What you really don't want to see is a picture of the copilot's pants.
Posted on 06/04/2009 1:26:35 PM PDT by traumer
Aircraft in heavy weather, even snow, will build up St. Elmo's fire and it will play havoc with communications.
I never flew a jet, but I have a lot of twin engine recip in weather time and I can tell you that at night, little green things marching across the windshield, the props lit up like rainbows, etc., do things to your communications.
Not really bad with VHF, but other stuff like Loran, for instance, which is outmoded now, but makes the point.
ADF is a good example.
As for the comments about weather radar, aircraft should stay out of storms, etc., almost every pilot tries. There are some hard noses that plow on, but no matter how hard you try there are a lot of opportunities for error.
An area of heavy rain can paint as heavy rain, so it is OK to go through it. Suddenly the rain gets heavier and heavier and the radar can no longer penetrate. Radar range is greatly reduced. Beyond whatever that range limit is, the radar is blank leading you to believe that is the end of the rain. No, it is not. It is worse.
So if the range on a jet's radar is reduced substantially, that combined with the high speed gives you a very short time to make a decision.
I know little about high speed high altitude jets, but I had 10,000 hours before I retired.
So any one of many things could have caused the beginning of the chain, but heavy weather in combination with some malfunction does seem to be the most likely. The fact that the plane took 14 minutes from the onset to the end seems to indicate that there was a malfunction in the control system or the instrumentation that gives speed and attitude information, that they managed it for a while before it beat them. That being a pure guess and probably not accurate.
The jet breaking up and the flash associated with fuel igniting.
The storm was 400 miles out to sea.
I doubt that in that part of the world there was any reliable radar information.
Lightening.
Any other questions? (And, BTW, I haven't seen such a report. Could you provide a link.)
ML/NJ
This may be a foolish question—
A couple of decades ago, I was told that trans-Atlantic pilots routinely put the plane on autopilot & went to sleep. (Was told this when we were making a trip)
Was the plane far enough out for this to have occurred?
Would this have occurred?
You don't know because you do not want to know. It was pretty obvious what happened, and now Air France telemetry seems to confirm the obvious.
Hey! Do you think it might have collided with a UFO?
ML/NJ
And you might point out to them that it would be a little bit hard to put the antennae for that Doppler they look at on TV into the nose cone of your aircraft.
The weather radar they see on TV not only has a huge antennae, but it uses tremendous amounts of power to operate.
I don’t know what is on the big iron these days, but my twin had a 12” antennae and I thought I was in high clover.
Do they still use magnetrons on modern radars?
The scariest ride I ever had was one evening over the Smokies.
Radar showed rain. Not bad. A little red in it, but looked like moderate rain with a few spots of heavy rain. No cells.
So on we go.
I got the ride of my life.
Turned the radar over to the avionics guy the next morning and what had happened was the mag had gone bad but had just enough life in it to paint something, thus the heavy stuff looked like it was flyable.
Just demonstrates how one problem can snowball.
This statement was true a few years ago: "few, if any, commercial aircraft equipped for voice satellite communications" but not any more. Now it is fairly common for overwater operators and ATC facilities to have datalink comm with ATC, as well as surveillance via SATCOM from ATC, and SATCOM voice, all at the same time.
In your first post you said:
As for the lack of radio transmissions, when you’re over the open ocean, transmissions are done over HF frequencies.
So apparently you meant only voice transmissions, because, as you mentioned in your reply to mine in which I pointed out ACARS messages were delivered in the final minutes via SATCOM:
ACARS which uses satellites, but only transmits data — that’s how their maintenance base in Paris got the error messages from the aircraft.
I'm not saying this crew was in contact with ATC via SATCOM voice, but I am willing to wager that if the airplane was equipped with the ability to send ACARS messages via SATCOM, then it follows they likely had more ATC communications functions available (if the ATC facilty in question even had that capability).
By the way I don't think they were in the Dakar Oceanic airspace. They were about 70-some-odd miles NE of ORARO, which would have them at least around 30 miles from Dakar Oceanic airspace. They were in the Atlantico FIR, SBAO.
Because..........?
No hail at that altitude — I learned that yesterday :)
No it is ZerO praying to allah it isn’t a bomb.
Are you implying the government would lie about evidence indicating there was a bomb? I hope you are, it’s the first scenario I thought about too. Clinton lied and got away with it, Zeo0 lies every time his lips move.
I read (on the link someone posted above) a comment that this aircraft had been involved in a taxi accident where one wing hit another aircraft. Not that it’s a factor, but could it be? I don’t know. If it were slightly weakened and hit the kind of turbulence a 50,000’ storm could produce....
I’m not ruling out a bomb, but it seems far more likely that the weather did this. The weather was severe. If ScareBus aircraft can disintegrate when a copilot uses too much rudder, imagine what severe turbulence could do, especially sustained severe turbulence.
As I said, I have no experience in heavy iron, but it is an established fact backed up by a number of test pilot crashes that heavy iron with T-tails do not like stalls. These are not the same as stalling a J-3 or a 150.
Now add to that the fact that a stall in heavy turbulence would probably involve one wing stalling ahead of the other with the result that the aircraft would be in an unusual attitude. At night, wild turbulence, unusual attitude, not a good combination.
I am not saying that this is or could be the cause of this accident, but I am saying that it is a mistake to make light of a stall in that type aircraft at night and in a thunderstorm.
Heavy iron upsets are not good.
Not that I'm aware of. In fact, we don't know if this was the case in regards to this Air France incident.
My comment in regards to HF transmissions, such as 100 watt voice transmissions to the Azores and as far away as Australia from the U.S. west coast, during thunderstorm activity, in addition to low solar activity, are accurate.
What you really don't want to see is a picture of the copilot's pants.
Not if the radar was inoperable.
Richard Reid didn't try to blow up AA63 until well into the flight, shortly after meals were served.
Also, Operation: Bojinka called for blowing up all 12 aircraft over the Pacific, basically in mid-flight.
Truth be known, real reason I wanted the LDS’ near me, is so I wouldn’t miss a meal. /s
Crew members 12: 3 pilots and 9 flight attendants.
And nobody could call mayday?
I always have bumpy ride that, for me, is to close to the ground in the summer.
Everyone has different experiences.
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