QF32

by Richard de Crespigny

  While all aircraft use the same controls, each kind is constructed differently. In the lead up to the Second World War there were many different aircraft makers, each with idio­syncratic designs. The governments ordered so many aircraft for the war effort that flight controls and cockpits became largely standardised. When the war finished, and commercial aviation boomed, the Western world had a standard for flight controls and cockpits: instruments, gauges, rudder pedals, joysticks, yokes and throttles.

  At the end of the 1970s there were three major manu­facturers of large jet airliners: Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas. All three were American and their designs used the same flying philosophy, in which a pilot manipulated the plane with two rudder pedals in front of the seat, and a yoke (mounted on top of a control column that moved forward and back between the pilot’s knees). The elevators on the tail plane moved when the yoke column was pulled or pushed. The wing-tip ailerons moved when the yoke was rotated. Long metal cables connected the cockpit controls to the flight control surfaces.

  The new jet aircraft were bigger and heavier than their ancestors, and the flight control systems were becoming inadequate. Hydraulic assistance was introduced in the Boeing 307 Stratoliner to reduce the pilots’ control forces (like a car’s power steering), but this was only an evolutionary change. There was a need for a revolutionary change.

  Airbus Industrie was created in 1970 by a European political initiative to counter the United States’ domination of aircraft manufacturing. Airbus was a consortium of British (British Aerospace), French (Aerospatiale), German and later Spanish (CASA) aircraft builders who agreed to collaborate to build passenger jet aircraft. Airbus knew it faced enormous risks when it entered the civil aviation industry; they were competing against the Americans who were the undisputed leaders in aviation, with the most knowledge and experience.

  Airbus took a conservative path for their first aircraft. The A300 would be a 300-seater aircraft with conventional flight controls. (It was called A300 because it was designed to carry 300 passengers.) The A300 entered service in 1974 and was a success.

  With a successful aircraft on the market, Airbus now swung their interests to make a 100-seater passenger aircraft with computer-controlled fly-by-wire flight controls. Fly-by-wire simply means the flight controls are controlled electrically rather than mechanically, with the cables and rods connecting the pilots’ controls to the aircraft’s flight controls replaced with electrical wires. Fly-by-wire was developed by Aerospatiale and BAC for the Concorde in the 1960s. There was a reason Concorde had to have fly-by-wire, and that was the extraordinary fact that during its cruise phase, when it broke the sound barrier and went faster than Mach 2.0, Concorde heated up (some parts up to 200 degrees Celsius), and the airframe stretched by 30 centimetres. Subsequently, conventional cables and rods could not be used in the flight control systems and electrical wires were used instead.

  NASA also introduced fly-by-wire on their unstable Apollo Command and Lunar modules that first launched in December 1968.

  Fly-by-wire provided the Airbus designers with many benefits. Their aircraft would be lighter, and would cost less to build, maintain and operate than conventional aircraft. It would also enable the planes to take off and land at heavier weights and on shorter runways, and be easier to fly. From my own research I concluded they are much safer than conventional aircraft.

  Fly-by-wire also includes ‘thrust-by-wire’, which is computer-controlled engine power, and ‘brake-by-wire’, or computer-controlled braking.

  Airbus delivered its first A320 fly-by-wire aircraft in 1988. By the end of 2011, Airbus had delivered 7000 aircraft, with all but 816 being fly-by-wire.

  The United States also used fly-by-wire – first in the space race and then in the US military (F-16 and F-18). Boeing’s first fly-by-wire aircraft was the 777, launched in 1994. The 787 Dreamliner that launched in 2011 is also fly-by-wire.

  Boeing and Airbus also use different cockpit pilot controls. All Boeing pilots have a control column and yoke between their knees, but Airbus took an innovative step. All Airbus aircraft (with the exception of the non-fly-by-wire A300 and A310) have a sidestick, a small 10 centimetre–long stick that protrudes up from the aircraft’s side console (to the left of the captain’s hand and to the right of the first officer’s hand). If you let go of the sidestick (termed ‘stick-free’) while you’re climbing in an Airbus, the aircraft will maintain the G of your climb and will keep you climbing. It also controls roll, and it won’t let the aircraft roll until you tell it to.

