Whiskey DeltaIt is obvious to me that all problems stem from icing in the pitot static ports after encountering super cooled rain water. Why in hells name they even contemplated entiring a CB cloud is beyond me. An Ibera flight before theirs deviated around the cloud so clearly that was the prudent course of action.
Obvious to you? You must be some clairvoyant to know everything that happened then. I guess they should call off the search for the CVR/data recorder, Simon G. has it figured out.
From the article that you lifted your pictures from:
* Icing — With a flight level temperature of -40 deg C suggested by the proximity sounding the A330 would have been flying mostly in rime ice and possibly some clear ice and graupel.
* Precipitation — A dual engine flameout due to precipitation or ice ingestion is a noteworthy possibility as has been discussed on other sites (specific to the A330 type too). Due to the high water vapor content in the tropics, tropical weather systems can contain exceptionally high values of precipitable water content. The plane, if at FL350, was experiencing flight level temperatures of between -41 and -36 deg C. Supercooled water is considered to be exceptionally rare or insigificant at temperatures below -30 deg C, but if it does occur it does present the possibility of aggravating airframe and engine icing. Overall the plane was mostly in rime ice and possibly some graupel.
Overall what we know for sure is weather was a factor and the flight definitely crossed through a thunderstorm complex. There is a definite correlation of weather with the crash. However the analysis indicates that the weather is not anything particularly exceptional in terms of instability or storm structure. It’s my opinion that tropical storm complexes identical to this one have probably been crossed hundreds of times over the years by other flights without serious incident.
How do you know that the Air France flight didn’t deviate around the weather? There are no radar returns only speculation based on the expected route of flight. The article even shows that the aircraft location at the time of the automatic ACARS messages was west of the planned course hinting that the crew had deviated.
At the same moment there was also a warning of rudder hard over and autopilot disengaged. The aircraft adopted natural law, which usually would apply to unusual attitude flying.
First there is no mention of a rudder hard over. The report lists a rudder travel limiter fault.
The rudder travel limiter system, controlled by the Feel and Limitation Computers (FLC), is designed to progressively reduce the available total rudder travel depending on aircraft speed. This provides sufficient yaw control within the entire flight envelope, including engine failure and maximum asymmetric thrust. This also limits the lateral loads on the stabilizer and rudder so that they remain within the certification limits. Rudder travel is limited as a function of the aircraft speed (IAS)
Second the aircraft adopted alternate law, not “natural law” as you state.
http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm
This has nothing to do with unusual attitude flying.
If Multiple Failures of Redundant Systems occur, the flight controls revert to Alternate Law. The ECAM displays the message: ALTN LAW: PROT LOST
Where do you get rudder hard over and unusual attitude flying from any of this?
It is conceivable that every other fault reported was secondary to ice in the pitot static ports or probes.
No it’s not.
I believe we don’t need the black boxes to deduce that much. What we do need to learn from wreckage or ACARS is whether pitot anti-ice was selected prior to entering the CB ?
Wow, a lot of dumb things get posted from time to time here but this is a real doozy. We don’t need the black boxes, we only need to know if the pitot heat was on! Wow……simply, wow.
If it was then clearly the aircraft systems were overcome by extreme conditions and one must question the judgment of crew for entering the CB system.
Again, from the article:
However the analysis indicates that the weather is not anything particularly exceptional in terms of instability or storm structure.
I really have no problem with folks giving an educated speculation to events but your post was nothing but outrageous misquotes followed by awful speculation based on poor knowledge and other misinterpretations.
Whiskey DeltaYou miss my point whiskey delta, I was trying to say, if the cockpit windows had blown out then perhaps its possible…thats all.
Then you didn’t read about Faraday Cages. Windows or not, it’s not happening.
Whiskey DeltaLightning won’t penetrate into the cockpit. Look up Faraday Cage and you’ll see why.
Whiskey DeltaCorrect.
And, rain and hail are by default below the clouds. The sort of clouds at 30k are made of tiny ice crystals which do not form together to make bigger ice crystals.
Actually hail is quite a threat even above storms. The rapid rising/falling air within thunderstorms creates a perfect cycle of cooling, wetting, cooling, etc. to form large hail stones. The violent updrafts have even been known to throw hail from the top of the storm cloud. I remember reading a report of a LearJet that encountered heavy hail in clear air conditions that had been thrown from the top of a nearby storm cloud which resulted in the Lear crash landing in a field. I couldn’t find that report but here is a synopsis of a BMI A321 that encountered hail at 34,000′ and suffered quite a bit of damage.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20030526-1
Whiskey DeltaInteresting article:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090601/twl-uk-france-plane-cause-sb-7f5ebb3.html
Two Lufthansa jets passed through turbulence before and after a missing Air France plane without incident Monday, a source with access to data said, leaving experts scrambling to assess the weather’s role in the disaster. Skip related content
A frantic air-sea search was under way to locate the missing Airbus and its 228 passengers and crew more than 12 hours after it was presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris early Monday.
