Posted on 07/22/2009 5:35:25 AM PDT by bert
Crash: Air France A332 over Atlantic on Jun 1st 2009, aircraft impacted ocean
The BEA have released their preliminary reports in both English (3MB - without attachments) and French (13MB) reporting, that the airplane had taken off from Rio de Janeiro at 232.8 tons near its maximum takeoff weight (233 tons) at 22:29Z. The airplane was subsequently cleared to FL350. At 01:35Z the crew contacted Brazil's Atlantic air traffic control control on the HF frequency reporting, they had just overflown waypoint INTOL, giving estimates for waypoints SALPU at 01:48Z and ORARO at 02:00Z. The crew also transmitted their SELCAL code and a test was performed.
The controller subsequently asked them to maintain FL350 and provide an estimate for TASIL, repeating the request for three times without reply.
The airplane's ACARS was programmed to transmit its own position about every 10 minutes. The last position transmitted at 02:10Z was 02 degrees 58.8 minutes North and 30 degrees 35.4 minutes West (N02.98 W30.59).
Analysis of the weather infrared images produced by the Meteosat 9 satellite every 15 minutes, with an image taken about 7 minutes before and another 7 minutes taken after the last position report at 02:10Z, does not allow conclusions, that the weather was exceptional, but shows the existance of a cluster of powerful cumulonimbi along the planned flight path starting at 00:30Z. The cluster is the result of 4 smaller clusters combining, its east-west extension was some 400km (216nm). By around 02:00Z those cumulonimbi had reached their maturity, it is therefore highly probable that some produced notable turbulence at FL350. It is also possible, that there was significant electrical activity at that flight level. The existance of supercooled water however is not very probable.
(Excerpt) Read more at avherald.com ...
If only we had this info for the flight downed off Long Island
We had eyewitness reports of the missle striking TWA 800.
interesting....
Several possibilities occurred to me as I read through this piece.
1. The description of some of the damaged pieces that were recovered suggest that the crash COULD have been the result of a bomb exploding aboard the aircraft. That could explain the buckled deck plates (attributed to the aircraft striking the ocean) showing that some of the recovered aircraft flooring had been pushed upward as well as the flurry of ACARS reports if the onboard computers lost contact with various sensors aon the a/c.
2. The description of the recovered debris AND the ACARS reports also suggests the possibility of a complete computer malfunction that could have provided confusing and faulty information to the pilots.
3. The pitot issue doesn’t make any sense to me because, if the pilots were paying attention to their aircraft (and NOT sleeping, for example), if the pitot tubes failed (dubious, at best) the pilots should have been able to manually control the aircraft and either reset the computer or fly the a/c without computer assistance.
4. If weather is supposed to be a possible factor, why didn’t the aircraft’s weather radar display the severity of those storms well in advance so they could take evasive action?
Taken as a whole, with the information that Air France is generating as well ads this information, it suggests that their pilots are complete idiots who lack sufficient training to be able to respond to (allegedly) faulty information (allegedly) originating from the pitot tubes. I don’t believe that to be the case, so it suggests that there is something else going on that they aren’t willing to discuss.
Such as a bomb.
Have you ever been in a total IFR environment, with no visible clues as to the attitude of your aircraft? And with no instruments to tell you which way is up, or down, or where your plane's nose is with respect to the horizon?
It's one thing to lose instrumentation on a clear day in smooth air. It's another thing to be at 40,000 feet in severe turbulence with no visual clues as to where the nose and wings are with respect to the ground.
The leeway between stalling and falling out of the sky and exceeding the maximum speed for the airplane in this case is about 70 mph. With all that's going on in the cockpit there's not a pilot alive who could keep that aircraft in the air in those conditions once they lost their instrumentation.
Yep, been there, done that got the T-shirt!!
It doesn’t answer the question why, if we are to believe that weather was a factor, their weather radar failed to indicate the severity of the storms ahead of them and allowing them to deviate from their flight plan to circumnavigate the storms?? Other flights ahead of them did, why didn’t they???
Ever flown a glass cockpit aircraft after a total electrical failure?
I thought that might be the case and hoped I didn't come across as a smart ass!
What have normally been a no-problem storm cell might have taken on a whole new complexion when the SHTF. One of those really weird, strange combination of a bunch of things that under normal circumstances and by themselves would have been business as usual.
Thanks!
There are backup non-electric instruments. However, loss of airspeed indication would be deadly. Pitch is the principal control for airspeed, but not knowing that airspeed gives no cue about the control input.
I didn't SAY it was easy, but the backup systems should have provided the capability.
And, again, it still doesn't answer the question why, if we are to believe that weather is or could be a contributing factor, their weather radar didn't indicate the storm cell on their flight path and/or why they failed to take evasive action like the flights before and after them?