  When I first became a Qantas captain on A330s, it was 2004 and there were very few Australian pilots with a good word to say about an aircraft controlled by computers. There were not many Airbus aircraft in Australia then, so a lot of rumours went unchallenged. Some critics believed Airbus aircraft computers were not much more reliable than Windows, and that they could be ‘hacked’ from the ground, fused by high-power radio transmissions from nearby radio stations, afflicted by a virus or beset by the ‘blue screen of death’.

  On the A380 the flight control computers (FCCs) are designed so there’s always at least one of the seven computers in control. The aircraft’s network is also impressive. Hundreds of computers monitor 250,000 sensors throughout the plane.

  For me, having left my beloved Boeing 747–400 after almost two decades on the flight deck, I was expecting to suffer a few of these negative feelings, but it didn’t happen. I really loved the Airbus A330. My routes included fantastic ports in Japan, India, Singapore, Australia and China, and I was instantly impressed with how well the aircraft responded and performed.

  I understood the fundamentals of the A330’s flight control systems and computers, and recognised its advantages and detractions. Airbus had thought through what aircraft need to achieve and had programmed the systems to do it with little pilot input. If you take the time to learn the basics, then it takes little effort to achieve great results. Airbus pilots are systems ­operators as much as they are aviators.

  And for all of the nay-saying about fly-by-wire being the end of real flying and real pilots, I found the fly-by-wire and automation made for a safer and more enjoyable experience. I can also now fly incredibly accurately.

  Airbus’s fly-by-wire is also the pilot’s best friend in the case of an engine failure. An engine failure after take-off can be a daunting experience. Pilots have to ensure the aircraft clears obstacles, but their control is compromised as the aircraft yaws and rolls as the engine thrust decays. Control of the aircraft can be lost at this point if the pilot fails to react quickly enough. At least, that’s the case on a conventional aircraft. If an A380 engine fails after getting airborne, and the pilots keep their hands off the sidesticks, the FCCs automatically introduce rudders to balance the aircraft, and ailerons to stop it rolling, and the aircraft flies away beautifully with a small 5-degree roll and a bit of a drift. The FCCs could have been programmed to fly the aircraft through the failure without yaw or a heading change, but in this case the pilot might not even recognise the engine failure and might have trouble identifying the failed engine.

  Fly-by-wire has saved lives. A remarkable incident occurred on 17 January 2008 when both engines on a Boeing 777 failed to respond during the approach to land at Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom. In Captain Peter Burkill’s book Thirty Seconds to IMPACT, Peter documents the last 30 seconds of the flight. Peter’s crew and passengers survived this unprecedented and ‘un-survivable’ accident because the 777’s fly-by-wire flight control systems helped the flight crew to stretch the maximum glide during those last 500 feet after the flaps were partially retracted, enabling the crew to hold the wings near their maximum angle of attack.

  In any aircraft, there are what we call ‘non-normal checklists’ – procedures for the actions taken by the flight crew when there is an emergency such as fire, engine failure, avionics failure or malfunction with the control surfaces. Most aircraft manufacturers produce their checklists in the form of a manual
, known as a quick reference handbook (QRH). The Boeing 747 QRH consists of 270 pages detailing more than 240 checklists. When a problem presents itself on a large jet, one of the flight crew, usually the pilot who is not flying, reads the checklist aloud then does the prescribed action, and then moves to the next command. The pilot who is flying the aircraft oversees the checklist.

  All of the Airbus checklists are held in a computer interface called the Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitoring (ECAM), which is displayed on a screen on the flight deck. When there’s an emergency, the ECAM throws up checklists until the problem is resolved.

  While I was comfortable with this technology when I converted to the Airbus A330, many pilots were not and I can appreciate why they experienced problems. The ECAM system only ever gives the flight crew a simplified or ‘veiled’ version of what is actually going on in the aircraft.

