Posted on 06/04/2009 1:26:35 PM PDT by traumer
Air France pilots battled for up to 15 minutes to save the doomed flight that went missing over the Atlantic this week, electronic messages emitted by the aircraft have revealed.
Details have emerged of the moments leading up to the disappearance of flight AF 447 with 228 people on-board, with error messages reportedly suggesting the plane was flying too slowly and that two key computers malfunctioned.
Flight data messages provided by an Air France source show the precise chronology of events of flight AF 447 before it plummeted into the sea 400 miles off Brazil on Monday.
These indicate that the pilot reported hitting tropical turbulence at 3am (BST), shortly before reaching Senegalese airspace. It said the plane had passed through tall, dense cumulonimbus thunderclouds.
At this stage, according to a source close to the investigation cited by Le Monde, the Airbus A330-200's speed was "erroneous" - either too fast or too slow. Each plane has an optimal speed when passing through difficult weather conditions, which for unknown reasons, had not been reached by flight AF 447.
Airbus is expected to issue recommendations today to all operators of the A330 model to maintain appropriate thrust levels to steady the plane's flight path in storms.
At 3.10am, the messages show the pilot was presented with a series of major failures over a four-minute period before catastrophe struck, according to automatic data signals cited by the Sao Paulo newspaper, le Jornal da Tarde.
At this time, the automatic pilot was disconnected – either by the pilot or by the plane's inbuilt security system, which flips to manual after detecting a serious error.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
There is no radar 200 miles off the coast, therefore throwing 7700 on the transponder in the middle of the South Atlantic is essentially worthless. In order to declare an emergency, you’ve got to try to call ATC on HF.
More like a LOT lonely.
I’ve spent most of this decade organizing funerals. And people wonder if Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is real!
People will concoct any form of story to obscure an explosion.If there was a catastrophic airframe failure,
how long would it take for the debris to reach
the surface of the the water from that altitude ?Four minutes ?
Jeeze that is just plain stupid! Toothfairy, Easter Bunny, Vampires and Lychen.
One wonders why you would post when you obviously know nothing about what you are talking about. Posts like this would make me question EVERYTHING YOU EVER POST.
Wind shear is a problem when you are low and slow. (I.e. takeoff and landing.) It is not a problem when you are high and relatively fast. When you are low and slow you might be only 20 knots above the stalling speed (that speed at which the wings no longer generate sufficient lift to keep the plane aloft). So a sudden loss of 30 knots due to wind shear would cause the plane to begin falling. (NB Falling and descending mean different things. I said falling.) When you fall close to the ground bad things happen.
At 35,000 feet (or whatever) the situation is somewhat different. Usually you have much a much greater speed margin over the stall speed. But even if you do stall, you just fall. In all but the most unusual circumstances, the fall increases the speed of the air over the wings and lift returns. Even if this takes several thousand feet, there is no ground anywhere near enough to cause a problem. I really don't know how much altitude the big boys would be likely to lose during a stall recovery but my recollection is that someone just learning to fly a single engine plane (which I did over 30 years ago) is expected to be able to recover from a stall without losing more than 100 feet of altitude.
ML/NJ
Yes, there are flight control computers galore with multiple back-ups but No, you can't fly the airplane if you lose ALL electronics.
It did break apart, after a major rupture caused by a bomb.
When was the last incident where a thunderstorm tore apart a modern jet at cruising altitude?
>>Wouldn’t your NAVCOM and GPS give you true data? Assuming it is still operational at this point...<<
From what I have heard on the news (and I am NOT the best source) there are holes in GPS tracking for places that don’t get a lot of traffic. There isn’t complete satellite coverage for the entire planet.
If they did transmit someone, somewhere heard it. There radio hobbyists all over the world with sophisticated equipment that listen in on just about anything.
Terrorism isn't a possibility, period.
As for wind shear, I refer you to a prior post of mine. Also wind shear and turbulence are very different. Wind shear primarily affect the the forward speed of the plane. Turbulence primarily affects its vertical speed.
ML/NJ
Planes nearly always avoid them. So just because it has not happened does not mean it can’t.
The plane was going sideways, up and down and the yaw... I just looked out the window and gathered the Mormons, who were going on mission, to pray. I never prayed that hard.
Thanks for your post. I was going to reply but skipped it. I experience wind shears in the DFW and will route my summer flights with NO Stopovers in DFW.
You could be correct, but please know, I personally spoke with someone in the Azores, (middle of the Atlantic) from the west coast U.S., on HF during recent thunderstorm activity, and this was using 100 watts of power, with an antenna only 40 feet off the ground.
Especially if you had seen the movie "Alive!" That is not a place you'd want to be stuck.
Commercial aircraft don’t have doppler radars that give a wealth of information about a storm. We have a conventional radar that scans for precipitation which is displayed in green (light), yellow, or red (heavy).
Good point, that....
Famous last words.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.