1 horrible.

2 I wouldn't rule out terrorism until we have a definite cause. All reasonable possibilities need to be explored.

3

Horrible indeed.

Our prayers go out to the survivors' families.

4 Drudge has a story linked saying another pilot saw a missile or something close to the plane soon after takeoff.

5 I doubt that it is terrorism simply becuase if it were, someone would be crowing about it.

6 I asked my friend who's father is a pilot, "How much you wanna bet it's an Air Bus"
to which he said "It is"

I'm not surprised at all by this, those things are death traps.

7 BTW, I asked him just after word of the crash got out, before I had seen any pictures.

8 Even if a missile were fired at the Scarebus, it was way too far out over the Atlantic for a missile strike to have impacted it. Certainly, let's not rule terrorism out, but it sounds an awful lot to me like the crew flew it into heavy storms and that's a good way to get dead.

9 Posted by: EC at June 02, 2009 11:34 AM (mAhn3)

Which caught up to it 4 hours later?

Actually, I just checked Drudge, that's a different plane, one over Texas. Totally unrelated to the Air France situation.

10

Actually, I just checked Drudge, that's a different plane, one over Texas. Totally unrelated to the Air France situation.

Gah!!!  I completely did not pay attention to that!  My bad.

 

11 Scarebus
Posted by: tmi3rd at June 02, 2009 11:39 AM (MLaAD)

I love the old saying..."If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going".

I will give Airbus one thing...they are very comfortable. They suck as a flying machine but if you survive the flight, you did so in greater comfort.

12 Clarification- I used "impacted" poorly. The Scarebus (I have a lot of friends who hate flying the damn things) was too far out over the Atlantic when it came out from under the crew for a missile strike on takeoff to affect things.

13

is that in the bermuda triangle. if so i will be hearing all about it on coast to coast tonight as i leave my radio on when i sleep.

 

sorry for the families to lost loved ones. god knows with frances birthrate they can't afford to have any of their citizens die from anything but heatwaves in socialist run old age homes.

14 thunderstorms are notorious for being hard on airframes...... it's traditional to fly around them, but if i heard the talking heads correctly, they flew right into it.

what a horrible way to go.

15

...but it sounds an awful lot to me like the crew flew it into heavy storms and that's a good way to get dead.

If so I don't get it.  They had to have seen it on radar.  Why wouldn't they go around it?  Something just seems weird about that.

16

6 I asked my friend who's father is a pilot, "How much you wanna bet it's an Air Bus"
to which he said "It is"

I'm not surprised at all by this, those things are death traps.

You know, I flew in one of those Air Buses from France to Germany. I was alarmed at all the creaking and popping the aircraft did while the pilot maneuvered it around after takeoff and again upon approach. I had never heard this kind of racket in a Douglas or Boeing aircraft. As an engineer, I liked it even less. Two words: metal fatigue.

17 They said they lost elect power, if true they would lose weather radar. Without that and flying into a storm. It becomes dang dangerous.

18 16

6 I asked my friend who's father is a pilot, "How much you wanna bet it's an Air Bus"
to which he said "It is"

I'm not surprised at all by this, those things are death traps.

You know, I flew in one of those Air Buses from France to Germany. I was alarmed at all the creaking and popping the aircraft did while the pilot maneuvered it around after takeoff and again upon approach. I had never heard this kind of racket in a Douglas or Boeing aircraft. As an engineer, I liked it even less. Two words: metal fatigue.

 

 

 

what do you expect when the beaucracies of 20 EU nations team together to build a plane that large. you get worst of everything

19 "All possibilities must be examined. We cannot, by definition, exclude a terrorist attack, because terrorism is the main threat for all Western democracies," Herve Morin, the French Defence Minister, said.

Nice to see a French official acknowledge this publicly. 

20

O-come on guys. As a engineer we all know that both Boeing & Air Bus must  meet air safety stds.    (FAA & EASA)

 

I'm not a fan of Air Bus... But this talk is pure BS.

21

"All possibilities must be examined. We cannot, by definition, exclude a man-caused disaster terrorist attack, because terrorism man-caused disasters, white judges and lack of health care are is the main threat for all Western democracies," Herve Morin, the French Defence Minister, said.

Hopey, changey edits.

