Air France Flight Missing

[taiar]

RIP to those lost on AF447, and prayers and thoughts be with the families and friends.

As for the A330 systems. The 330 has your normal 3 GENs 1 per Engine and the APU. In addition you have an EMER GEN. The EMER GEN can be driven by either the Green HYD sys, or the RAT.

In scenario A, Hydraulically driven, the EMER GEN will provide power to PRIM 1, SEC 1,2. So you maintain flight control. ADR1 is powered, so are IR 1,3. As for the RADAR, it is still powered as long as the EMER GEN is powered by the Green HYD source. But if the motors are not running, HYD GREEN drops off line, and EMER GEN is then powered by the RAT. In this case the RADAR becomes INOP and falls under the INOP SYSTEMS list.

In Alternate Law the Aircraft is very flyable...you just give up a few protections. In direct law just becomes a conventional airplane, not challenging, you just have to readjust to how you use to fly. And worst case scenario, MAN PITCH you just use the rudders gently for roll and the trim wheel for manual pitch.

MANUAL PITCH is OK when the shiny side up is UP, but in a JET upset scenario, it can get ugly very fast. The MAN PITCH mode was not designed to fly the plane to a landing... it was designed to keep controllability until you can reset and bring back a PRIM or a SEC online and go back to Direct , ALTERNATE or Normal Law depending on how many failures you have at hand.

In any case, we now just sit and wait till the pros pull what they can pull out and reconstruct what happened with FACTs not speculations. Mean while we keep everyone in our thoughts and prayers.

God Bless.

T

 

[onewithwings]

Oh yeah, it's because I drive an RJ, my bad.

Has NOTHING to do with equipment type.

Re-read your posts. Many (myself included) find them offensive. This thread is meant to pay respect to the many lives that were lost as a result of this tragedy.

HAVE SOME RESPECT!

 

[freightdogfred]

Gonna have to call BS on this one... It's impossible to have lightning without precip/ice, which is what causes the lightning and will give a return on any functioning radar. I'll buy your radar in the Lear did not show a return (it was malfunctioning, no other way) but to suggest there was "not enough precip to give a return" is preposterous. Sorry, but that's Meteorology 101.

RIP to the crew and passengers of this tragedy.

 

[HA25]

Has NOTHING to do with equipment type.

Re-read your posts. Many (myself included) find them offensive. This thread is meant to pay respect to the many lives that were lost as a result of this tragedy.

HAVE SOME RESPECT!

Yeah, I've tried to show him the light and explain to him why he's out of line, and rather than apologize and make good he continues to be disrespectful..

 

[Lear70]

Gonna have to call BS on this one... It's impossible to have lightning without precip/ice, which is what causes the lightning and will give a return on any functioning radar. I'll buy your radar in the Lear did not show a return (it was malfunctioning, no other way) but to suggest there was "not enough precip to give a return" is preposterous. Sorry, but that's Meteorology 101.

RIP to the crew and passengers of this tragedy.

Yeeeaahh, I'm gonna have to, sort of, disagree with you there. Yeah. Because I was there, and had that airplane all week, radar was functioning perfectly.

The updrafts and downdrafts alone can produce enough friction from the dust and moisture particles inside the cloud matter to produce a static discharge from cloud to cloud, yet still not carry enough DENSITY of water for the radar to report back anything than a faint green or yellow return, and certainly not the large-core yellow, red, or magenta returns you'd normally associated with a mature thunderstorm.

I've experienced EXACTLY that, more than once, with a radar that otherwise worked flawlessly. A thunderstorm doesn't have to be pouring down rain to produce lightning. It also doesn't have to be pouring down rain (mature stages) to be deadly.

I refuse to believe an experienced crew such as this deliberately and willingly penetrated a thunderstorm of that magnitude, and there was NOTHING to indicate a radar malfunction prior to the initial ACARS bursts. Period. So, either:

a. Something else besides a t-storm took the plane out of the sky and now we're back to sabotage / terrorist act kind of ideas.
b. The pilots had a malfunctioning radar that didn't report the cell and didn't trigger an associated ACARS fault message and they flew into it unknowingly (and we're creating a new, COMPLETELY unfounded hypothesis with that idea with no data to support it), or
c. The cell was there, but not carrying enough moisture to paint as anything other than light or moderate and they flew through it not knowing what was about to hit them.

p.s. Maybe you should re-take Meteorology 101 to understand the intensity of the return is in direct correlation to the intensity of the precipitation contained within the cell, and severe updrafts and downdrafts CAN occur both before and after the cell is in its mature stage and has depleted or has not yet stored a large volume of moisture.

