No Man's Land
The Untold Story of Automation on QF72
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No Man's Land
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Narrated by:
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Brett Cousins
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By:
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Kevin Sullivan
About this listen
Former US Navy Top Gun Kevin Sullivan, captain of the ill-fated Perth-bound QF72, breaks his silence to give a gripping account of how a rogue computer went 'psycho', causing the Airbus A330 he was piloting to pitch down, nose first, towards the Indian Ocean—twice.
Unlike other well-publicised near air disasters, the plane carrying 315 passengers and crew was out of control, a g-force of –8 propelling anyone and anything untethered through the cabin roof. It took the extraordinary skill and presence of mind of the veteran Top Gun to wrestle back control of the plane in order to perform a dramatic, high-stakes emergency landing at a RAAF base on the WA coast 1200 kilometres north of Perth. More than 100 injured people, many seriously, were airlifted to hospital.
As automation becomes the way of the future, the story of QF72 raises important questions about how much control we relinquish to computers and whether more checks and balances are needed.
©2019 Kevin Sullivan (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing Pty LtdListeners also enjoyed...
What listeners say about No Man's Land
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- M.G.Scotney-Jones
- 01-02-23
Harrowing, breathtaking…incredible
As an aviation enthusiast, this book was really a reminder about how safe flying is but when it goes wrong how vital the training of the crew is. How going ‘back to basics’ and applying training and experience outside of commercial aviation helped save the lives of hundreds of people. Just amazing.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- paul welton
- 26-05-24
A well written in insightful account
As a retired airline captain with 40 years and 26000 hours of flying time, I rarely bother with books on aviation. This book caught my eye for the following reason.
When I approached retirement age I was required by my employer, to give up flying Boeing airliners and transfer to the Airbus A330. I found the fly by wire Airbus to be a very complex aeroplane after the delightfully simple Boeings and developed something of a dislike for it. The Boeing philosophy of keeping things simple seemed to have been replaced by the Airbus belief that ‘pilots are incredibly stupid and we in Toulouse have to prevent them from crashing the planes.’
As a Boeing captain I always granted myself a generous amount of hand flying on every flight, and encouraged my copilots to do the same, especially at high altitude when the plane is very sensitive to control inputs. Flying a jet airliner by hand can, if one is out of practice, absorb more than 80% of a pilots available mental capacity, but with regular practice this figure comes quickly down to less than about 30%, leaving plenty of mental capacity available to manage other aspects of the flight.
I quickly learned that the fly by wire Airbus seemed to have been designed specifically to discourage the pilots from hand flying. The auto thrust system to control the engine power and hence airspeed was always engaged, and the thrust levers themselves did not move when engine power changed. This deprived the pilots of an important visual cue that engine power output was changing. I addition the automatic pitch trim system ensured that changes in indicated airspeed or engine power were not felt by the pilot via a changing force on the side stick controller. This computer controlled pitch system deprived a pilot flying the aeroplane manually of any feel for the changing conditions his aircraft might be encountering. In other words Airbus planes deprive the pilots of the ‘seat of the pants’ sensation or any feel for what the aeroplane is doing.
With only two years left to retirement I quickly gave up trying to hand fly the A330 and used the autopilot for almost the entirety of every flight. I never developed any affinity with or liking for the aeroplane, and became convinced that the fly by wire Airbus control system design had some serious flaws. As I read up on past accidents I could understand how the complex control system design combined with modern (but in my view poor) flight instrumentation had contributed to the crashes.
It seemed to me that in their efforts to build an airliner that even the most stupid pilot couldn’t crash, Airbus have produced a plane so complex, that we pilots have simply been suckered into inventing whole new ways to do just that.
So I bought this audiobook to learn, as a pilot, exactly what went wrong on board QF72. As a former A330 captain I could obviously follow the well written technical details and could place myself in the authors position in the left hand pilots seat. I cannot fault the narrative of this well written account of the accident and of the pressures flight crew are subjected to in modern airline operations. I have to admit that Captain Sullivan seems to have been a much better aeroplane commander than I was in regard to his crew management skills.
His accounts of transiting areas of thunderstorm activity and associated turbulence reminded me of long stressful nights doing just that,
So I did learn exactly what happened on that flight. I am grateful that in my 1000hrs or so on the A330, nothing similar happened to me.
There is a whole new generation of pilots leaving flying school and transiting straight on to the fly by wire Airbus. I know that they think it is the best thing since sliced bread, as do many of their more experienced Captains. As Capt Sullivan points out, these pilots rarely fly the Airbus by hand. Indeed they are actively discouraged from doing so. In contrast, the operating manual of my very first airline stated in writing the following. ‘ Consistent with safety, the First Officers are to be afforded the maximum opportunity of handling the aeroplane.’ How things have changed.
When I fly now as a passenger, I hope that every one of my pilots will be as skilled and conscientious as Captain Sullivan. I fear that the pressure to use automation on the flight deck, coupled with aeroplanes that are no longer easy to fly by hand means that they might not be.
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