  Over the years I have spent a lot of time with Airbus test pilots and engineers, and I recall one engineer telling me there are so many computers, sensors and processors on board an Airbus that there is enough information to overwhelm most pilots. So the flight warning computer sifts through the flood of information, filtering out the extraneous, and presents only the summary information the pilots need to know. An engineer told me the Airbus computers only ever allow the pilots see 15 per cent of the information.

  This is not a happy situation for most pilots. We are a controlling profession: if lawyers are cautious and firefighters are brave, pilots are controlling. Our employers and passengers like us that way. The best way to be a pilot is to get to the point where the airframe feels like an exoskeleton, like an extension of your body and mind. So when Airbus pilots become aware that they only get to see what they need to know, they can get annoyed and under-confident.

  I counted myself lucky in that I loved the feel of the aircraft – I was, after all, a motorcyclist who felt comfortable throwing machinery around to see what it would do. But I was also a computer geek, and the challenge of new computer systems intrigued me. Still, I needed to go deeper than the Airbus system would allow me. I started talking to Airbus engineers and test pilots, reading all the manuals I could get my hands on and looking at as much testing data as Airbus would release to me.

  I don’t want to give the idea that Airbus is complicated and hard to learn. Many of the improvements Airbus made when it built the A300 – and subsequent models – have been huge leaps forward for the aviation industry. I am an inquisitive and technical person so I love Airbus designs and the challenges of aviation. After three years on type, I ‘wore the aircraft around my body much like a glove around the hand’ and I still got a thrill after every take-off from how the aircraft flies so smoothly and accurately. When we have delays on the ground, I tell the passengers interesting facts about engines or performance. They’re interested (or feign interest!) when I explain to them how the flight controls steady the aircraft in the cruise and why it’s such a delight to fly. It’s hard work but fantastic fun.

  No analysis of Airbus aircraft is complete without a discussion of what I think is the most remarkable flight this century. On 15 January 2009, US Airways flight 1549 flew through a flock of Canada Geese (big birds, Coral calls them flying wombats) after take-off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport. The subsequent ingestion of birds caused both engines to lose thrust. What happened next became a remarkable display of airmanship, decision-making and flying skills.

  Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, assisted by First Officer Jeffrey Skiles, flew his disabled Airbus A320 to a safe emergency landing on the Hudson River, saving the 155 lives of those on board. The air traffic controller offered alternative airports that Sully considered but decided were outside his workable range. Sully’s clear-headed decision to select the Hudson over ‘stretched glides’ to other airports shows his overarching priority to fly the aircraft and secure the passengers’ safety over everything else. He made many rapid and excellent decisions that day, which reinforce the need for all pilots to be knowledgeable, well-trained and experienced. Sully’s inspirational flight is a landmark survival case study for the aviation industry. Sully and his team rightly deserve their place in the annals of aviation.

  CHAPTER 12

  A380

  In 2000, Qantas announced it would be one of the first customers for Airbus’s new ‘super jumbo’, the A380. The double-decked, four-engine aircraft could carry 853 passengers in maximised format, compared to the 747–400’s passenger load of 412.

  Although the A380 is almost as long as the 747–400, it is noticeably heavier (569 tonnes versus 413) and has a much longer wingspan of 79.75 metres (261 feet) against the Boeing’s 64.9 metres (213 feet).

  Airlines were impressed by a plane that could operate over longer routes with 40 per cent more capacity per flight, but with environmental performance becoming a big issue for airlines and airports, the A380’s noise ratings could also not be ignored: the A380 had half the noise footprint of the 747–400, produced half the noise-energy and had less than half the cabin noise recorded on the 747–400. It even flew 4000 feet higher at cruise, overflying congested air routes below. And with greater efficiency, greater payloads and less noise, there was very little compromise in terms of performance: the A380 was one third greater in size than the 747–400, but it could take off and land using less distance. This performance discrepancy was in large part due to the fly-by-wire computer system and superior wing shape of the A380. Each A380 wing is as long as a fifteen-storey building is high, and from tip to tip they measure just under 80 metres. It has a distinctive gull shape to lower the wing tip, keeping it underneath the runway’s obstacle-free zone. And every square centimetre of the wing surfaces are designed by computers to optimise the airflow and performance. The A380’s gull wing provides extraordinary efficiencies and it looks like a piece of art. But the A380 also owes a lot to the latest Rolls-Royce engine, the RB211 Trent 900.

