Posted on 12/07/2011 9:55:38 AM PST by ventanax5
For more than two years, the disappearance of Air France Flight 447 over the mid-Atlantic in the early hours of June 1, 2009, remained one of aviation's great mysteries. How could a technologically state-of-the art airliner simply vanish?
With the wreckage and flight-data recorders lost beneath 2 miles of ocean, experts were forced to speculate using the only data available: a cryptic set of communications beamed automatically from the aircraft to the airline's maintenance center in France. As PM found in our cover story about the crash, published two years ago this month, the data implied that the plane had fallen afoul of a technical problem—the icing up of air-speed sensors—which in conjunction with severe weather led to a complex "error chain" that ended in a crash and the loss of 228 lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
For me it’s gently-used Ford trucks/SUVs.
Stories like these don’t help this lifelong fraidy cat flyer. I have no experience flying a plane and even I know that if a plane stalls, you NEVER pull up. It seems to me we had an inexperienced guy who freaked out, a flawed design in the aircraft, and a total meltdown of discipline and experience in the end.
You are correct, poor piloting killed everyone.
Expect to see more of this as years past. We now have “digital aircraft operators” not pilots. They have little ability to operate the aircraft manually. Take all the instrument panel toys and eye candy away from them and they might as well kiss their ass good bye if in true IMC conditions.
Some of the problem is in the new mindset of the aircraft engineers, but most of the problem is the pilots refusing to remain proficient in rudimentary flight skills.
That aircraft can safely fly with no airspeed indicators with nothing more than the attitude indicator and the engine power controls. It is right there in the aircraft ops manual, and has been used several times in the past in similar situations by experienced and well trained pilots.
My son and I were discussing this crash last weekend.
He’s more knowledgeable on this stuff than me.
If electronics, gauges, displays fail, 75% power, 5 deg. nose up. hold the wings level.
At high altitudes the safe envelope is very narrow. High angle of attack...stall. Even at relatively high speed.
Too low angle of attack..over-speed.
My wife is a retired airline captain, former small plane pilot and aerobatic pilot. That girl could fly. The amazing thing I found was that the vast majority of airline pilots had never flown small planes, just the big iron.
It didn't "simply vanish." It fell into the sea. There, "mystery" solved.
Just what you said.
IMO too much reliance of electronic instrumentation.
Just like kids today trying to make change w/o an electronic register or calculator.
Totally lost.
The fact that the pilots are told (ingrained) that they CANNOT stall the aircraft is the root problem, IMO.
They simply did not believe that it was possible and assumed an instrument failure. Nobody ever mentioned it when the alarm was blaring and the stick shaker was going off. Whatever you are taught, the stick shaker always tells the truth and one does not disregard it, EVER!
I’m sorry, but that remark makes you sound like a jerk.
I’ve been called worse, by better.
I watched an episode of “Mayday” on this. It was particularly unsettling because of all the mistakes the pilots made.
It’s from wiki so you probably won’t believe it, but here goes.
“The trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) moved from 3 to 13 degrees nose-up in about 1 minute, and remained in that latter position until the end of the flight.”
There was absolutely no evidence of a mechanical failure or a clear design inadequacy. The human errors were tragic but not any worse than errors common to any human endeavor.
With good cause, no doubt.
My comment was more about the commonality between the other poster’s truck woes and the AF447 equipment-oriented failures. As a system component, the flight deck crew definitely figures into the cascading errors experienced. I most certainly agree with you on that.
I'm with you 100% there.
Glad you got home OK. What make of vehicle out of curiosity?
97 Suburban 4x4, haven’t had many problems with it either. I use it for my running around truck, 200k miles now.
Black box and cockpit recorder, according to the Popular Mechanics story mind you, tell a different tale. That’s all I can tell you.
The transcript is chilling. Having the greenest pilot in control of the aircraft was not a wise decision.
On the bright side, at least the passengers never knew what hit them. Aside from what was likely unnerving turbulence, they probably had little idea that their flight was in peril.
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