NEWSLETTER

Flight Simulator Experience

Do you want to be a pilot? Do you think you got what it takes to fly? Here’s your chance to show off your skills of landing a jetliner full of passengers all by yourself! Join us at the UTIAS to experience a full flight simulator and participate in a semi-professional flight course that will take you through the basics of flying, just like how real pilots do it. The UTIAS flight simulator is acquired from Air Canada, and its cabin and model modified for research purposes. The 747 model that the simulator runs on achieves the level of realism expected in the training of an airline pilot. The simulator offers full motion with six degrees of freedom, allowing the pilot to feel the forces that is experienced in a real aircraft. At its full extension, the simulator can tilt up to 90 degrees from level, and its hydraulic actuators can raise the cabin up to 5m in the air. Through the two hour session, attending guests are granted at least 20 minutes as pilot in command of the simulator. Additionally, A 30 minute ground school session will teach students about relevant aspects of flight and allow the student to get the most out of the simulation session. This event offers three different flight lessons on different flight conditions, and students may work through these lessons to earn a certificate from UTAC

Date: Friday, 13th and 27th February

Time: 3-5pm

Location: University of Toronto Institute for

Aerospace StudiesCost:

$15/day for members, $20/day for non-members

February 2015

1

AVIATION NEWS

Member of US Navy supporting the search efforts of QZ8501 over Java Sea, Indonesia (Photo: US Pacific Command)

On December 28, 2014, a third incident in recent months involving a Malaysian-owned airline shocked the world. Air Asia Flight 8501, an Airbus A320-216 with 162 passengers on board,

crashed into the Java Sea. Once again, no survivors were found among the wreckage that was located over a week later. The cause of this crash is still under investigation, but many important

clues that holds the key to this mystery has already started to appear, including the Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Flight Data Recorder. The flight was attempting to make a climb from 32000ft to 38000ft to avoid storms in the area, but was only cleared to climb to 34000ft before disappearing from radar. The flight path shows a dramatic climb rate of 6000ft/min before descending into a terrifying dive in which the pilots never recovered from. Aircrafts are

only designed to climb less than 2000ft/min at high altitudes. Any higher rate would result in a rapid loss of speed, and eventually control of the aircraft. The vertical profile of Flight 8501 is reminiscent of a high altitude stall. Although pilots are trained to recover from stalls, the exact

reasons of how this flight ended in disaster can only remain as speculations until the full investigation is completed.

Not only does this incident remind the world of the loss of two Malaysian Airlines 777 in 2014, but it also resembles the crash of an Air France Airbus A330 in 2009. In the Air France incident, supercooled water droplets in a storm cloud blocked the aircraft’s pitot tubes with ice, giving the pilots false speed measurements. This caused the pilots to mistakenly fly into a stall that they did

not recover from. If both of these crashes were caused by stalls, Airbus will come under heavy scrutiny on their flight envelope protection system, which is installed on every Airbus aircraft. The

system is designed to prevent the aircraft from entering a stall, even with false pilot inputs. It appears that stall recovery training needs to be more frequent in commercial pilots, as they can

not always rely on machines to correct their mistakes.

Unravelling the disaster: Air Asia Flight 8501