Posted on 12/28/2014 7:30:34 AM PST by SeekAndFind
JAKARTA, Indonesia – Several hours of searching Indonesian waters turned up no sign of an AirAsia plane that disappeared Sunday with 162 people on board in airspace possibly thick with dense storm clouds, strong winds and lightning, officials said.
Aircraft searching for AirAsia Flight 8501 called off the effort for the night and will resume at Monday morning, said Achmad Toha of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency. Some ships were continuing the search overnight, he said.
The plane took off Sunday morning from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, and was about halfway to its destination, Singapore, when it vanished from radar.
The last communication between the pilot and air traffic control was at 6:13 a.m. (2313 GMT Saturday), when the pilot “asked to avoid clouds by turning left and going higher to 34,000 feet (10,360 metres).” It was last seen on radar at 6:16 a.m., and a minute later was no longer there, Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia’s acting director general of transportation, told reporters.
More than 12 hours later, shocked family members huddled at the Surabaya airport from where the Airbus A320 had taken off, awaiting any news of the jetliner, operated by an airline whose parent company is based in Malaysia. It is the third major aviation incident involving Malaysia this year: in March, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared with 239 people, and in July, a jet from the same airline was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.
Indonesia and Singapore launched a search and rescue operation for Flight 8501 near Belitung island in Java Sea, the area where the jetliner lost contact with ground traffic control about 42 minutes after taking off from Surabaya.
I agree. A very strong downdraft in the clouds would be all it wood take..
That was an amazingly retarded statement. This area is known for severe storms, and the pilot requested clearance to avoid weather.
IIRC the vertical stabilizer on Airbuses are glued on . Laminated carbon fiber and resin.
Didn’t one crash when lateral forces break the stabilizer off some years ago? Yes, here’s an article
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Recent Posts
On November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 ran into air turbulence shortly after taking off from Kennedy International Airport. The vertical stabilizer broke off from a combination of the air turbulence and pilot attempts to compensate for the turbulence.. The Airbus A300 crashed into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens; a borough of New York City. The crash killed all 260 people in the plane and 5 people on the ground. The broken vertical stabilizer was found in the bay a few miles before the airplane hit the ground. When the vertical stabilizer came off the plane turned sideways, its engines broke off, and all control was lost.
“I think what happened was the plane flew into some extreme turbulence from the thunderstorms over the Java Sea (common at this time of the year) and somehow, the plane lost control and crashed.”
I’m betting the composite tail assembly broke off, with the expected results.
I’ve never been a fan of Airbus, especially in turbulence, etc.
Ever since the tail fell off that plane over Queens, following the 9/11 disaster I try to avoid anything Airbus.
If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going!,
And I think the whole vertical stabilizer fell on this model of Airbus over NY either during turbulence a result of the pilot applying too much rudder pedal, breaking off the rudder in one giant piece. All composite rudder and vertical tail assembly if I remember correctly.
Still looking for the words ‘transponder’ and ‘black box’ in any of this discussion. Disabled?
This plane had over 13000 flights. That is a lot of cycles. I wonder if there is some unforeseen problem with composites that might feed into it. Pure speculation at this point. I suspect we will find out what happened to this plane. Prayers up.
That’s what I think
Piloted, of course, by Loretta Fuddy, Tupac, and Elvis.
Removal of the /s would be closer to fact.
We may be seeing an armed up airliner race. Iran has the Triple 7 and ISIS now the Airbust.
Removal of the /s would be closer to fact.
We may be seeing an armed up airliner race. Iran has the Triple 7 and ISIS now the Airbust.
Different model - that was a larger and older A300.
Dude!
Lay off E...
His 80th birthday is next week.
Do you know of any 80 year old commercial pilots?
Yes it has heated air data ports. Including EPR probs, 8 of them. The AF A330 was not caused by a lack of pitot heat, but faulty heated data probs.
It took the disintegration of three de Havilland DH 106 Comet airliner flights before the causes were discovered, understood, and acknowledged:
The de Havilland DH 106 Comet was the first production commercial jetliner.[N 2] Developed and manufactured by de Havilland at its Hatfield Aerodrome, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom headquarters, the Comet 1 prototype first flew on 27 July 1949. It featured an aerodynamically clean design with four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines buried in the wings, a pressurised fuselage, and large square windows. For the era, it offered a relatively quiet, comfortable passenger cabin and showed signs of being a commercial success at its 1952 debut.
A year after entering commercial service the Comets began suffering problems, with three of them breaking up during mid-flight in well-publicised accidents. This was later found to be due to catastrophic metal fatigue in the airframes, not well understood at the time. The Comet was withdrawn from service and extensively tested to discover the cause; the first incident had been incorrectly blamed on adverse weather. Design flaws, including dangerous stresses at the corners of the square windows and installation methodology, were ultimately identified.
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet
Another fatal crash was narrowly averted, but the causes were never really proven. The flight crew were not believed when they insisted the problem was with the aircraft components and not their handling of the aircraft:
Air Crash Investigation The Plane That Fell From The Sky Full Version TWA 841
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_hk483IsaQ
So, this latest missing commercial airline flight is currently a possible incident of aircraft malfunction, pilot error, weather mishap, and/or terrorist act. It remains to be seen if and when any evidence can be obtained to distinguish between these possible causes.
You can check me in however as stating that this was test run number two for whatever is happening.
6,000 hours is 20 hours a week for 6 years.
The copilot had about a third of that.
That’s not a substantial amount of hours, apparently not enough to know that you don’t deliberately fly into at thunderstorm of that magnatitude.
There was a Lion Air flight that took off from the same airport a few minutes before 8501 and flew AROUND the weather and then in between the two supercells on its way to Tarakan.
These pilots were clowns, and how many Airbus planes have to crash due to weather before they are sued out of existence?
The control system is NOT SAFE.
You’re kidding right?
That was a terrorist attack.
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