Posted on 06/04/2009 1:26:35 PM PDT by traumer
Sounds like the got turned into a giant ball of St. Elmo’s fire by the T-storms, and then the plasma currents started leaking through every ground fault they could find.
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...
Global warming!
Oh boy. Now the speculations will go into higher gear.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Ping.
It was Senagalese airspace at that point?
In any case, this is a horrible scenario. Prayers for all those poor people.
If you think that's a joke, think again.
And no voice traffic? Something sounds fishy about that.
I don’t think they’ve recovered the “black boxes”, and I haven’t heard that there were any distress calls, so how are they determining this? Pure speculation?
Wow.
No matter what happened I pray for the passengers, crew and families of the flight.
I fly — A LOT — and can picture what happened and what they were thinking in their last moments. My wife and I both know the importance of that “last” statement: “I love you.” It may be our last statement.
But so may be your drive to work — so let the people you love know how much you love them. Frequently.
They were out of range of VHF communications (400 miles offshore). They would’ve had to use HF shortwave, which is borderline useless in thunderstorms—think of your car AM radio. Besides, if things are going to hell in a bucket in the cockpit, the first rule pilots follow is simple: Fly the plane. *Everything* else, including radio, is secondary to keeping the airplane moving forward and not hitting anything.
}:-)4
Actually it looks silly anyway.....
What the hell is wrong with you guys?
This ain’t funny at all — or does mass death just get you your jollies?
Huh. Failures in air data inputs can give erroneous airspeed indications and kick off the autopilot. I’m not familiar with this aircraft though...
This could have been wind shear: i.e. the plane was flying into a strong headwind and then suddenly found itself in a tailwind. This is what caused the Delta crash at D/FW back in the 80's.
However, the Delta plane was on final approach to the airport near the ground. This plane was presumably at high altitude and cruise speed, although they may have slowed to "maneuvering speed" because they expected heavy turbulence.
The "flying too slow" may have been an erroneous measurement, or it may have have been when the plane first went out of control.
I don’t know how they’d know about “erroneous speed” unless it was transmitted in another ACARS message that they didn’t tell us about at first. Apparently Airbii “phone home” with a lot of information (see all those fault messages between 0210 and 0214 GMT) but I wonder if either an overspeed or a near-stall is one of them.
}:-)4
I knew that would be some scientist bent on destroying civilization would say after reading that.
It would be funny
but they are the same group that would believe the world is flat and would force ships to stay near land.
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