AirAsia flight returns to Perth after mid-air scare

[HJ1an]

Aside from the totally useless cabin crew (why am I not surprised) I think that is totally within reason that they did that. Pressurization problems, whether or not a false positive, requires drastic action. Get down low first, talk later.

This is Indonesian AirAsia, btw.

Have fun reading.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia ... 84?SThisFB

[jwocky]

I am kind of uncertain. They lost if the reports are true, aboutish 20,000 feet in 9 minutes. So, over the thumb, -2200fpm. That is steep but for an emergency descend still relative tame. And the way, those flight-attendants screamed on the video that is going around, I am pretty sure, the was no decompression.
So, there was no explosive decompression which means cabin compromised, there was maybe a slower decompression if the packs didn't work properly. But why would the plane climb to over 30,000 feet if the pressurization is in some kind of trouble, that stuff should have worked at least since the plane came above 10- to 12,000 feet. The other thing is, the plane had just taken off from Perth and was already higher than 30,000 feet, so that makes what? 2000 to 2500fpm? They descend in an emergency slower than they climb at AirAsia or what?
To me, nothing here fits really together. Either some numbers the articles report are wrong or those guys flew the A320 like lets see what this thing can do, tell the computer ... and there is where things go wrong. When people tell computers things, they don't understand themselves. Seems, that plane went up and down in some kind of altitude hold mode, but I am not sure how that is called by Airbus. Which means, if the cabin was not compromised and the air pressure was there (how would have those flight attendants screamed without air?) there was nothing wrong with the plane, someone just pressed a button in the cockpit. Did he do so because he had a warning light? Maybe! But for now, I think, the optimal crew for an Airbus at AirAsia is a pilot and a dog. You know, the pilot to feed the dog, the dog to make sure the pilot presses no buttons.

[HJ1an]

Well, I didn't read other artcles about that (only the one I posted) so I wouldn't know what kinds of numbers that flight was dealing with.

The article I only mentioned pressurization in a sentence so I went with that. It's possible the thing worked fine until they were at 30,000, a warning or alert came on. Hence the descent. The report I read was that they were about 25 minutes into the flight, so 30,000 is entirely possible within that time frame.

BTW, what's the hard limit for the FBW descent on an Airbus?

Also, I didn't watch the videos, and I just learnt that the Australian passengers didn't know what was going on because the plane was playing a recording in every language except English. Hahaha. I was on a flight to Kuala Lumpur (this was a few months after the AirAsia went into the sea in 2014) and the totally incompetent cabin crew had to make an announcement verbally, because they did not have a recording for the sudden need of reassurances 'blablabla we take safety as utmost priority blablabla' announcements. Of course, they failed to do that. The flight attendant who did the announcement forgot her line and simply gave up on talking halfway through.

[KL-666]

It is always best to stick to the facts, instead of listening to exaggerated horror stories of passengers. Aviation herald says this about it:

http://avherald.com/h?article=4afbbe1b&opt=0

There are not many details known about this incident. And why should there be? As far as i am concerned, a normal procedure was executed. If there is a decompression (rapid or slow), oxygen masks drop. They have about 10 minutes of oxygen, so the plane must be brought down to fl 100 fast. That's all there is to it.

Considering that panicky passengers create all sorts of malformed stories in their heads, i have my doubts about about the allegations made towards the cabin crew. When not using the PA, one has to speak up loud. With the childrens voices of women, that quickly sounds like screaming. And do we know whether a passenger stood up to get his prayer book out of the overhead? In such case a cabin crew member must tell that person to sit down, which again over a distance may appear as screaming.

Kind regards, Vincent

[Wecsje]

Just to comment on the limit of descent: the A320 can easily descent at a V/S of 5000 when full spoilers are deployed, and a normal descent without inputting a V/S would be 2500+. So imo they descended a bit slow...

C.

[HJ1an]

i have my doubts about about the allegations made towards the cabin crew. When not using the PA, one has to speak up loud. With the childrens voices of women, that quickly sounds like screaming. And do we know whether a passenger stood up to get his prayer book out of the overhead? In such case a cabin crew member must tell that person to sit down, which again over a distance may appear as screaming.

Trust me, from personal experience they were not very good/well trained and have attitude / patience problrms. About the running in the cabin thing, i have seen that before (even in non emergency) and I'm pretty sure a proper airline would not allow this. Besides looking all unprofessional there is also risk of tripping and injury especially.

Also, I want to point out that *some* of what was happening was indeed probably blown out of proportion by the uninformed passengers but based on personal experience I will say half of that is probably completely true.

If there is any training spending saved, it's definitely in the cabin crew department. They can't even make announcements and were too reliant on the recordings.

[HJ1an]

Just to comment on the limit of descent: the A320 can easily descent at a V/S of 5000 when full spoilers are deployed, and a normal descent without inputting a V/S would be 2500+. So imo they descended a bit slow...

C.

Thanks for the info.

[KL-666]

Hi HJ1an,

I am not doubting your experience and judgement that there may be some lack of training with the AirAsia cabin crew. Not being able to do a simple announcement sounds pretty weird indeed.