22 Dustoff  --  I think they lost electric power because they were crashing. 

23

Eleven

++++

 

Have you heard of a RAT for all large aircraft.

24

I remember reading a comment by a pilot some years ago that went to the core issue here “there is NEVER a valid reason for flying into a thunderstorm”.  This is especially true for airline pilots who must worry about their passengers.

25

Didn't they just arrest an al-Qaeda member in Brazil?

26 And wild horses couldn't get me on a single engine plane, speaking of "things you wouldn't want to fly in."

27

Vic

there is NEVER a valid reason for flying into a thunderstorm”. 

_____________________________

 

True. They use weather radar to fly around them.. but if they lost power to that system. Then your flying blind.

28

Sorry for my ignorance Dustoff, but no I don't know what that means.  Are you saying airliners don't have weather radar?

I just assumed they do.

29

Eleven

And wild horses couldn't get me on a single engine plane, speaking of "things you wouldn't want to fly in."

++++++++++++++++++++++

 

O-brother.  Have you ever flown in a small plane?  Say a Cessna 150, 172, 177?? 

30

O-come on guys. As a engineer we all know that both Boeing & Air Bus must  meet air safety stds.    (FAA & EASA)

 

I'm not a fan of Air Bus... But this talk is pure BS.

And of course these standards are infallible. As proof you may show that no aircraft that met said standards ever broke up in flight. Right?

31

Eleven

 

RAT... Remote-Air-Turbine. It's a back up if you lose you flight systems

 

32

"I'm not surprised at all by this, those things are death traps."

Huh?  Last AirBus crash due to a mechanical issue was in Queens, in 2001. (getting hit by birds doesn't count, and in any case, the "deathtrap" in the Hudson harvested no one).

And that's worldwide, sir.

So I ask, which large-passenger-jet manufacturer has a better safety record, given the number of planes in service?

33 I, in fact, am not an engineer. But I thought planes were insulated against lightning strikes. Granted, flying nose first into a thunderhead would probably expose the craft to greater than expected amounts of contact but still...I thought they were insulated.

34

O-brother.  Have you ever flown in a small plane?  Say a Cessna 150, 172, 177?? 

Hells no... but I'm sure its fun.  I'm just too paranoid about single engine planes.

35 I blame Charles Widmore.

36

maddogg

Not quite.  Any aircraft can fail if pushed beyond it's upper limits.

Right now NO-ONE knows what went wrong.

 

Everone should remember that.

37 "There is no reason to fly into a thunderstorm in peacetime."  Full quote.

38 Dustoff. That is true. And if the water is deep enough, we will probably never know what happened.

39

Eleven

Hells no... but I'm sure its fun.  I'm just too paranoid about single engine planes

+++++++++++++++++++++++

 

As a pilot myself. You lose a engine in a small plane compared to a large one. Your glide path is much safer. 

40

"I will give Airbus one thing...they are very comfortable. They suck as a flying machine but if you survive the flight, you did so in greater comfort."

Maybe I flew on the wrong Airbus, Drew, but I disagree with that.  I flew on a Bus once and vowed to avoid them forever after.  It was like flying on a bus... in the air.  (Hence the name.)  It was annoying not to have individual air conditioning vents on the flight and especially while on the tarmac.  The seats, the bins and everything just reminded me over and over of a cross country bus liner.  I hated it.

41

Maddog

water is deep enough, we will probably never know what happened.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yep.... how deep is that area 11.000ft? 

 

42 I doubt that it is terrorism simply becuase if it were, someone would be crowing about it.

That was my thought too.  Not that I'm ruling out terrorism, you'd think someone would take credit though.  Hell, I've been expecting some group to take credit for this even if it was weather related/structural failure, etc. 

43

By the way... Newer birds have a satcom system that (phones-home) when a system failure happens.

 

Pretty cool.

44

I'm sticking with Occam's Razor for this one. It was the storm(s). Reminds me of the two Space Shuttle disasters where it took two months (each) to "determine" what was obvious the first day.

The Air France crash will be controversial for a long time-- likely they'll never find the black boxes-- but it's really not a big mystery. Violent storms can easily bring down planes.    

