Grime- skint wouldbe ftb Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 I don't want to sound alarmist or conspiracist but if you take most of the recent airplane scares, the crash investigation board conclusions have been 'inconclusive' for nearly all of the UK near misses in recent years.Remember the heroic landing of the plane at Heathrow last year when it is said to have dropped like a stone out of the sky? CIB conclusion: 'inconclusive'. Now it could be that there really has been no known cause, but I also know that mandatory recalls can easily bankrupt an airline. Yeah, but they're pretty sure its a design fault in the engines that caused the fuel lines to freeze, RR are working frantically to get a fix engineered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Stromba Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Serious question to all air buffs: why dont they have a beacon that can instantly locate the plane? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abstra Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Serious question to all air buffs: why dont they have a beacon that can instantly locate the plane? They do. They are called a transponders. One of them is activated when emersed in water, however it can't transmit anything unless its deployed ariel is floating out of the water. No radio signals will come out from under the water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest redwine Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Yeah, but they're pretty sure its a design fault in the engines that caused the fuel lines to freeze, RR are working frantically to get a fix engineered. they are pretty sure about nothing they haven't even found whats left of the aircraft or rather they haven't even found it it always takes a long time even years to find out the truth of an accident of this size Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrashedOutAndBurned Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 I really loathe flying - although it never stops me travelling - and this sort of thing makes me even more paranoid. Yes, I know I'm more likely to die falling over in the bathroom but it's just that you'd feel helpless knowing that it was over in a plane. At least in a car, where you are far more likely to be killed, if some idiot tries to kill you, there's the steering, the brakes, your reflexes - you have some inputs. And of course its worse if kids die. Not only have they not had a chance to live their lives but they are unlikely to have the maturity to make their peace with the universe in the final minutes so it's far more deeply tragic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest redwine Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 Yeah, but they're pretty sure its a design fault in the engines that caused the fuel lines to freeze, RR are working frantically to get a fix engineered. ps it isn't a design fault as this plane has been in service since 1998 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Cash Posted June 1, 2009 Share Posted June 1, 2009 They do. They are called a transponders. One of them is activated when emersed in water, however it can't transmit anything unless its deployed ariel is floating out of the water. No radio signals will come out from under the water. They are actually called ELTs, short for Emergency Locator Transmitter, but you're right, they signsl which is sent out is rapidly attenuated by increasing water depth. A transponder is a device which replies to the ground radar sending out details about the flight such as its number, altitude and sometimes other information too. I would imagine they will retrieve the flight recorders in a day or so, unless the wrekage is in very deep water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkG Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 it disappeared at 4 am it flew into a storm and airfrance think that it was struck by lightning and it destroyed its electronics According to news reports I've read the ACARS message indicated loss of cabin pressure as well as loss of electrical power: to me that says catastrophic failure, not just electronics damage. As someone else mentioned, being hit by lightning shouldn't cause a plane to crash -- they get hit often enough that they have to be able to survive such a strike -- but extreme turbulence in a thundercloud could certainly do so. That would also explain why there was no communication from the pilots and no further ACARS messages (which are typically generated automatically and sent via satellite when flying over the oceans). Can you imagine how frightening it would have been as the plane went down. With a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure at that height you'd be unconscious in a few seconds (less than five, if I remember correctly). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnionTerror Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 According to news reports I've read the ACARS message indicated loss of cabin pressure as well as loss of electrical power: to me that says catastrophic failure, not just electronics damage. As someone else mentioned, being hit by lightning shouldn't cause a plane to crash -- they get hit often enough that they have to be able to survive such a strike -- but extreme turbulence in a thundercloud could certainly do so.That would also explain why there was no communication from the pilots and no further ACARS messages (which are typically generated automatically and sent via satellite when flying over the oceans). With a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure at that height you'd be unconscious in a few seconds (less than five, if I remember correctly). It depends if the composite hull behaves differently to an aluminium hull (ie Boeing et al)... I've been reading up on this http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/376015-comp...330-thread.html..If the composite has a lower conductive resistance than metals, then a build up of heat is possible, which can damage components near to the strike. I'm sure the conductivity of composites have been rigorously tested in labs, but normally a Plane Crash is caused by a chain of events - the "Swiss Cheese model" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Cheese_model..it could have started a chain reaction of other events, which brought the plane down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkG Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 If the composite has a lower conductive resistance than metals, then a build up of heat is