But i do want to put forward, what maybe not everyone knows, is that the major part of cabin crew training is not how to throw a food box onto your tray, but it is safety training. These people are (or should have been) trained to take the lead when there is a calamity and tell passengers what to do. That safety mindedness can explain maybe some of the unexpected behaviour you sometimes see from the cabin crew. In this case i think they at least did one thing right: They tried to take the lead

Some cabin crew take the safety training a bit too seriously, like i experienced once on a Dutch airline. While taxiing to the gate a person started to get his stuff out of the overhead. From the rear galley came a screaming: Sit down! Sit down! This had no effect on the passenger. Then i heard a rumbling noise coming from the back, getting louder and louder, until an elephant sped past me, almost ripping my arm off with her hips. She threw the passenger in his seat, and ran back almost getting my arm again.

A bit overdone her behaviour i would say. I suppose it is a matter of (company) culture, because Swiss cabin crew reacts completely different to the same issue. My uncle who flew for a Swiss company during his working life, told me that Swiss cabin crew chooses to tell on the passengers to the "boss", the captain. Then he would always reply: "Thanks for that information. I shall brake a bit harder at the gate. That should teach those pesky passengers!". Not that he would really brake hard. He is just so appalled by people telling on others, that he liked to make the cabin crew sweat a bit about what would happen at the gate.

Just some anecdotes about how safety education can be absorbed by different people, or maybe not getting sufficient education at all. I can not judge what is going on at AirAsia, because i never flew them (and probably will never). I trust your judgement because you fly them often.

Kind regards, Vincent

[HJ1an]

I will agree to that. In my POV they completely saved on hospitality, and trained just the bare minimum on teamwork, and probably did the absolute minimum as required on safety too. As the passengers rely on the cabin crew to inform them of what is happening as they are the ones who're supposed to know what is going on, and they didn't get either information or calmness, I can understand why the passengers became more stressed than they already are.

So, I am sure they are trained how to open the e-exits, for example, but I can't say for sure if they'd wait till everyone was off, or they'd jump out first as it's every 'man for themselves'. Or even push passengers or even one another. That's the impression that I have. You just don't know..

I also had a similar experience where I stood up to let a fellow passenger in ( I was in the aisle seat), the attendant shouted from some distance away "SIT DOWN SIR!" . This was still when we were boarding and people where stuffing their bags into the overhead compartments. :/

Oh, btw they were trained (?) to peddle wares and food to sell too while in flight. They just haul the cart around and started shouting out "food! books! sourvenirs!". If you didn't pre-order your food, and were hungry, you could buy them at exorbitant prices at that stage (assuming they still have stock, which are always not in enough supplies). So, OK, that may have nothing to do with hospitality, safety, or teamwork training, but again, unprofessionalism comes to mind.. but I guess that is sort of at the level at which you're getting what you paid for. I should be happy, as they say, that I am not sharing cabin space with livestock at that point. (There have been tales where people bring tied-up live roosters on board.)

[jwocky]

So, despite Vincent's wisdom "of not listen to anything but", Aviation Herald says the same as I said: This was no "free fall" or "plummeting" and it did not "plunge" for sure. This was rather moderate. It was, as far as I can get some numbers together, even a little bit moderate for a crew really dealing with a loss of cabin pressure. I mean, alright, you are above FL300 and want to get down to FL100 and you sit in a plane that can, with spoilers make easy and save a descent at 4000 or even 5000fpm, which ina situation of pressure loss would be entirely justified. Soooo ... you have about 15 minutes oxygen, you don't know, how long it took till the problem was noticed (if it is only a warning light in the cockpit). Would you sit there and take you 9 or even 10 minutes time to get down where people can breathe again without masks? Or would you see to get down as fast as you can?

Here is the other thing. As much as I appreciate the attitude of "political correct closing the eyes till there is an official report and never ask questions" ... NOT ...
See, if I have one witness who tells something, it is one thing, but by now, there are several. And they all paint the picture of the inept cabin crew. Fine, but here is the thing, when a bunch of witnesses describe a detail, that in its meaning can't be entirely clear to them, they just describe what they see and hear. We have it on crime scenes often, when people for example describe "a low pop and then a little noise almost like glass breaking but lower". Well, that is when a burglar or intruder smashes the light bulb on your porch to get the light out. Normal people describe what they hear when they don't know the hidden meaning in it. Same here. They all try to give an impression of flight-attendants running around like headless chicken, screaming things, most of the passengers couldn't even understand because most of it was probably not even in English. So, how would you lie about a detail, you don't even understand to begin with. If their stories were entirely invention, we would hear the usual trimmings of an explosive decompression, not of screaming flight-attendants. So I have serious doubts, they had really a sudden loss of cabin-pressure and for sure, the pressure didn't go down to outside air-pressure to begin with.

So, there are still some questions open and since we have over the last two years seen more than one investigation that aimed more at clearing responsibilities and look politically good than real, I still take the freedom to think for myself.

Now, the