45 NYT story yesterday discounted turbulence as cause of accident, but that seems weird to me.  The 2001 AA587 disaster was caused by A300 encountering mere wake turbulence from aircraft ahead.  A300 pilot stepped on the rudder pedal too hard/wrong time and snapped the damn vertical stabilizer right off.  Maybe if they didn't make the airframes out of that brittle carbon composite crap, they might not break so easily.  See this picture of AA587 stabilizer mount (PDF pg 35; scroll down to figure 22):  http://tinyurl.com/l3tdtd

46 Dustoff, I have no idea, but it could be pretty damn deep. Couple that with debris spread over several square miles and the chances of finding those boxes might get pretty bleak.

47 If it was an American plane, we could expect the lawsuits to come rolling in any time now.

48 My big gripe about Airbuses- particularly the A319 and A320 (most widely used in US domestic service)- is that the sidestick controller doesn't always respond as accurately as I'd prefer. Much like the F-16's sidestick controller, it responds to the measured force on the stick, not the degree of movement like a traditional stick-and-rudder aircraft. It has nothing to do with its safety standards- the aircraft is known as the ScareBus within the industry. That said, the DC-10 (now known as the MD-11 in service or the KC-10, and flown only by shipping companies and the USAF) was called the Death Cruiser-Ten after an early-80s catastrophic crash at DFW, caused by windshear. The moniker isn't always fair, but I just don't know many pilots who like flying the damn thing.

Pursuant to to the weather radar question- there seems to be some indication that they lost their radar unit somehow and were navigating the thunderstorms by Mark I Eyeball. The cloud tops were 51,000 feet, and they were flying at 36,000 feet. That would put you right into the teeth of a standard-anatomy thunderstorm. It wouldn't require a lightning strike to knock the aircraft down- you could also run into a hail core (area of the thunderstorm where the highest density of hail is found) and literally shotgun the aircraft apart.

49

GP

The 2001 AA587 disaster was caused by A300 encountering mere wake turbulence from aircraft ahead.  A300 pilot stepped on the rudder pedal too hard/wrong time and snapped the damn vertical stabilizer

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

The final FAA report on that bird. The Vert Stab had been repaired and the repair was done poorly. That's why it failed.  NYT should know better.  )-:

50 My family, who has done little flying in our lifetimes, flew to Fla last summer for vacation.  There was lots of turbulence and strange noises upon taking off and landing.  I decided I was really much happier not knowing all the things that could happen on a flight.  Imagine listening to the stewards/stewardesses and pilots and their stories of near-misses.

51 Dustoff, the water there is 16K feet deep. Only thing that you could do recovery with is a DSRV, and the Navy doesn't exactly rent them out.

By the way, GP, the F-22 and F-35 are made primarily of carbon fiber... as is the external skin of the Space Shuttle. It's actually (at least according to my engineering friends at Lockheed) more resilient than steel, and doesn't suffer from metal fatigue.

I think Bat Chain Puller probably has it right.

52 Eleven,

I'm a student pilot, and on my first flight in a Cessna 172, I asked my instructor what would happen if the engine quit.

He said, "Let's see" and cut the engine to idle.

Nothing. You can glide 9000 feet for every 1000 feet of altitude. That's a lot of time to figure out both where to land and/or fix what's wrong so you don't have to.

But there is NO reason to fly into a thunderstorm. The lightning is part of it, but the violent turbulence associated with storms can overstress the airframe to the point where it rips the wings off or cracks the body in half.

From the fact that several automated failure messages were sent over the company datalink, plus there being no radio calls, along with the weather they were flying in, my money is on catastrophic and immediate airframe failure.

53

TMI

Hail at 36,000 feet?   Ice yes, hail???  

54 i flew a sopwith camel in the Great European War.

55 I read Airframe by Crichton awhile back.  It was a few years old but for even back then I was impressed by the standards of safety.

56

i flew a sopwith camel in the Great European War.

That wasn't you that was Brian Dennehy.

57 I wonder why no one has superimposed the satellite image (or a radar image) of the weather in the area of the crash at the time with a plot of the last radar contact with the plane so that we can see if there was actually any weather in the area.

58

katya

_____

 

Planes make noise... They also move in flight. If they didn't. Things would break.

59 Sounds like a terrible accident. It could possibly be a criminal action, I suppose. If it's an aspect of terrorism, however, someone or group will take "credit" for it. Otherwise, what is achieved by mysteriously blowing up an Air France flight over the ocean?

60

They use weather radar to fly around them.. but if they lost power to that system. Then your flying blind.

