The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Politics & RKBA => Topic started by: long762range on June 03, 2009, 09:20:03 PM
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOegnahAFcEgwJZ4WKGkVz9Dgq5wD98JG00G0
Air France jet likely broke apart above ocean
By FEDERICO ESCHER and BRADLEY BROOKS – 3 hours ago
FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (AP) — Military planes located new debris from Air France Flight 447 Wednesday while investigators focused on a nightmarish ordeal in which the jetliner broke up over the Atlantic as it flew through a violent storm.
Heavy weather delayed until next week the arrival of deep-water submersibles considered key to finding the black box voice and data recorders that will help answer the question of what happened to the airliner, which disappeared Sunday with 228 people on board. But even with the equipment, the lead French investigator questioned whether the recorders would ever be found in such a deep and rugged part of the ocean.
As the first Brazilian military ships neared the search area, investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms. They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.
The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time saying he was flying through an area of "CBs" — black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning. Satellite data has shown that towering thunderheads were sending 100 mph (160 kph) updraft winds into the jet's flight path at the time.
Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.
Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.
The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure — catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.
"This clearly looks like the story of the airplane coming apart," the airline industry official told The Associated Press. "We just don't know why it did, but that is what the investigation will show."
French and Brazilian officials had already announced some of these details, but the more complete chronology was published Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, citing an unidentified Air France source, and confirmed to the AP by the aviation industry source.
Air France spokesman Nicolas Petteau referred questions about the messages to the French accident investigation agency, BEA, whose spokesman Martine Del Bono said the agency won't comment. Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim also declined to comment, saying that the accident "investigation is being done by France; Brazil's only responsibility is to find and pick up the pieces."
Other experts agreed that the automatic reports of system failures on the plane strongly suggest it broke up in the air, perhaps due to fierce thunderstorms, turbulence, lightning or a catastrophic combination of events.
"These are telling us the story of the crash. They are not explaining what happened to cause the crash," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "This is the documentation of the seconds when control was lost and the aircraft started to break up in air."
Voss stressed that the messages alone were not enough to understand why the Air France jet went down, noting that the black boxes will have far more information to help determine the cause.
One fear — terrorism — was dismissed Wednesday by all three countries involved in the search and recovery effort. France's defense minister and the Pentagon said there were no signs that terrorism was involved, and Jobim said "that possibility hasn't even been considered."
A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane, a French AWACS radar plane and two other French military planes joined Brazil's Air Force in trying to spot debris and narrow the search zone.
Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with some 230 kilometers (140 miles) separating pieces of wreckage they have spotted. The floating debris includes a 23-foot (seven-meter) chunk of plane and a 12-mile-long (20-kilometer-long) oil slick, but pilots have spotted no signs of survivors, Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said.
"Oil stains on the water might exclude the possibility of an explosion, because there was no fire," Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told reporters Wednesday.
The new debris was discovered about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of where searchers a day earlier found an airplane seat, a fuel slick, an orange life vest and pieces of white debris. The original debris was found roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, an area where the ocean floor drops as low as 22,950 feet (7,000 meters) below sea level.
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Now the news is not ruling out previous terror threats that delayed the original flight in S. America.
Other experts agreed that the automatic reports of system failures on the plane strongly suggest it broke up in the air, perhaps due to fierce thunderstorms, turbulence, lightning or a catastrophic combination of events.
Old phrase for aircraft regarding construction. Air bus are the composite, injection molded airframes, not as much steel on there as others.
If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.
Granted, they were flying over the Tropical Convergence Zone, at the equator, they have storms that make most look like a Spring shower. Could have lost radar also. Thunderheads to 45,000 ft. fly through it? and microbursts go to another level. They had straight line winds at ground level in the mid west to 100 kts.
Get to 35,000 ft. and fly into a squall at 350 kts, hit a wall of 150 kt. crosswinds, air pockets, and SHTF in an instant.
We may never know, I hope they can at least find a reason somehow.
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"Wind shear" is an atmospheric phenomenon that has been tearing planes apart for ages, It doesn't even have to be associated with a storm, I'm sure there are pilots here who can explain it more fully but twyacht summed it up pretty good.