possible, which can damage components near to the strike. Composite construction is a good point, I hadn't realised Airbus were using that much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnionTerror Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Composite construction is a good point, I hadn't realised Airbus were using that much. Boeing are now moving to composites http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/bo...l-aircraft.aspx when building new planes.. If a composite plane is 20 or 30 percent cheaper to run, Airlines are now demanding that manufacturers build more fuel efficient planes, due to the cost of fuel. Manufacturers have to adapt, otherwise the customers will take their business elsewhere. There maybe a dramatic flaw in the composite material that caused this accident. Something that the scientists missed - for instance lightening managed to cause an in-flight fire. It could be a faulty piece of composite, that wasn't made properly or maintained properly by Air France. Or the composite issue could be a complete red herring. It depends if lightening caused a fire, or some onboard systems caused it - it has happened before... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 The vast majority of accidents occur during take-off & landing, so there are normally eye-witness accounts for many accidents. In flight accidents are pretty rare. Lets just hope that the black box is recording the required number of parameters for the investigators to find the cause of the accident. If there is a fatal flaw in composite materials, then it will turn the airline industry on its head. Its sad that I know a fair amount of Air Accidents..but I've been studying them for over 10 years..I blame BlackBox on Channel 4 about 12 or 13 years ago that started off my fascination with them.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkG Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Its sad that I know a fair amount of Air Accidents..but I've been studying them for over 10 years..I blame BlackBox on Channel 4 about 12 or 13 years ago that started off my fascination with them.. When I flew to London from Canada last year my flight was delayed for a day, and the only thing I could find worth watching in the hotel while I was waiting was a long documentary about plane crashes: the strange sequences of events and piloting or design errors that led to them occurring was pretty interesting in a somewhat macabre kind of way. The one I particularly remember was some bug nesting in a pitot tube used to measure airspeed for the autopilot, which resulted in the crew getting simultaneous indications from the aircraft that they were both exceeding the maximum safe speed and going so slow that they were about to stall... they had a few seconds to decide whether to speed up or slow down, and made the wrong decision. The bug wouldn't have been a problem if they could have used any of the multiple pitot tubes for the autopilot rather than being restricted to just one, they would have avoided the crash if they'd aborted the takeoff as soon as they noticed the errors in the air speed indication, and they would probably have figured out what was wrong if the aircraft hadn't confused them with an 'impossible' combination of signals when it happened; so nature, design and piloting were all at fault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Ayatollah Buggeri Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 I'm sure the conductivity of composites have been rigorously tested in labs, but normally a Plane Crash is caused by a chain of events - the "Swiss Cheese model" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Cheese_model..it could have started a chain reaction of other events, which brought the plane down. Agreed, and IMHO the crucial issue here is what started that chain. Was it an electrical fault originating inside the aircraft (as with the Swissair MD-11 in the late '80s) or were the electrical faults caused by flying into bad weather? Reading this story I was a bit shocked to discover that there is no ground-based radar surveillance of most oceanic airspace, and therefore that if an airliner does go down in the middle of an ocean there is no even remotely accurate means of identifying where it did so. A rentaquote on R4 said last night that even taking account of the time of the automated transmissions (i.e. indicating that the plane must have still been in the sky at that moment, and by matching the time to the intended flightpath and cruising speed you can theoretically identify the approximate area), the wreckage could realistically be anywhere between the coast of Brazil and the coast of North Africa. I have to confess to having believed that nowadays, the position of an aircraft in flight was monitored far more closely than that, even over water. I guess it isn't because there's no need, except in the case of very rare and tragic accidents such as this one. Do airliner pilots still navigate by dead reckoning?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkG Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Reading this story I was a bit shocked to discover that there is no ground-based radar surveillance of most oceanic airspace, Where do you think you'd put the ground-based radar stations when there's no ground? and therefore that if an airliner does go down in the middle of an ocean there is no even remotely accurate means of identifying where it did so. Location messages are typically sent automatically every few minutes, so in normal circumstances you can determine an accurate position based on the last location report and the heading and velocity since that point; I have a vague recollection of them being sent every 40 miles but I'm not certain of that. The problem is that if the plane stops talking and you don't know when it diverged from its planned course, then you can only guess where it might have gone. Do airliner pilots still navigate by dead reckoning?! Only if the GPS and inertial navigation systems all fail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Ayatollah Buggeri Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Where do you think you'd put the ground-based radar stations when there's no ground? I'd have thought that there are enough islands in the Atlantic to at least provide coverage for most of it, though I admit to being no expert on this subject (my sister is a short-haul airline pilot, and pretty much everything I know about it is via her). R4 is now reporting that the pilots of a Paris to Sao Paolo flight yesterday recall seeing flames