Airliner almost flips over during flight due to pilot error

[Phil Bunch]

Interesting story and video recreation here.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8798517/Japanese-plane-flips-over-during-flight.html

and here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8796494/Plane-nosedives-6000-feet-after-pilot-presses-wrong-button.html

Not sure I would want to fly on this roller coaster!

Bad form to mix up switches like that, but it's inevitable if enough thousands of flights are executed.  Sort of like jaywalking in that any one attempt is low risk but if you jaywalk say 10,000 times, you'll probably get hit by a car or at least have a near-miss once or twice.

I'd hate to know I needed to instantly recognize that the rudder trim had gone out of whack while the airliner was executing aerobatics.  I'm sure the natural reaction would be to assume that something obscure had broken.  Maybe what the airliner controls need is a "rescue my airliner into stable, level flight" button?  

Along these lines of thought, I recall that the F18 fighter is designed so that if the pilot gets into unstable trouble during flight, he lets go of the controls and just sits there for a brief period of time, and it automatically recovers from bad situations.  I believe that normal procedure during catapult launch from an aircraft carrier is hands-off until it is airborne.  The pilot has grab bars for both hands, and he just hangs on until it settles down into stable launch attitude.

Just some unqualified thoughts.  Hope everyone enjoys the story and video.

[Aidan]

On the Airbus, when the A/P is on; accidentally pressing the rudder trim reset to zero pushbutton or the rudder trim selector itself does nothing, which is good because the reset to zero pushbutton is just near the pushbutton that displays the video screen for flight deck access, it also looks the same.

Knock you might but the Airbus is very well designed ergonomically, with the obvious exception of the thrust levers.