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"Wind shear" is an atmospheric phenomenon that has been tearing planes apart for ages, It doesn't even have to be associated with a storm, I'm sure there are pilots here who can explain it more fully but twyacht summed it up pretty good.
If there is truth to it, I want to know why they flew through a thunderstorm? Even the King air I'm getting on in the morning has radar to fly around storms. Fuel is not a good reason...flight time is not a good reason....has anyone pondered why otherwise rational pilots would fly through a thunderstorm?
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The same reason most reasonable competent people do dumb sh!t, seemed like a good idea at the time and then things started to go wrong.
Ask your pilot about CAT Clear Air Turbulence.
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The storm itself appears to have been 600-800 miles wide. Very difficult to go around. They had already flown 4 hours across the Atlantic when it met this storm. The air craft flew 75 miles through the storm (12 min) before it broke up.
http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/
Tim Vasquez did a detailed meteorological analysis of the conditions the Air France jet experienced.
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The storm itself appears to have been 600-800 miles wide. Very difficult to go around. They had already flown 4 hours across the Atlantic when it met this storm.
http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/
Tim Vasquez did a detailed meteorological analysis of the conditions the Air France jet experienced.
Thanks, that would be difficult to go around.
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i'd bet it was lighting strike(s) that brought the plane down. lots of reports of computer failures. those planes are 100% fly by wire, there is a no mechaincal link between the controls and the control surfaces.
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i'd bet it was lighting strike(s) that brought the plane down. lots of reports of computer failures. those planes are 100% fly by wire, there is a no mechaincal link between the controls and the control surfaces.
nope
Lightning generally does very little to an aircraft. At the most you'll sometimes have a couple of scorch marks at the point it was struck
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I read something this morning saying it was flying too slow. I have know idea how they would know but that is what I read.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L413345.htm
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I read something this morning saying it was flying too slow. I have know idea how they would know but that is what I read.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L413345.htm
The plane sent no mayday signals before crashing, only automatic messages showing electrical faults and a loss of pressure shortly after it entered a zone of stormy weather.
when things turn to shit in an aircraft, you have a list of a million things to do.
They all have a priority. In most cases, putting out a mayday call is at about number 792.
You do the things that will make whatever is happening better. In most cases a mayday call does not improve things, so it has little priority.
There are exceptions, but mostly the calls happen once the initial recovery actions have taken effect....and if they don't work, then the priority of the call never gets high enough.
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nope
Lightning generally does very little to an aircraft. At the most you'll sometimes have a couple of scorch marks at the point it was struck
Hate to differ but a lightening strike will disable auto flight control systems, com/nav systems and generally jack up any size aircraft if the systems aren't shielded right. I've spent plenty of time rebuilding avionic systems on a plane that got close enough to a T-storm that the shielding was blown and the radios failed, it hadn't even been hit. I was in a P-3 that actually was hit and the plane stayed airborne but comms were marginal at best. It hit the wing so not to much damage. If it had hit the tail or closer to the fuselage it would have done a number on the electrical system. Hell my house took a hit a couple nights ago and we still haven't got cable and the internet working right. Same deal for a plane.
WX avoidance radar is good but that far out that high up there really aren't a whole lot of options. A small storm can disrupt (push around like a doll) an aircraft over 30 miles away. Something as big as they are saying and you only have a straight through and pray. Offsetting course uses a lot of fuel and requires a lot of work so you get around it and get back towere you want to go. An International flight that is say 12 hrs long normally can become a 14-16 hour flight if the wx causes them to deviate. To keep within minimum fuel levels they would have to either land at an alternate or push through.
philw: Ain't that the truth: AVIATE, NAVIGATE, COMMUNICATE Keep the plane flying, find out where you are and where a safe place to land is, then tell anyone that will listen you have a problem and what you are doing about it.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-06-03-air-france-flight_N.htm
Wreckage yields clues in jet crash
Search vessels prowling the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday found a 23-foot-long chunk of Air France Flight 447, the largest piece discovered yet in the hunt for clues in the mystery of the downed airliner.