 

They should be required to check the weather in the flight path before takeoff  (U.S. regs require it).  

61

They also move in flight. If they didn't. Things would break.

Ah, like skyscrapers?

62 rdbrewer  --  I know what you mean.  Where's the maps?  Always with air crashes there's maps.

63 what is achieved by mysteriously blowing up an Air France flight over the ocean?

Posted by: ducktrapper at June 02, 2009 12:20 PM (6kZI3)

I'm not saying it was a deliberate act, but what if there were a bomb that was supposed to go off either over Brazil or France and the terrorist fucked up or the bomb itself malfunctioned?  

A friend of mine thinks that the black box data will be retrievable, even if it is at the bottom of the ocean.  By satellite through the transponder or something.  Is this possible??

64 Dustoff-

Sure, that's how hail forms.

From Wiki: "Hail forms in storm clouds when supercooled water droplets freeze on contact with condensation nuclei, such as dust or dirt. The storm's updraft blows the hailstones to the upper part of the cloud. The updraft dissipates and the hailstones fall down, back into the updraft, and are lifted up again. The hailstone gains an ice layer and grows increasingly larger with each ascent. Once a hailstone becomes too heavy to be supported by the storm's updraft, it falls from the cloud."

Here's a NOAA diagram of a typical overland hailstorm...

And here's a good animation demonstrating it. Bear in mind that the freezing altitude will change depending on conditions at the site of the thunderstorm.

I'm married to a meteorologist, and I'm working on a degree in atmospheric chemistry as I try to get into medical school... which means I'm an overeager weather geek.

65

"Pursuant to to the weather radar question- there seems to be some indication that they lost their radar unit somehow and were navigating the thunderstorms by Mark I Eyeball."

Seems like there would have been a radio contact indicating this or even, say, a turnaround.

66 For those skeptical about the terrorism angle -- this is likely what would have happened if Reid's "shoe bombs" had gone off. The plane would have dropped off radar quickly, in the middle of the flight, with no time for the crew to become aware of what happened.

67 Back on aug 11, 2001 I flew from ny to sf I remember the date because everyone thought the plane was going down. I use to race motocross and let me tell you that the roughest track was smoother then that flight. People were getting sick, crying and screaming when the plane felt like it dropped a 1000' in half a second. For almost 2 hours it was white knuckles, and we were weaving threw storms and I don't think they even thought about diverting to another airport.

I can't imagine the weather that would be needed to destroy a plane in seconds without any indications from the pilots about rough conditions.

68

tmi

______

 

I know about hail.  I'm a pilot.

I've seen hail at up to 25.000 ft, but as you get higher is just damn cold up there. 

 

69

From the NYT this am:

"Hans Weber, head of the Tecop aviation consulting firm in San Diego, offered a hypothesis about the episode, based on his knowledge of severe losses of altitude by two Qantas jets last year.

The new Airbus 330 was a “fly-by-wire” plane, in which signals to move the flaps are sent through electric wires to small motors in the wings rather than through cables or hydraulic tubing. Fly-by-wire systems can automatically conduct maneuvers to prevent an impending crash, but some Airbus jets will not allow a pilot to override the self-protection mechanism.

On both Qantas flights, the planes’ inertia sensors sent faulty information into the flight computers, making them take emergency measures to correct problems that did not exist, sending the planes into sudden dives.

If the inertia sensor told a computer that a plane was stalling, forcing it to drop the nose and dive to pick up airspeed, and there was simultaneously a severe downdraft in the storm turbulence, “that would be hard to recover from,” Mr. Weber said"

70 The new york post has like a partial passenger list.  There were a lot of business men and women on that plane, had no idea there was that much business travel between brazil and france.

71 Vic-

The only thing you can use to check the weather over the ocean is satellite imagery, or the occasional ship or pilot report from the vicinity. During the summer, particularly near the equator, you can still get those popcorn thunderstorms (afternoon convection) which are damn near impossible to predict. If they get enough energy together, they can kind of create their own convective environment and be maddeningly long-lived.

CB- it would be awfully hard to get down that far to retrieve the black boxes. It'd require special deep-sea salvage equipment, and I don't know if anyone owns anything privately that'll go down to 16K feet below the surface... that's a whole shitload of pressure at that depth. Crush depth for most attack subs is around 2000 feet... the Glomar Explorer retrieved a Golf-class Soviet missile sub at 10,000 feet. The DSRV (used for sub rescues) is only listed at 5000 feet.