Air France said the Airbus A330 plane had hit stormy weather and “strong turbulence” and a spokesman said it could have been hit by lightning.
If so, it would be the worst air disaster caused by lightning, according to the Aviation Safety Network, but most experts said such a strike was unlikely to down a modern jet.
In the worst previous recorded incident blamed on lightning, 113 people were killed in 1962 on a Boeing 707, also operated by Air France, the Dutch-based database organisation said.
Brazil said Monday’s aircraft last made radar contact at 0133 GMT after passing the Fernando de Noronha islands off its northern coast, about 250 miles (400 km) south of the equator.
It was heading towards a notorious stormy patch that shifts around the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone.
It had been preceded safely on the same track 30 minutes earlier by a Boeing 747-400 heading to Frankfurt for Lufthansa, according to a source with access to data transmitted from jetliners for the World Meteorological Organisation.
Two hours later an MD-11 cargo plane also flown by Lufthansa passed just south of the same spot on the way to West Africa, the source told Reuters, asking not to be identified.
Neither aircraft reported any anomaly.
“You can’t tie it down to lightning with the information we have; for me it’s a red herring,” said the source, who specialises in aviation weather. Lufthansa declined comment.
CIRCUIT FAILURE
An Air France captain operating on long-range routes, who agreed to speak to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said lightning alone was unlikely to have caused the presumed crash.
“I would not think it was possible that lightning could lead to a short-circuit and disrupt all of the plane’s electrical systems. Test planes have resisted some 30 lightning strikes and nothing ever happened,” the pilot said.
More likely, he said, is that the jet might have suffered an electrical system failure which would have turned off its radars and communications systems, turning it blind and making it more vulnerable to storms and strong lateral air currents.
Air France said the A330 plane sent an automatic message at 3:14 a.m. British time indicating an electrical circuit failure. There were no other official details on the possible cause of the crash.
Lightning strikes are fairly common but planes built out of metal like the A330 are designed to be able to shake them off.
The massive current passes along the metal fuselage and is allowed to arc towards earth without causing harm.
The idea is based on a principle known as a Faraday Cage, which protects passengers inside a mesh of conducting material.
Whiskey DeltaWhat do the tech people here think of the multiple lightning strike theory? Can it lead to electrical failure which in turn may lead to loss of cabin pressure.
I can’t imagine an aircraft being struck by multiple lightning bolts in a short amount of time. Once struck the charge built up by the airframe would be eliminated. It would take awhile for the airframe to build up another charge before lightning would be drawn to it. At least that’s my take on it.
As long as the aircraft engines are working the pneumatic system is providing pressurized air. An electrical emergency would hamper the ability for the pressurization system to modulate the internal pressure most likely. Not being familiar with the Airbus systems I don’t know exactly how the pressurization system acts in an electrical emergency. It would be safe to say that the result wouldn’t be a rapid depressurization of the aircraft though. The outflow valves may slam shut leaving the internal pressure to very slowly bleed off through the aircraft joints. There would be time before the aircraft was completely depressurized.
A structural failure would be the only way that I can see there being a catastrophic depressurization. The pressure vessel basically needs to be popped to the point where the outflow valves can’t control the pressure anymore. Any hole in the aircraft would have to be larger than the outflow valves to cause a serious problem and a lightning bolt would only punch a small hole through the aircraft skin.
I’m curious to what the reports mean by “dropped off the radar”. Did the radar return just go away or did it actually show the aircraft turn/climb/decent/etc. before it disappeared. An electrical emergency could have killed the transponder which would have made it disappear off the scopes while the aircraft continued to fly along.
Whiskey DeltaI’m curious what type of electrical failure the message contained. A loss of pressurization would lead them to decend to a much lower altitude and divert to a nearby alternate airport. I don’t have any experience with long range nav. but I would guess that along any particular segment the flight plan would have a list of diversionary airports should such an emergency arise. Did they possibly lose their nav. system? I’m sure the crews training covered these such situations. Without knowing any details I’m sure the crew worked tiredlessly to get to a safe landing point no matter how dire their situation may have been.
Whiskey DeltaAn infamous/@#$%y airline.
Whiskey DeltaWho’s giving this guy money? His last airline lasted 10 months and he’s back again with another round? Good luck trying to get off the ground with EWR has your hub/focus city.
Whiskey DeltaIt isn’t really penalizing tall people just charging more for anyone wishing to sit in the exit row. A tall person, or anyone else for that matter, can sit anywhere else without penalty.
Whiskey DeltaThere have been problems with airlines (not just regionals) using non-certified/outsourced maintenance. It’s been a while since I remember that being reported and I believe it involved foreign maintenance stations being used by US carriers. It might have been American that got in trouble or was being investigated.