  For Qantas, with fully booked routes across the Pacific and to London, the A380 could not be ignored. The airline ordered twenty of the aircraft which had a market value of about A$420 million each (though Qantas negotiated a considerably lower price).

  I put my hand up to fly the A380, of course. It was a big, new plane – the biggest commercial airliner ever – and I wanted to be a part of that. In March 2008 I trained on simulators in Sydney and became fully licensed by Qantas for the A380, even though the first plane didn’t make it to Sydney until September of that year.

  Qantas sent the first few crews to Toulouse in France to do the eight take-offs and landings and the ten hours of flying CASA required on Airbus test aircraft. We were assigned to the A380 Manufacturer Serial Number (MSN) 4, the fourth A380 Airbus had produced. MSN 4 was a test aircraft, set up with 20 tonnes of special sensors, wiring and computer equipment for engineers and test pilots. Airbus used MSN 4 to certify the new Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine and conduct heavy take-offs and landings.

  The engines were hammered. Commercial airlines limit take-off thrust settings to the minimum of what is required to prolong the engine life and to reduce costs, but on MSN 4 the test pilots routinely thrashed the engines at take-off, meaning we got a great sense of how powerful those engines really were, and we could push the aircraft and ‘see what she’d do’.

  Behind MSN 4’s cockpit spread an un-partitioned $30 million cabin configured for fifteen test engineers and scientists. The engineers sat at work stations in front of 8 foot–high racks crammed with computers, all joined by tonnes of bundled orange wires linking to Airbus’s ‘Mission Control’ in Toulouse. Spread evenly around the cabin were hundreds of water ballast tanks used to simulate passenger weight for performance testing. Thousands of additional sensors sent a constant feed of data to the engineer’s stations. It was IT nirvana for a computer nerd like me.

  On our flights there were only six of us on board: three flying and three in reserve down the back. It was a delight being on the plane as we flew around Europe with two Qantas pilots and Pascal Vernea
u, the Airbus test engineer. Pascal oversaw MSN 4 from construction through to testing, and now through Qantas’s proving flights. He sat behind and between the pilots and, in a very unusual situation for an airline pilot like me, Pascal had authority to call for the pilot to reject a take-off. While many pilots would be annoyed about being under the watch of a design engineer, I loved the experience: for five days I had total access to one of the most senior people behind the construction of this aircraft and he encouraged me to ask any questions I could think of, which I did.

  I flew my sectors in the morning, and the other Qantas pilot with me, Mark Penklis, flew his sectors in the afternoon. On the first afternoon, Mark had an engine failure.

  My first impressions of this aircraft were entirely positive. It was huge but it was quick; incredibly powerful, yet very quiet; it had a massive wingspan yet it was responsive. It felt just like the A330 – amazing given it was twice the size. Imagine if you took a car or a boat and doubled its size; you would expect the handling to be very different. But the A380’s fly-by-wire was the same as the A330’s, and the cockpit and controls were also the same. The control surfaces were larger, more numerous and improved, and the engineering of the larger aircraft was so superb that it was as agile as an Airbus A320 (which was one seventh the weight). One of the enhancements on the A380 over the A330 was the number of ailerons. On the A330 there are two ailerons on each wing while on the A380 there are three, giving it added agility and stability at cruise, and resilience to damage, which would be vindicated later. Ailerons roll the aircraft. If you are fortunate enough to fly in an A380, sit at a window above the wing and observe the ailerons during take-off or landing. If there’s turbulence, watch the ailerons perform what is poetically called the ‘Dance of the Ailerons’. The three ailerons (and two rudders) move independently to stop the wings flapping, the engines nodding, the fuselage jerking and the tail shaking like a dog that has just come out of the water. It is a majestic dance, it’s the reason the A380 is famously smooth in flight, and it happens without anyone on the flight deck even touching a button.