72 I'm married to a meteorologist, and I'm working on a degree in atmospheric chemistry as I try to get into medical school... which means I'm an overeager weather geek.

So what would you know about it? Shut up.

/sarc

73

"A friend of mine thinks that the black box data will be retrievable, even if it is at the bottom of the ocean.  By satellite through the transponder or something.  Is this possible??"

You bet your ass they'll get that black box.  Prolly using an ROV.  Regardless, they have to find it.  So, they will. 

The bathyscaphe Trieste easily made it seven miles down.   I'm sure our navy--and maybe even a few private firms--has the tech.  But they probably won't even need U.S. help. 

74

CB

A friend of mine thinks that the black box data will be retrievable, even if it is at the bottom of the ocean.  By satellite through the transponder or something.  Is this possible??
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Transponder don't work underwater.  They do have a pinger, but they need to be somewhat close to the crash area to find it.

75 Sorry, Dustoff... should've made the connection with your handle. My bad. From your handle, you're a medevac pilot?

But yeah, some of my friends with NOAA who fly the Citation into the edges of big thunderstorm complexes have encountered baseballs at altitude. The other story I've heard is from an F-111 at Clovis that had its radome ripped off by hail skirting too close to a thunderstorm.

West Texas hailstorms are only slightly more fun than Oklahoma/Kansas storms.

76 Last night heard a radio interview where the pilot said those planes rely heavily on technology and if lightening were to ht the plane just right it could blow out all the eelctronic stuff and then the plane would resort to a mode where the pilot can take over, however, the pilot caustioned that the plane, under those conditions is very difficult to fly, you really have to know what you are doing.   Yesterday the ATC's somewhere said they never got the plane and then people on the radio were discussing the fact that you have to check in like every ten minutes when you are over the ocean cause the radar doesn't go there.  A pilot described the system as like two tin cans and a string and said it is hard to communicate through it.  Geez, you would think this kind of stuff is state of the art.

77 EmOfJeff-

I'm supposed to be in town hopefully around the end of the month- my new nephew was born yesterday, so I have to come visit at that time... and my old physics teacher in high school is or was an instructor out at Lakefront. The other thing is, if you're flying VFR, my wife works in Flight Services for Lockheed up here, and her AOR just happens to include SE LA... more on that later.

78

TMI

Sorry, Dustoff... should've made the connection with your handle. My bad. From your handle, you're a medevac pilot?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

I am, but I love to fly.  (-:

79 Waiting for Ginger and hubby to add their insights on this one.

80 Dustoff- what birds do you fly?

81 We're all cheese-eating surrender monkeys now.

82
"That said, the DC-10 (now known as the MD-11 in service or the KC-10, and flown only by shipping companies and the USAF) was called the Death Cruiser-Ten after an early-80s catastrophic crash at DFW, caused by windshear. The moniker isn't always fair, but I just don't know many pilots who like flying the damn thing."

It was a DC-10 that crashed while taking off from O'Hare in May 1979, when the port engine tore loose and fell off, killing 271 passengers and crew, and two people on the ground. It was later determined that the cause was faulty maintenance; but I'm sure that did nothing to help the aircraft's reputation.

83 Thanks, tmi, rd, and dustoff, for the info.  My friend thought they could pull the data without having to physically obtain the black box.  As I thought, it sounds like that would be impossible. 

84

Tmi.

Let's see.  Bunch of Bells, MD-500& 600.  Citation, 737.

85 I just found out that one of my ESL Comp I students was on the plane. She was from Brazil, and had gone home at the end of the Semester in May to get married.

Jeez.

86 Brown Line- wasn't it a DC-10 that did what was known at the Sioux City Cartwheel around the same time?

87

On both Qantas flights, the planes’ inertia sensors sent faulty information into the flight computers, making them take emergency measures to correct problems that did not exist, sending the planes into sudden dives.

That's one hell of a design flaw right there.

88 Jesus, Dustoff... do you fly for an airline as well with the 737? I'm just hoping to get my multi-engine IFR at some point down the road...