The latest piece of wreckage floated about 55 miles from where debris was originally spotted on Tuesday. The enormous distance between the debris fields strongly indicates that the plane came apart in the air Sunday night, showering parts across a wide swath of ocean, aviation experts said. The Airbus 330-200 was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it entered a fast-developing thunderstorm.
Air France's CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told families of passengers on Flight 447 that the jetliner broke apart and they must abandon hope that anyone survived, said Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, a grief counselor who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel family members and was at the Wednesday meeting.
U.S. aviation experts monitoring the recovery said that information released so far suggests the jet was jarred while cruising at 35,000 feet by an external force that knocked out key electrical systems and may have broken up the plane. Satellite data show thunderheads were sending 100-mph updrafts into the jet's flight path.
"It is likely that we do have an in-flight breakup," aviation-safety consultant John Cox said.
Also among the debris was a 12-mile oil slick. "Oil stains on the water might exclude the possibility of an explosion, because there was no fire," Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said.
Search crews continued sailing toward the remote ocean spot hundreds of miles from Brazil's northern coast. It will take until early next week for the most important vessel to arrive: a French ship with remote-controlled submersibles that will search for "black box" recorders.
Crew conversations and airplane movements contained in the recorders would be vital to solving the crash, but France's chief accident investigator, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said Wednesday that he is "not optimistic" about finding the two boxes because they are likely a couple of miles underwater on a craggy ocean floor.
In the minutes before disappearing, the jet sent a series of automated messages indicating damaged controls, electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure.
"There was some kind of in-flight violent" incident, said Bill Waldock, an air-crash expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.
Waldock suspects weather — namely, the 100-mph winds the airplane apparently encountered that could have gotten underneath the wings and shaken the plane. "If they hit a 100-mph updraft while they were going 525 mph, it would have thrown them violently," Waldock said. "It's way beyond what the airplane is designed to accept."
The force could have bent or torn off a wing, Waldock said.
Extreme winds also could have blown the airplane into an unnatural position — nose down, or angling sharply to one side — that can lead to sharp acceleration as a plane tries to right itself, said former Boeing accident investigator Kevin Darcy. Usually a plane's computer will quickly regain control, but not always, Darcy said.
"In a loss of control, the plane speeds up. It goes faster than it's designed to, and you could have a flutter or structural problem where the airplane shakes itself apart," Darcy said.
Another possibility is lightning causing some kind of catastrophic damage, although many experts say the odds of that happening are extremely low because modern-day planes are designed to withstand lightning strikes. Several planes in the 1960s were downed when lightning hit a wing — the typical location for strikes — and ignited a fuel tank. Airplane redesigns moved fuel tanks to safer locations and made planes generally more resistant to strikes, Darcy said.
However, some modern planes are made of composite materials that may not be as durable against lightning, said former National Transportation Safety Board inspector general Mary Schiavo. A strike could knock out a plane's electrical system, ignite a fire or damage the fuselage, Schiavo said.
"If you get a bolt of lightning, anything can go apart, depending on what's the voltage," Schiavo said.
A sudden jolt also could have come from a bomb. Officials have discounted terrorism, and Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said, "That possibility hasn't even been considered." Former Boeing safety engineer Todd Curtis said foul play is possible, albeit unlikely. "At this point in the investigation, nothing can be ruled out.
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One would think that had it been terrorism somebody would've claimed responsibility by now.
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One would think that had it been terrorism somebody would've claimed responsibility by now.
Maybe not if it was aimed at an individual, but there are no reports of any potential target individuals being aboard.
Under the circumstances weather is a sufficient suspect, airplanes and thunderstorms do not mix well.
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nope
Lightning generally does very little to an aircraft. At the most you'll sometimes have a couple of scorch marks at the point it was struck
generally, you are correct. Light strikes don't do alot of damage to a aircraft. but your assuming every thing was installed and sheilded correctly. I've seen the aftermath of several striked to light aircraft, 9x out of 10 it frys something.