 

[mesaserf]

I had an AWA guy on my jump a few years back that described an electrical problem he experienced in the A320. He said that they had some kind of generator fault that caused a cascade failure with a total loss of flight deck instrumentation (The CRT’s) except for the peanut gyro. This included most of the flight deck lighting. I do not remember if he said the RAT failed to deploy.

He also mentioned that there was some kind of change to the flight control command that made any control imputes more sensitive than what was normal. I can’t remember all the details.

Somehow this cascade failure/power surge also caused one of the FADEC computers to shut down an engine. This happed to them at night, in IMC while descending. He made it sound like Airbus was very keen to keep this situation from the public eye.

Just imagine this same scenario while experiencing moderate turbulence. Or trying to pick your way through level 5 thunder storms in the middle of the Atlantic.

One thing for sure, Airbus will be at Def Con 4 in trying to pin the blame on anybody else but them.

God Speed...

​

 

[clippyrip]

Not one radio call from 35,000 feet all the way down. Electrical issues and a loss of cabin pressure. Well, lets see.....what causes electrical issues IN A THUNDERSTORM? What causes loss of cabin pressure when IN A THUNDERSTORM with reported SEVERE TURBULENCE?

Lightning and a breach in the fuselage somewhere.

If they lost both engines and had to ditch in the dark they would have been better off....rather than have electrical issues on a fly-by-wire aircraft and loss of cabin pressure in heavy turbulence. At least they would have been able to talk on the radio all the way down.

No radio calls from a plane that crashes, 99% of the time means something VERY BAD and/or SUDDEN happened. Pretty simple. Does it really take an experienced accident investigator to figure that out? NO.

And like I said yesterday.....today they will find a debris field....and they did.

That plane came apart. There's all kinds of crap floating around.

Doesn't mean the beginning wasn't from massive hail, or a friggin meteor even. Maybe a mid air collision with a military aircraft. Maybe a flock of Condors were out for a stroll in a thunderstorm at 35,000 feet.

Whatever it was, it was catastrophic. What causes that...catastrophies.

And talk about jumping to conclusions....why would they rule out sabotage. What moron would rule that out this early?

You remind me of the mentally slow kid in class that keeps talking while everyone snickers. Meanwhile he has no clue what is so funny.

 

[BLing]

In my experience, Air France crews have always proven to be highly trained professionals and extreemly friendly. When my company was too cheap to buy me first or businiess class tickets to and from my contracts, Air France crews always upgraded me as I walked on. Keep in mind as a contract pilot, I never travel in uniform, almost never have a company ID as Im either going to a new airline or coming back from a contract that ended and had to turn in my ID. Anyway, a crew member would notice my carry on that said Flight Crew and my flight bag. Id be asked if I was a pilot, Id say yes and make small talk before continuing onto cattle class. The Captain would be notified without my knowledge. After sitting down, I would be asked to grab my things and come up front as the Captain has requested I sit in first class. This happened everytime I was not already booked up front. They are some of the most professional crews I have come accross that I have the utmost respect for.

Now, the FAs are professional on the job, but not on an overnight in Central Africa! I had me some fun with them on their overnights during my time contracting over there!!!

This is a horrible accident. Hopefully something can be learned from it and the blame not placed on the crew.

 

[OneBadLT123]

CNN had a live press conference just a minute ago from France. But no new information though, just the usual media Q & A. Nothing we all don't already know. Wreckage found, deep water so its difficult, no indication of problem before the flight. 4 teams sent from France. MX crew, Ops crew, Airbus crew, and forgot the last one...

 

[Dornier 335]

Gonna have to call BS on this one... It's impossible to have lightning without precip/ice, which is what causes the lightning and will give a return on any functioning radar. I'll buy your radar in the Lear did not show a return (it was malfunctioning, no other way) but to suggest there was "not enough precip to give a return" is preposterous. Sorry, but that's Meteorology 101.

RIP to the crew and passengers of this tragedy.

I beg to differ. I got hit by lightning really badly a few years back; in a hold into PHL. No echos on radar, at 14,000, night, SAT around 0C. Cloud wasn't taller than 17,000 and lightning damaged the COM2 antenna pretty good.