89 Prayers for her family, Cranky... that's horrible.

90 CrankyProf,  Oh man I'm so sorry to hear that. 

91 50 My family, who has done little flying in our lifetimes, flew to Fla last summer for vacation.  There was lots of turbulence and strange noises upon taking off and landing.  I decided I was really much happier not knowing all the things that could happen on a flight.  Imagine listening to the stewards/stewardesses and pilots and their stories of near-misses.

Posted by: katya at June 02, 2009 12:15 PM (oRJZj)

--Fortunately, Air Canada (which flies a lot of A319s and 320s to/from Pearson) recently allowed listening to the in-flight entertainment during boarding, taxi, and takeoff --pretty much the whole flight except for the announcements-- provided you use earbud-type headphones.  It makes the whole process go by much faster (and I much more rarely miss the last ~10 minutes of a movie anymore).

92 Every time I have flown, I had this strong urge to find the pilots afterward and shake their hands for being so awesome.

93

Seems I read that the automated radio failure signals indicated sudden pervasive electrical failures and decompression.  Decompression means some form of structural failure, which can be caused by either a bomb, or exceeding the aircraft's structural limits.  In most scenarios I can imagine, exceeding the aircrafts limits would be preceeded by some period of system difficulties that might have allowed for a mayday (but remember it's only a two-man cockpit!).

The lack of any mayday and structural failure points to a bomb, but there are many scenarios in which the crew could be prevented from calling mayday by the failure, so I do not regard that as proven, only a strong possibility.

94 67 Back on aug 11, 2001 I flew from ny to sf I remember the date because everyone thought the plane was going down. I use to race motocross and let me tell you that the roughest track was smoother then that flight. People were getting sick, crying and screaming when the plane felt like it dropped a 1000' in half a second. For almost 2 hours it was white knuckles, and we were weaving threw storms and I don't think they even thought about diverting to another airport.
Posted by: evil libertarian at June 02, 2009 12:28 PM (BxRqD)   A couple of years ago in Canada there was one that was so turbulent and involving sucd such drops that after it landed, many of the armrests were literally bet of of shape, the passengers were clenching them so hard.   63 what is achieved by mysteriously blowing up an Air France flight over the ocean?

Posted by: ducktrapper at June 02, 2009 12:20 PM (6kZI3)

That is what the bombers of the Air India flight in the 80s did: bombed it over the North Atlantic, and days later debris washed up in Ireland.

95 Here's a weather site that Rush mentioned, apparently someone put together a detailed analysis of the weather that AF447 would have encountered.  The site is being hammered right now so it might take a while for it to load.

96 Apparently the only part of the an aircraft not protected against lightning is the radome over the weather radar, or else it wouldn't work.

Excellent article/speculation here:
http://tinyurl.com/ljqxzo

97 Dustoff, you have a lot in common with my son, Flyin' Brian. He has about 10,000 hours, 9500 in rotors.
You can google Heliman to see the website I made for him.

98 It seems all the communication from the plane was automated.  This feels similar to the Buffalo thing when the pilots didn't realize what grave danger they were really in.

99 The problem with thunderstorms, as my IFR weather flying books point out, is that the thunderheads are pretty good at lofting things like hailstones right out the top and around the surrounding area.  That's why pilots are recommended to give such a wide berth around active cells if at all possible.  I got a pretty good taste of this in my Kansas days.

As for the terrorists vs. thunderstorms angle, it's good to remember that thunderstorms pack an *immense* amount of energy within them.

-ex-Skylane driver

100 No one seems to be ruling out terrorism

Now, now, you think they'll actually say "terrorism" until they find irrefutable evidence that it was terrorism?

101 "That's one hell of a design flaw right there."

Avionics software is all kind of redundant and error-detecting.  But there's always an infinitesimal chance that data bits will be simultaneously wrong in a configuration that hides the error and the bad sensor data looks good.

102 Gran, that was an excellent link.  One of the co-bloggers might want to consider creating a post for it.

103 >>No one seems to be ruling out terrorism

Are you blaming gun-nuts, Bible-thumpers or Ron Paul voters? They are the only terrorists we are aware of....

Otherwise it's "man-made disasters."

104

TMI

I've been flying since I was 15.  Back in the 1960's. 

Was a Nam pilot, then on to air medical services (USA).  Now retired, but do part time work for Boeing.

 

Geezer.  I'll check it out.

