which should really all be deleted.
Beg to differ. We can all learn from these things. Don’t forget, every rule in aviation is written in the blood of someone.
rather the normality of what’s going on around it. The guy in the tower looks away from the runway, the two construction workers just stand there, loafing. Yet we know what’s about to happen….
cf Musee de Beaux Arts by Auden about Landscape with the fall of Icarus
I had asymmetric flap in a TB10. There is a torque tube that connects the two flaps, and it turns within blocks in the wing. One was not attached to the wing (misassembled after maintenance, where was the duplicate inspection?) and the tube moved within the wing rather that twisting, leading to asymmetric flap deployment. It was not that one side moved and the other one didn’t, it resulted in different flap positions on each side. I needed a lot of aileron to maintain level flight.
This is totally irrelevant to the accident mentioned, but just shows the unexpected can happen.
One preflight item for me is checking equal flap position (viewed from about 5m in front of the prop) at the full flap setting. A duplicate inspection is a mainly UK thing; the mechanic must have been asleep.
One preflight item for me is checking equal flap position (viewed from about 5m in front of the prop) at the full flap setting.
I do the same. But that doesn’t mean they (flaps) do the same thing under aerodynamic load.
Adding the first an third photos in this thread, it would appear that the 310 was allowed to depart controlled flight in the yaw and roll axis, which is certainly possible in a 310 on one engine if you allow it to, of get going too slowly. The pilot allowed it to get inverted, at which, at that altitude would be impossible to recover for anyone other than the most experienced aerobatic pilot. Once inverted, there was an attempt to maintain 1G flight (or the plane was just rimmed that way) which explains the near straight down attitude the instant before impact. I’m presuming that was a fatal accident.
The flight controls of the 310 are mighty effective, and reliable. The gear can be a pain, and losing an engine is always possible. But losing an engine is recoverable, if you maintain control. Let’s hope it was pilot incapacitation, the view out the windshield those last couple of seconds would have been horrible!
I fly mostly DR400 which are wood and frabric aircraft. Flaps are mechanically deployed. There is no electrical system involved. A simple lever in the cockpit, much alike a car parking brake one which you raise to deploy the flaps. They are hinged on the wing and simply activated by a rod. To me it seems very asymmetrical-proof.
I wonder why all flaps are not activated this way? What is the advantage of electrically deployed flaps?
I don’t think there is anything in an electrical system that is more likely to result in assymetric flap extension. If a mechanical system has only a single lever (which it must have) then there must be a linkage between the two flaps, and that linkage is a potential failure point i.e. the flaps may not get operated equally.
As to why have electrically operated flaps – it’s nice to just flip a little switch 
What is the advantage of electrically deployed flaps?
First: The bigger the flaps, the greater the travel and the forces involved. There quickly comes a point when both criteria cannot be met by a single lever. This has been overcome with a handcrank in some aircraft. The only twin I am familiar with that has “handbrake lever” type flap operation is the Piper Seminole which is nothing but a Pa28 with another engine.
Second: Often, especially in larger and faster aircraft, it is desirable (or even a design requirement) to move the flaps at a given (slow!) speed so that the aircraft can be kept in trim and at the correct speed while the flaps operate.
One has to pose the question, why would an aircraft on a flight from Paris to Hawarden go around, One picture taken near the tower shows a strong westerly wind which could have produced considerable turbulence on the approach as the wind would have been coming off the Airbus wing assembly plant, a rather non aerodynamic building. I recall seing a 50Kt airspeed variation caused by the BA maintenance hangar at Cardiff many years ago. Big buildings near runways can have some very undesireable effects.