Fortunately I work for a company that has outstanding maintenance and has a top training department. Others who have come to us from other carriers have shared horror stories in the differences between what we consider normal which is seen by others has unheard of. To be fair though it did take our company losing a EMB-120 in flight due to the tail separating because of lax mx in the 90’s to straighten everything out.
I’m really curious what the discussion of fatigue will generate. The rules/law that we have now do nothing to insure a rested crew. Sure a crew can decline a flight if they are fatigued but some companies put inappropriate pressure against crews who do not to mention that you need to realize that you are fatigued in the first place in order to pull yourself off a trip. They say that by the time you “feel” fatigued is too late, you’ve been fatigued with degraded senses for hours before.
Pilot groups have been fighting for more appropriate rules within their own companies for a long time. Unfortunately that unless every company has similar rules requiring more rest at one company can put them at a disadvantage while they try to compete with others. If your crews get 10 hours of rest while everyone else is doing 8 hours your competition will be off the gate 2 hours before you taking your business. Rule changes have to be made at the Federal level to insure some rouge outfit doesn’t keep their crews at minimum rest to beat out the competition.
In addition to that a reduction in available flight hours due to improved rest will impact the pay of the pilots because they are paid per hour flown. That magnifies another problem of incredibly low pay for regional pilots. The FO in the doomed Q400 commuted across the country to EWR. Her sub-$20,000 pay wouldn’t buy her a parking spot in the NYC area which forces pilots to live well outside of their base of employment. Now if rest rules lowered the pay further what will the effect be? I could go on but you get my drift.
Whiskey DeltaWhat I’m saying is airlines would be extremely stupid if they stated the facts in the clear cut manner in which you seem to suggest.
Actually I find in most cases that the airlines do exactly that and only that. Looking at Colgan’s recent crash in BUF the company was very careful about only stating facts and not giving emotional statements. The safest recourse is to only state the facts and not speculate or draw early conclusions about how safe or unsafe a situation is/was. For a Colgan rep. to state “it’s no big deal…” the day following the incident is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard.
Incidentally, the Concorde accident was not caused directly by a wheel failure, as you seem to imply.
Well it does take a chain of events to cause an accident but a blown tire did bring down the Concorde.
According to the official investigation conducted by the French accident investigation bureau (BEA), the crash was caused by a titanium strip, part of a thrust reverser, that fell from a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off about four minutes earlier. This metal fragment punctured a tyre on the left main wheel bogie. The tyre exploded, and a piece of rubber hit the fuel tank and broke an electrical cable. The impact caused a hydrodynamic shockwave that fractured the fuel tank some distance from the point of impact. This caused a major fuel leak from the tank, which then ignited due to severed electrical wires which were sparking……
The tire caused the damage to the aircraft from which it was crippled. The metal on the runway caused the tire to fail but didn’t directly bring down the aircraft. In the case of Colgan the tire failed due to some sort of mechanical failure (human installation error or actual metal failure) which lead to the tire departing the aircraft. Yes the incident ended there but what if this was on takeoff like the Concorde and the departed tire struck the aircraft?
Whiskey Delta‘A wheel fell off one of our aircraft on landing. It shouldn’t have and it could have caused a serious accident and killed everybody’.
And saying something to this extreme is just as stupid. Blurting out that folks are lucky to not have died or that despite the incident it was no big deal are equally dumb. Wheel failures have caused accidents and dismissing one on your own airline is amazingly stupid.
“Don’t worry folks, we just lost a tire, it’s no big deal….”
Whiskey DeltaMaybe, but then you get people accusing the airline of not being upfront and hiding the truth. Saying nothing leaves everything open to interpretation by the media and the public, which can do far more damage than saying it wasn’t a big deal. I really can’t criticise them for saying what they did and I can’t imagine many other airlines would act differently.
Paul
I think a better way to approach it is to stick to the facts. Oversimplifying that a wheel falling off is a non-event or a matter of no concern is stupid. Colgan is very lucky that it was only 1 wheel and didn’t damage the aircraft as it departed the axle.
kevinwm. Yes, a lot of scrutiny is being put towards the regionals since the Colgan crash in February. I think it’s long over due and hope some real changes come from this to improve safety for everyone. Pilot Fatigue is becoming a focus which every pilot can attest there being a need to revamp the rules by which we operate.
Whiskey DeltaI agree that airline spokesmen need to steer clear of painting a doomful picture but in cases like this I’ve always thought it to be better to say nothing (or very little) rather than say something was no big deal. “We had an incident on our flight to BUF, we’re launching an investigation into the cause of the tire loss, we’ll be upfront with what we discover and apologize for any concern it caused our passengers.” Just don’t say “it’s no big deal”.
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