alot easier then if you are landing and loose a motor, where you can keep your speed constant.

Any pilot that compares a new aircraft to an older 727/737, has been out the loop for a long time, Boeing takes pride in there fly by wire computer controlled planes that save weight by not have thousands of pounds of cables and pulleys stretching through out the aircraft.

I just think the pilot did a job, and lucky for them the pilot was: Ex USAF, Part of the Crash Team Board, Accident prevention member, and part of the comity for predicting and preventing future incidents.

Unless they were in a plane with more engines, and it was 100% confirmed that the other motors did not ingest birds, then more then likely the same thing would have happen, just like the E-3 that flew into a flock of birds in Alaska on September 22, 1995: Quote:
The rest of the story:
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/5464/

Hagar wrote on Feb 5^th, 2009 at 6:00pm:

Oh YEah I forgot about that!! On Landing the motors would not go above 30% or 40% throttle, they just froze up, no mater what the pilot did, and landed short of the runway. Hell those 2 stories just proved how a Boeing would have just flown straight over to the runway and landed like those pilots on the blog though.

Hagar wrote on Feb 5^th, 2009 at 6:15pm:

No No, you misunderstood, I was being sarcastic towered the original blog who said had it been a Boeing, it would have let the pilot land it, because Boeing would let the pilot have full controlled over the throttles.