 

105 I just heard a report on Fox, and if I'm correct, they said there appears to be two debris fields about 40 miles apart.  I'll venture a guess on that one right now.  The plane hit an extremely turbulent area (that remained undetected because it was young--see Gran's link), some of the debris fell immediately and the rest was kept aloft for some time by the same process that keeps hailstones aloft.

106

Geezer

Tell your son Brian. GREAT JOB!

PS. I fly the Bolkow BO-105. I have worked for CALSTAR  is one sweet bird.   (-:

 

107 Gran, I just sent the author a note recommending that he enter that in the AMS Journal... if anyone wants to read some excellent professional analysis, that's your article right there.

108 Geezer, that website is wonderful!  You and Brian are lucky to have each other!!

And, Gran, thanks for linking that awesome analysis.  While I don't even pretend to understand most of it, the satellite images alone are terrifying when you think of a plane in the middle of that hellstorm. 

109 Actually, CB  The scary part is that wasn't a particularly bad T-storm.  The lack of shearing and that low energy value make it a modest storm.

My bet is stall/tumble/separate or bomb due to France's political moves last week

110 Very good analysis at the weathergraphics website. I originally looked at lightening strikes data  and found only a few at the time and just off the coast.
I think turbulence makes the most sense.
On another speculation, I think the Airbus A380 is being delayed because of a design flaw in how the wiring harnesses are protected and attached throughout the airframe. I think there was an issue with electrical fires from abrasion. I wonder about the A330 design and how a great deal of turbulence could cause damage to the wiring harnesses which control everything.

111

Norton

Airbus A380 is being delayed because of a design flaw in how the wiring harnesses are protected and attached throughout the airframe.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Not quite. From my friends working at AB.

They had a computer problem with a system called Catia V5/Enovia when it came to the wiring  (measurements)

112

CNN just did a report saying experts are focusing on what Kina points out at #69, that the computer on the Quantas flights was working with faulty inertia data and forcing the the planes into dives--to correct non-existent stall conditions.  The former head of the NTSB talked at length about how strong the airframes are. 

I read Crichton's "Airframe" too.  After that, structural failure is never the first thing that comes to my mind when hearing about crashes.  The CNN reported, f/x, that the wings can deflect 20' in either direction before failure.  I think pilots would probably be knocked out by g-forces or blunt trauma before the plane would break.

On the other hand, add to the computer failure the fact they were entering thunderstorms, and I suppose the situation was primed for confusion.  At that point, it's likely loss of control of the airplane would, indeed, result in structural failure.  Or... that's my guess, anyway.

 

113

Well, at least a good think about  that!

America have the occasion to reaffirm its superiority over the rest of the world .( especialy against the Frogs!)

114 Just curious:  what deters terrorists from claiming responsibility for non-terrorist crashes; what's the downside to doing so?

115

Gizmodo cites a report that as of October of last year, the ATSB was looking at *in-cabin* electronic interference as the cause of the screwball computer data that sent the plane into a dive.  "In-cabin" as in iPods and shit.

http://tinyurl.com/rbc2ow

Here is the article Gizmodo links:  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/

 

 

116

Dustoff,

You are correct. I think the difference between the two versions of computer programs created incompatible wiring harneses that could cause damage because of incorrect lengths. Still wiring is everything. Thanks for correcting that.

117 Well, the Kiwi Herald link doesn't work as advertised.  Oh, well...

118 That said, the DC-10 (now known as the MD-11 in service or the KC-10, and flown only by shipping companies and the USAF) was called the Death Cruiser-Ten after an early-80s catastrophic crash at DFW, caused by windshear.

I believe that was a Lockheed L-1011 if the Delta crash in Dallas.

86- That was a DC-10 that crashed in Sioux City, it was caused in flight by a cracked turbine blade that broke and sheared the hydraulics in the rudder. The pilot did a hell of a job flying that plane using only the thrust from the 1 & 3 engines.

If there's any bombing angle to this, it might be more a murder of a targeted passenger than terrorism. This has happened in the past, and where better to murder sombody than over the South Atlantic. The Reid Shoe bomber scare and the plot to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific has to be considered. This is possible but I don't think it was the cause.

Large hailstones present an interesting theory. Sudden decompression could be caused if a particularly large one hit the windscreen at high speed and blew it out.