Seen on the web
Picture this ... you’re the captain of an Airbus A319-131, and you’ve just taken off from London into a clear night sky, bound for Budapest with 76 passengers on board. Approaching FL200, you hear a “CLUNK” and the cockpit goes dark. No autopilot, no multi-function displays, no radios, just a bit of backup lighting. An airline pilot must now actually fly the airplane. As your co-pilot starts down the checklist, you take manual control of the airplane, and fly by the night horizon outside and what backup instruments you can see. Two minutes into the checklist, the co-pilot pushes a button, and all whirrs back into bright life. That’s what happened during a very long two minutes on Oct. 5. With everything back online, the crew spent 40 minutes in a hold checking all the systems, then flew on to Budapest without incident. A mechanic reset the system and put it back in service. The U.K.’s Air Accidents Investigation Board said it checked the systems and found no anomalies, but the investigation is continuing — a preliminary report is available online.
And in another story
At 9:45 a.m. on January 25, 2008, United Flight 731 departed from Newark Liberty Airport in Newark, N.J., on a flight to Denver, Colo., with 107 people on board. Shortly, after lifting off, three of the six electronic panel displays went blank—including the captain’s PFD and navigational display, plus the upper electronic centralized aircraft monitoring (ECAM) display—and a number of systems became inoperative. The attitude information on the first officer’s PFD became unusable, though it eventually returned. The landing-gear handle had been moved to the “retract” position (as is normally done after takeoff), but the gear stayed down.
All radios became inoperative and the airplane’s transponder, traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) and standby attitude indicator all went dead. One interesting (and perhaps frightening) bit of information is that the A320’s standby attitude indicator is designed to function for only five minutes after it loses power. (Its usefulness is particularly limited in the event of a catastrophic electrical failure while in night VFR over the middle of the ocean.) The NTSB wants the FAA to require that the standby attitude indicators run for at least 30 minutes.
The first officer reported that the standby attitude indicator began to present false information about three minutes after takeoff, rolling about 45 degrees and pitching up about 20 degrees. Eventually, an orange “failure” flag appeared. The first officer stated, “If Newark had low ceilings and visibility that day, and if my attitude indication on my PFD hadn’t returned, the aircraft may have been lost as the attitude gyro failed.” In a report to ASRS, the first officer stated, “As I continued to fly straight ahead, I had little idea what was wrong with the aircraft… The captain told me of his confusion with what was happening to the airplane. Neither of us really understood what had happened.”
The pilots leveled Flight 731 at 2,500 feet, the first assigned altitude on their IFR flight plan. Crew members reported feeling a very real urgency to land because the aircraft was at low altitude in VFR conditions, not in contact with ATC, had an inoperative transponder and was heading roughly in the direction of downtown Manhattan. (We all remember September 11, 2001: Two airliners, one a Newark departure, flew to downtown at low altitude in VFR conditions without radio or radar contact with ATC.) “I made a comment to the captain about staying clear of the metropolitan area, not wanting to get shot down by military fighters,” reported the first officer. “I wasn’t joking at all. Operating this ‘no radio’ aircraft with no ‘squawk’ at low altitude made me quite uncomfortable.”
The crew felt that the sense of urgency may have led them to devote most of their efforts toward returning to Newark rather than troubleshooting the aircraft’s problems. After a safe landing at Newark, the crew was able to focus on troubleshooting; they manually moved one of the AC bus feeds to “alternate,” which reconfigured the power supply. At this point, the captain’s instruments and most of the failed aircraft systems started working again.
The NTSB found that in May 2007, Airbus had issued a service bulletin to modify the electrical system so that the AC power supply would be automatically reconfigured in the event of a failure affecting the #1 bus. The FAA didn’t issue an airworthiness directive to mandate compliance, which the NTSB says it should now do. The Flight 731 aircraft hadn’t been modified. The NTSB also said the FAA should require better guidance and more simulator training about dealing with electrical malfunctions for Airbus A320 pilots.
Airbus and back up insturments
The Airbus A320 family is the first to fully feature the glass cockpit and digital fly-by-wire flight control system in a civil airliner. The only analogue instruments are the RMI (backup ADI on earlier models, replaced by digital ISIS on later models) and brake pressure indicator.
The Airbus A320 family is the first to fully feature the glass cockpit and digital fly-by-wire flight control system in a civil airliner. The only analogue instruments are the RMI (backup ADI on earlier models, replaced by digital ISIS on later models) and brake pressure indicator.
If this is true, then the FAA should de-certify the Airbus A320 and associated aircraft from flying into/out of North American airports/air space. If this craft lacks a backup system that allows the human sitting in the front of it to fly manually in the face of an electrical/electronics failure, then it lacks a fundemental safety feature and should not be allowed to carry paying passengers.
But, of course, to do all that, we'd have to have an FAA that actually gave a rat's patootie about the flying public!
747, the safest A/C in the world - even the back up systems have backup. And a RAT for both electrical and hydraulic
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