AF447

[G1BTW]

My fav, Aloha Airlines.

lol @ passenger noting huge tear in fuselage and wondering whether to inform crew

wtf @ tear strip engineering not taking into account pressure wave caused by plump stewardess...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZHCm59gy4

fascinating/informative/well made

[Royal Flush]

The amazing thng is that it has just totally disappeared, they don't exactly know when, & have no real idea where it came down. Modern Civil Airliners don't just "disappear".

Isn't it really unusual as well for a plane to go down mid-flight?  I'm not the best flyer, but am usually ok once we're cruising.

Watch "Aircrash Investigation" Claire. There's quite a few go down mid flight on that.

It's actually a very good program for people who don't like flying. My sister who doesn't like flying at all finds it comforting that whenever there's a crash it's thoroughly investigated and it always leads to steps to improve safety in future.

There's always a reason for the crash as well and it's very rarely a single reason. Always a sequence of events leading up to the crash. It's a fascinating program to watch.

It'll be interesting to see what the investigators come up with on this one. Obviously it's impossible if they don't locate something but it's amazing the lengths they go to to find a plane in the middle of the ocean.

I personally cannot get enough of Air Crash Investigation (ACI), the vids are all on youtube.

In this instance, I think they're still trying to decipher what the brazilians meant by 'disappeared off radar", it does not mean that it was blipping on their screen one minute and then not the next, it can mean that it just didn't show up when they expected it, the area it went down in is not covered by conventional radar anyway.

Very strange no Mayday, and no locator beacon. Could be a bomb, or electrical failure leading to fire and instant explosion.

It was not in range of any radar station. You rarely get a mayday call in any rapid instance as the pilots are too busy aviating.

Read a few things on PPRuNe that make sense, the best 2 being lightning strike on the composite fuselage causing sparking inside a fuel tank.

The other being loss of cabin pressure somehow, over a storm forcing them to descend into a storm.

[EvilPie]

My fav, Aloha Airlines.

lol @ passenger noting huge tear in fuselage and wondering whether to inform crew

wtf @ tear strip engineering not taking into account pressure wave caused by plump stewardess...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZHCm59gy4

fascinating/informative/well made

The East Midland's crash in '89 was similar. Pilot announces "I have shut the right engine off because it's faulty"

Passengers wonder why he's switched off the wrong engine.

They sure let him know.

[TheChipPrince]

Surely something must be floating out there?  Are is it now just an underwater search?

Morbid as it sounds, things like this fascinate me...

[G1BTW]

My fav, Aloha Airlines.

lol @ passenger noting huge tear in fuselage and wondering whether to inform crew

wtf @ tear strip engineering not taking into account pressure wave caused by plump stewardess...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZHCm59gy4

fascinating/informative/well made

The East Midland's crash in '89 was similar. Pilot announces "I have shut the right engine off because it's faulty"

Passengers wonder why he's switched off the wrong engine.

They sure let him know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxiBHNeTG7o

Yeah I saw a couple of incidents like that, a passenger/cabin crew member telling the pilots about the wrong engine would have saved them. The pilots smelled smoke through the aircon which normally came from the right engine, so they shut it down, even though a modification made it come from both.
With modern anti-hijack cockpit doors I don't think you'd get much joy by banging away at it to let them know the problem.

[AndrewT]

There's a whole chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's latest book Outliers which is about this kind of thing. Tale of a Korean plane which crashed simply because everyone in the cockpit apart from the captain noticed something was wrong, but because it is such a deferential culture, not one of them felt it appropriate to question the captain's judgement.

So the plane crashed and they all died.

[Claw75]

Surely something must be floating out there?  Are is it now just an underwater search?

Morbid as it sounds, things like this fascinate me...

just heard on news that Brazilian air force may have found some wreckage

[G1BTW]

Total bitch to find the sunken wreckage now, that's one big ocean and the weather was bad so it could have drifted a long way. As far as I know they only have a limited time (30 days?) on the voice recorder/ flight data recorder box transponders.

[cia260895]

I heard late last night that the search area is as big as europe?

 those in the know how is this possible? would it be down to the cargo that floats?

[cdw1111]

   An incredible number of things on an airliner are buoyant.Every seat cushion(Squab) is a bouyancy aid,an aircraft has a huge amount of insulation inside the fuselage which may cause large section of skin to float nevermind alot of baggage and unfortunately human bodies.Combine strong changable winds with ocean currents  and debris will be spread far and wide in a relatively small time frame.

[relaedgc]

I heard late last night that the search area is as big as europe?

 those in the know how is this possible? would it be down to the cargo that floats?

Well, yes. Once you're out of Radar from the Brazillian coast you've got a thousand plus miles of Atlantic ocean that isn't monitored. The US military are unlikely to monitor past their territorial waters which I assume are at about the 200 mile mark. I am assuming that it was hit by lightning during turbulence, which has screwed up the electronics to some degree and then coupled with heavy turbulence, caused it to crash into the Atlantic. Practically impossible to pinpoint the location.

Please note the use of assume. Just my own opinion on the matter.

There's always aliens.

[pokerfan]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Air-France-Plane-Disaster-Officials-Say-No-Debris-Has-Been-Found-In-Atlantic-Despite-Earlier-Report/Article/200906115296406

[G1BTW]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8087573.stm

"""On Saturday, Air France said that in May 2008 it had begun noticing "incidents of loss of airspeed information during cruise flight" on its A330s and A340s jets - although only a "small number" of incidents had been reported."""


Would you have flown in a plane if the pilot announced pre-take off that the type of plane you were in had  uncorrected "incidents of loss of airspeed information during cruise flight"??

Would you fly on a 777 that hadn't yet had the following modifications?

""On 11 March 2009, the National Transportation Safety Board issued urgent safety recommendation SB-09-11 calling for the redesign of the fuel/oil heat exchangers used on Rolls-Royce RB 211 Trent 800 Series engines. A build-up of ice from water naturally occuring in the fuel had caused a restriction of the flow of fuel to the engines of G-YMMM. Rolls-Royce have already started on redesigning the component, with an in-service date of March 2010 at the latest. All affected engines will be fitted with the redesigned component within six months of its certification.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_38#NTSB_Urgent_Safety_Recommendation.2C_11_March_2009

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/03/12/323794/rolls-royce-trent-800-fix-only-part-of-broader-icing.html

[Royal Flush]

Yes and Yes.

[cdw1111]

The RR engine problem is avoided now be a simple procedure carried out by the flight crew in flight.Air travel can be scary to some as it's so unnatural but statistcally it's very safe and heavily regulated,people should really be more concerned about the huge numbers of un-MOTed cars on the road which pose a much larger risk to the average Joe on the street.