119 CB- it would be awfully hard to get down that far to retrieve the black boxes. It'd require special deep-sea salvage equipment, and I don't know if anyone owns anything privately that'll go down to 16K feet below the surface...

The French have long had deep manned submersibles, it was the Nautille that partnered with Bob Ballard to find the Titanic in 1985. It was luck of timing that Ballard's shift found the wreckage.

Ballard took the Alvin submersible down to 15000 ft to explore the Bismarck and 17000 ft to explore the Yorktown 10 years ago, and there have been upgrades since. I believe the French do have submersibles that can go to that depth. That said, the DMS's don't do searches, they explore what is known to be there. Searches are done by sonar imagining and "mowing the lawn" with remote controlled camera submersibles.

An Air India vehicle that crashed over the ocean was found some years back in some pretty deep water, so if they can find the wreckage quickly they can probably find the black boxes (which are actually bright orange). Spotting the wreckage is a good start, but they'll have to do sweeping searches accounting for debris drift of the surface currents and the drift that occurs in sinking objects.

120 My bet is stall/tumble/separate or bomb due to France's political moves last week

Posted by: Jean at June 02, 2009 02:30 PM (L64A6)

I will admit that my first thought, when I woke up and saw this news yesterday morning, was a bomb.  However, it doesn't seem like anyone would wait this long to claim credit if that were the case, does it?

121 I will admit that my first thought, when I woke up and saw this news yesterday morning, was a bomb.  However, it doesn't seem like anyone would wait this long to claim credit if that were the case, does it?

That's a lingering myth from the old PLO and European Leftist terrorism habits. Al Qaida doesn't seem to feel the need to claim responsibility afterwards, their modis operandi tends toward cryptic warnings of things to come.

That said, until there is recovery of wreckage everything is speculation. Given our DemSM habits of getting shit wrong, I'm not even sure it's been verified that there were thunderstorms at the time, only that they're common at this time of year. I'll guess however that there were storms and that they might have either caused the crash directly, or finished off the plane if there was a pre-existing problem due to either design, pilot error, or poor maintenance.

122

"I'm not even sure it's been verified that there were thunderstorms at the time, only that they're common at this time of year."

KDB, take a look at Gran's link at #95.  It's good.

123 Thunderstorms can cause severe windsheers and donwdrafts that the aircraft cannot handle.  If the aircraft flew into a thunderstorm, that could be enough.

124 What deters a terrorist org. from taking "credit" for a plane crash that wasn't really terrorism? Seems like a no-brainer, no?

125

"What deters a terrorist org. from taking "credit" for a plane crash that wasn't really terrorism? Seems like a no-brainer, no?"

Yeah!  Residual fear of Dick Cheney.  Of course.

126 Here's a neat trick if your LCD screen works like mine.  At the weathergraphics.com site you can incease the contrast of main cluster of storms by tilting your screen back.  By doing that you can see that the brightest areas indicating updrafts are in the middle of the main cluster.  Interestingly, those areas are not only in the flight path, but they're also right next to the biggest dark subduction ("downdraft," I guess) area that seperates the main lobes of the large clusters of updrafts.  Prolly a big up-down-up bump there.

127

"A friend of mine thinks that the black box data will be retrievable, even if it is at the bottom of the ocean ..."

Maybe the first lady could reach down there and get it?

(I'm sorry)

128

I remember seeing a special on lightning in the last year or so where they discussed the lightning strike scenario. They said that planes are well protected against a particular, and common form of lightning (either negative or positively charged) but, just in recent years it has been discovered that we did not know all that we thought we knew about lightning. It seems that there is a completely different form of lightning for which aircraft are not protected and which was even considered for a short time to be a possible cause of the shuttle disaster.

Amazing...for all that we know about the earth and skies, only recently was 'new' lightning discovered.

Pretty scary.

129 I'd imagine the US Navy would offer Alvin for the recovery.  That is, after all, their premier deep-sea submersible.  Or Dr. Ballard at Woods Hole might be able to help.

I think we shouldn't worry too much about enemy action on this.  Electrical storms have long been known to play havoc with the electronics in planes.  Airbuses are fly-by-wire -- if the computer dies, you find yourself in a very expensive lawn dart.  The plane's CPU sent ten messages to the airline's maintenance department describing cascading failures.  Do the math.

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