Posted on 06/01/2009 7:11:10 PM PDT by traumer
A commercial pilot has said he saw a "fire" on the Atlantic Ocean close to the route of a missing Air France plane.
The pilot, for TAMAirlines, said he spotted what appeared to be orange marks in the ocean near to where the jet went missing.
More follows...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
The airbus pilot did a little speculating and suggested that the plane may have lost its main computer, possibly due to lightning and was flying at night in an area with numerous huge thunder cells with tops at 50k. He speculated that the crew may have been trying to dodge the major cells and possibly got caught in one...he was the first to say that it was pure speculation, but not impossible given that the AB has so many redundant systems...he said that particular model AirBus was just about the safest plane in service.
One of the things I read after that crash was that the entertainment center was an aftermarket installation, something highly discouraged by McDonnell-Douglas.
The most widely produced and utilized passenger aircraft in history could reasonably be expected to have a higher "raw number" of accidents.
ETOPS is an acronym for Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards, an International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rule permitting twin-engined commercial air transporters to fly routes that, at some points, are farther than a distance of 60 minutes' flying time from an emergency or diversion airport with one engine inoperative.
Of course, pilots and engineers say ETOPS stands for "Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim."
I agree that CDG sucks. The one and only time I was there we were not allowed to leave the plane. Sat for 6 hours in the late June sun. The only a/c we had was what little breeze came through the open doors.
Same could be asked about your trashing of Airbus.
But let's see why am I against Boeing.....
Their union is headed by a corrupt, pro-0bama communist.
Boeing is helping the chinese military by giving them access to aircraft technology they they should not receive.
Boeing has bid on military contracts with the claim to keep the jobs here in the U.S. if they win the contract but then shipped those jobs overseas once they won.
Paying off congresscritters to have them block any awarding of the tanker contract to anyone but Boeing.
Boeing has done more in the past decades to stiffle competition and thus innovation than any other corporation.
Oh I can go on and on about Boeing.
Please do!
Of course, you'll be fair and consider the same issues (corruption, unionization, etc.. ) as they relate to Airbus, right?
You could start by answering my question from post #130.
What's the fatality RATE of Boeing vs. Airbus aircraft?
“I agree that CDG sucks. The one and only time I was there we were not allowed to leave the plane. Sat for 6 hours in the late June sun. The only a/c we had was what little breeze came through the open doors.”
Yes, and that would have been enough to make me sick - sitting in that heat. :o) If they had let you out, you would have had to take a bus & then probably a train to get to another gate, after going through security at several areas & then being told your flight was at another location & that you’d have to go through security again. As I tried to exit the security I had just gone through, an employee at a table yelled out, “Madame!” He wanted to see my boarding pass. He didn’t speak english. I asked him, “I’m never gonna make it out of here alive, am I?” And he just looked at me & handed back the pass. That was after I’d spent the night in their empty no man’s land of a closed airport & still hadn’t found anything to eat or drink. Great day. :o) You’re actually lucky you didn’t have to get off the plane & witness any of that. :o)
What the ETOPS standards mean is when you fly with those engines, you are getting better, safer engines than you are on 4 holers.
As is the crash rate. There are many factors, including how many were caused by pilot error, improper maintenance, failure of the carrier to implement fixes, use of counterfeit parts, engine failure (not the same as airframe failure), etc. Any crash caused by those factors cannot count as black marks against the safety of an aircraft model.
True, but I would expect those issues to be more-or-less equal among different models and manufacturers. A country with crappy aircraft maintenance won't keep their A320s pristine while ignoring their 737s.
I think the fatality rate is still a meaningful indicator because other variables would tend to balance out across the spectrum.
But a carrier would.
Really? Why?
That's pure speculation. With so few deaths per so many miles for both manufacturers, anything other than death rate per miles flown caused by design flaw (whose recommended fix wasn't ignored) is not usable data.
And that goes both ways. If stats make Boeing look bad, those stats better be meaningful, not a bunch of incidents thrown together like gumbo.
Because a carrier might only purchase from one manufacturer or the other.
But again, unless the statistics are broken down, this is all speculation.
Canoe have your kayak and eat it too? (ducking incoming flak)
Thanks. Fanscinating read, both the analysis and the experienced commments that follow.
Yep but the Boeing cheerleaders will use any and all excuse they can to unfairly trash the only viable competition that Boeing has.
There is only one instance of a major part coming off of an Airbus causing a crash, and that was a result of departure control allowing the takeoff to be too close behind a 747, and the flight crew following improper proceedures to deal with the wake vortex.
The Boeing cheerleaders wrongly attribute the American Airlines crash to a design flaw while ignoring the known fact that established proceedures were not followed.
But then even Boeing jets have had their vertical tail separate too...
BOAC flt 911:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_911
There has been numerous other fatal in flight airframe failures of Boeing jets to include the roof falling off, pressure bulkhead fractures, etc.
My experiance with flying on Airbus aircraft has actually been favorable in the past. They are quiet, have some better features, and the ones I’ve been on have yet to have been delayed or diverted due to equipment failure.
On the flip side, I’ve been on a brand new 737-800 that felt like I was sitting in a rolling pile of scrap iron. It shaked, shuddered, creaked, and popped all through the flight and the landing was even worse. Not to mention that the cabin noise in general was louder than most turboprop puddle jumpers I’ve flown on.
The crash rates that was asked for is irrelevant since more Airbusses are used by airlines that do not have the same high training or maintanence standards as our domestic airlines, or major foreign airlines such as British Airways, Lufthansa, JAL, ANA, Quantas, Swiss Air, etc.
Up until this crash, only 7 people have lost their lives on a A330 (during a flight test) in over 12 million hours of flight time and countless number of miles since the A330 was introduced while the same can not be said of the A330’s competition the 767.
In it’s nearly 40 years of existance, only one Airbus has been lost due to a structural failure. The other crashes were pilot error, or extreme weather conditions.
Oh and being that there was a report of a bomb threat that was called into Air France concerning one of the flights from Brazil to Paris in the days leading upto this flight, this could very well still be an act of terrorism which doesn’t count against any safety rating.
It is odd to see this trashing of Airbus, considering that when there are discussions of military aircraft on this forum, I read plenty of favorable comments about foreign aircraft.
I actually prefer the Boeing planes, but Airbus makes a fine plane.
“And some dry, white toast, ma’am.”
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