Comments on: AF447’s last messages point to the ‘dragons’ that can destroy a jet

By: matt

matt — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:59:34 +0000

One should have thought that all comercial jets would have heated pitot tubes and they are unlikely to freeze up at 35000 feet. It is rediculous if Airbus did not have them.

By: caf

caf — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:48:01 +0000

There’s a tradeoff between them being able to float, and being able to withstand a high speed impact with terrain. 70% of the Earth may be covered in water, but I’m sure that aircraft flights are concentrated mostly in the other 30%.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:15:26 +0000

Given that 70% of the Earth is covered in water, wouldn’t you think they would make black-boxes that didn’t sink like a stone? It’s almost as if they don’t want the black-boxes retrieved.

By: Ben Sandilands

Ben Sandilands — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:31:00 +0000

The ‘most electrical’ of jets of all so far, the 787 may be only days away from first flight now and I have to say, I’ve been looking forward to flying on this with enthusiasm and frustration given the delays. But let’s hope that adage–fly the plane first–is front of mind for all the pilots that fly this incredible jet. That message, fly the plane first, is one that my trusted sources when it comes to all types have emphasised down the years. And one of them, a privater pilot these days, never goes into the air without a little bag of back up aids for the day, or night, when everything in front of him goes blank, or tells him there is about 18 minutes of backup battery power on hand.

By: Glengarryboy

Glengarryboy — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:08:13 +0000

In the early days of Ansett’s first ‘all electric’ jets, I wouldn’t fly on them having been put off by my RAAF pilot colleagues that fly by wire was inherently dangerous. I know that the technology has improved greatly and that most civilain planes have some degree of computerised control, but I still feel that the primary flight controls should have an electro-mechanical over-ride function rather than just being computer controlled. The incident in WA with the QF A330 highlighted the huge cockpit workload required when something goes awry in fly by wire aircraft. I have never forgotten the old adage constantly briefed by my fighter jock colleagues when I was an air defence tactical controller – fly the plane first.

Alex

By: Nick33

Nick33 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:35:56 +0000

The air france plane that “crashed”, first by ligthning at 40,000
feet???Anyway, planes get hit by lightning all the time!
http://www.etravelblackboard.com/showarticle.asp?id=91390 In an area that
has no radar coverage ie nobody can see whats done to it, and now they say
they’ll never find a black box that emits a beacon hmmmmmmmmmmm

Looks like someone shot it down, probably someone was on the plane who
needed to disapear (a drug lord of the other side which is being supported?)

With 90 km
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/mp/5626926/new-debris-found-from-air-france-jet/
of wreckage and instant down (nobody text messaged anything, pilot didn’t
say anything, just emergency messages from plane) it exploded for sure.

Could have been a military accident? Like the USA shot the Iranian one or
Russia shot the Ukraine one, somebody could have accidently fired at it from
a nuclear submarine, I mean they are so stupid they crash into each other!
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2240543.ece

Anyway, I’d first be looking very very closely who was on that plane!

By: Space Dog

Space Dog — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:28:53 +0000

Air France and the French Government will do all in its power to protect the Airbus name. I reckon their early statements about not locating the black box recorders are part of that strategy. That makes it easy put it all down to pilot error – flying into massive storm cells which stressed the jet beyond its design limits. There will still be questions however about aircraft system failures – multiple computers, sensors, probes, fly-by-wire technologies, composite materials, etc etc. I read a post by one older jet pilot who has flown through violent columns of cloud at the equator. He stated quite plainly that had this aircraft been one of the earlier Boeings or Douglas jets it would have survived such a flight into storm cells as he had. Moreover, the absolute reliance on automation in Airbus aircraft not only can increase pilot workloads but amplify the risk of loss of control when all of these automated systems fail or at least briefly malfunction (as with the recent Qantas Airbus off the WA coast). Conflicting and bizarre instrument readings confuse pilots who can then lose complete control (eg, manually fly the plane at inappropriate high or low speeds). I was amazed to read that the Airbus side-sticks (in lieu of traditional control columns) are independent of each other so a movement from one pilot can be cancelled or doubled by the opposite or same movement by the other pilot. That is scary. Fingers crossed they locate the records and reveal the truth.

By: Ben Sandilands

Ben Sandilands — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:57:44 +0000

In fact GPS coordinates were included in many of the ACARS messages, although this wasn’t learned by the media for several days. This makes it clear Air France knew exactly where the jet was at key moments as it entered the tropical convergence zone, and could see, as it would have expected, that the crew were trying to navigate around the storm cells as shown by deviations from the nominal flight path. The onset of a stream of unprecedented failure messages and then the cabin vertical speed alert at the end of them left the airline in no doubt that AF447 had crashed. The only explanation I can think for declaration of such a large search area on the first day was uncertainty as to how far and in what direction the jet or parts of it might have travelled after that last message, and the dispersal effects of currents and wind. By the second day we see a much tighter search area declared, although given the false leads caused by flotsam and jetsam from shipping it also means there may not be much surface wreckage, and will make locating the black box flight recorders even more urgent. My hunch is that Air France knows far more about this accident than it has until now seen fit to share with the public.

By: maokh

maokh — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:39:02 +0000

Since the only global satellite network available these days is Iridium, I will assume that the ACARS satellite communication was indeed over the Iridium network.

Assuming this is the case, what happened to the location data that is associated with all incoming MO-SBD packets? Sure, its an ellipsoid that is 10km squared, but it seems like Air France would have had a very good idea (with over 10 data points) where this jet was. Was this data element forgotten about?!

By: Bree

Bree — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:30:44 +0000

According to ATC, they said they were talking with the pilot and then suddenly AF447 vanished from the radar. A terrorist could have hidden a time bomb into a suitcase. Like Pan Am 103.