in the water at a location that makes sense, though they didn't report it at the time because they didn't know that an airliner was missing. The Brazilian navy are investigating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkG Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 I'd have thought that there are enough islands in the Atlantic to at least provide coverage for most of it, though I admit to being no expert on this subject (my sister is a short-haul airline pilot, and pretty much everything I know about it is via her). Not a lot of them: http://www.reisenett.no/map_collection/isl...nticIslands.jpg Ground-based radar doesn't have a terribly long range, because even when it listens for aircraft transponder transmissions rather than radar reflections, it can only see aircraft above the horizon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6538 Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 ps it isn't a design fault as this plane has been in service since 1998 It was said last night that it was 4 years old. I fail to see how it would be a design fault of the nature stated because how on earth would it cause it to immediately disappear from radar. I would imagine that the only thing which would cause that would be some sort of catastrophic and very rapid break-up of the aircraft. Of course we don't know exactly how quickly this "disappearance" from radar actually took place so it's all pretty much guess work. Surprised the conspiracy theory nutters haven't started bleating by now though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest redwine Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 It was said last night that it was 4 years old.. Surprised the conspiracy theory nutters haven't started bleating by now though. the original airbus A330 dates back to 1998 the one that crashed yesterday first flew on the 18 april 2005 it also had a full hanger service on the 16 april 2009 a brazilian pilot has reported seeing the "ocean on fire " in orange and red today in france some "experts" dont agree with the lightning reply given by air france yesterday it wont be long before before the conspiracy circus starts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Ayatollah Buggeri Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Some design faults don't manifest themselves as accidents until the aircraft has been in service for a number of years: the engine pylons on the DC-10 and the weak fuel tank skin on the Concorde, for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest X-QUORK Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Some design faults don't manifest themselves as accidents until the aircraft has been in service for a number of years: the engine pylons on the DC-10 and the weak fuel tank skin on the Concorde, for example. The Airbus A300 has previous: American Airlines Flight 587 In the above incident, as the Airbus entered wake turbulence of a 747, the First Officer tried to stablise the aircraft but used excessive rudder inputs which put huge airflow stresses on the vertical stabiliser (tail), resulting in it being torn from the aircraft. You might think recommendations to strengthen the aircraft were made in the aftermath, but all that happened was pilots were warned not to use excessive rudder input. If the Air France aircraft experienced similarly rough turbulence in a storm, the same thing could well have occurred again IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frozen_out Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 I wonder if Jacob's been in touch yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest X-QUORK Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 I wonder if Jacob's been in touch yet. ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warwick-Watcher Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 the original airbus A330 dates back to 1998 the one that crashed yesterday first flew on the 18 april 2005 it also had a full hanger service on the 16 april 2009 a brazilian pilot has reported seeing the "ocean on fire " in orange and red today in france some "experts" dont agree with the lightning reply given by air france yesterday it wont be long before before the conspiracy circus starts S' Aliens isn't it? Stands to reason - they need more lizard people to replace Brown and his turds when they get thrown out of power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolf Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Yes it is you dumb c unt. Calm down lad. Have a bit more respect. Let me guess, you're a parent? Doesn't make your opinion worth more than a non-parent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnionTerror Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 When I flew to London from Canada last year my flight was delayed for a day, and the only thing I could find worth watching in the hotel while I was waiting was a long documentary about plane crashes: the strange sequences of events and piloting or design errors that led to them occurring was pretty interesting in a somewhat macabre kind of way.The one I particularly remember was some bug nesting in a pitot tube used to measure airspeed for the autopilot, which resulted in the crew getting simultaneous indications from the aircraft that they were both exceeding the maximum safe speed and going so slow that they were about to stall... they had a few seconds to decide whether to speed up or slow down, and made the wrong decision. The bug wouldn't have been a problem if they could have used any of the multiple pitot tubes for the autopilot rather than being restricted to just one, they would have avoided the crash if they'd aborted the takeoff as soon as they noticed the errors in the air speed indication, and they would probably have figured out what was wrong if the aircraft hadn't confused them with an 'impossible' combination of signals when it happened; so nature, design and piloting were all at fault. Ah, the Birgenair Flight 301 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birgenair_Flight_301.. The plane had sat in the tarmac for three weeks without moving. The crew were very eager to get home, so not all the pre-flight checks were done properly. Divers wouldn't go into the site to collect the bodies, as they didn't want to be eaten by Sharks. Typical, you survive a horrible Plane crash, but then you get scoffed by a load of circling sharks. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ai...ks-1317887.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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