Air France Flight Missing

[crxpilot]

Lightning damages electrical equipment...heavy turbulence damages airframes.

Heavy thunderstorms produce both.

They had electrical problems and loss of cabin pressure.

Two pilots made horrible decisions to fly into HEAVY thunderstorms.

Chaulk another crash up to "pilot error." We're never gonna reverse this damn trend.

Feel bad for all those people that died because of a stupid decision.

Well cowboy it sounds like you have got it all figured out. Can you tell us who killed JFK, and the events that happened at Roswell as well?

 

[Fly-By-Cable]

debris found along the route of flight confirmed by officials, seats, floatation devices ect from 447. No survivors yet.

 

[PilotswifeII]

Chaulk another crash up to "pilot error." We're never gonna reverse this damn trend.

Feel bad for all those people that died because of a stupid decision.

I think he was just being sarcastic. But it's true, more often than not, a stupid decision is made by other people that the cause of a crash was "pilot error" and many good--often deceased--pilots end up being the blame for a crash and unable to defend their actions.

Then the pilot's poor family ends up being sued and losing their homes, etc. to pay restitution for the loss of other's lives. I believe that many times stupid decisions are made by people at NTSB and other agencies when they fail to find the actual cause to provide closure to victims' families who are harrassing them to do so.

 

[Top Gum]

Theory: lightning strike at 2200 failing certain electrical systems, including weather radar. They are flying blind in regards to WX detection. Unable to contact anyone due to weak radio transmission. They also have their hands full flying the aircraft in moderate to severe turbulance while trying to fix the electrical problem. They inadvertently end up in a cell with tops to 50K. Severe turbulence causes airframe failure 14 minutes after initial electrical failure at 2214.

It’s not a cowboy speculation. It’s very likely that they had multiple problems to have caused such a crash. I was actually thinking about this all day yesterday and was wondering if they would have use of the radar with an electrical failure.

Does someone know if they were down to only the RAT and if so would it provide power to the radar? My guess is that in RAT only power the radar doesn’t work.

 

[bubbers44]

We have no facts so why don't we wait a while. Finding debris is the first step. Now that should lead us to the black boxes. Then we can guess what happened. If an aircraft comes apart in the air of coarse it will send malfunction ACARS reports but they have nothing to do with the accident, just things that failed on the way down. If the report was well before the accident it probably was a routine message of one of hundreds of reports sent out automatically which probably had nothing to do with the accident. Just be patient.

 

[greyskyracer]

New information provided by sources within Air France suggests, that the ACARS messages of system failures started to arrive at 02:10Z indicating, that the autopilot had disengaged and the fly by wire system had changed to alternate law. Between 02:11Z and 02:13Z a flurry of messages regarding ADIRU and ISIS faults arrived, at 02:13Z PRIM 1 and SEC 1 faults were indicated, at 02:14Z the last message received was an advisory regarding cabin vertical speed. That sequence of messages could not be independently verified."

what is alternate law?

 

[Stukadriver]

what is alternate law?

http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm

 

[PilotswifeII]

When was the last voice transmission? Any indications of problems then?

 

[Scope out RJ's]

Or what?

Yawn!
Or I'll flatten the tires on your trailer!:laugh:
Get back to the regionals you sniveling little ********************!

 

[Lear70]

Does someone know if they were down to only the RAT and if so would it provide power to the radar? My guess is that in RAT only power the radar doesn’t work.

This is all speculation which, as some posters have noted, is useless until the prelim comes out, assuming they ever find the FDR and CVR.

From my rudimentary knowledge of Airbus systems and RAT knowledge from the 3 aircraft I've flown that have one, probably no radar with a complete electrical failure (which is the only thing that SHOULD deploy the RAT - complete loss of AC power to the retaining mechanism on the firing pin with Weight Off Wheels).

However, that's not what gets my attention. There's a couple critical things in that information about the avionics failure chain, IF it's correct, that happened SO fast (less than 4 minutes from first ACARS burst), I wouldn't lean towards a radar malfunction being out long enough to let them wander into a supercell t-storm:

1. ISIS failure. That's a BIG problem. Integrated Standby Instrumentation System. This is ALL you have if you lose everything else. For the ISIS to go or at least have to reset itself, you'd have to have a BAD electrical system spike. The ISIS gets its power directly from its own internal battery, continuously trickle charged through one of the aircraft's primary electrical AC Buses as long as they have power. Even if primary AC power is lost, the battery should provide uninterrupted power to the ISIS. For whatever reason, it appears it may have faulted.

2. Primary and Secondary aileron flight control damper unit failure (PRIM1 and SEC1) with a simultaneous ADIRU failure (Air Data Inertial Reference Unit - what gives the Primary Flight Display your attitude, VSI, airspeed, and heading readouts among other things) fault and almost simultaneously with the ISIS fault (within 90-120 seconds according to that data stream) means that they were at least momentarily (and possibly longer) without ANY instrumentation. No PFD, no ISIS, nada, zero, zilch with a flight control problem...

3. All of that while trying to fight an airplane that had reverted to alternate law on the flight control systems? That would be eye watering enough without anything like severe turbulence associated with a thunderstorm to compound the problem.

I've done a fair amount of over-water flying. Many times late at night, the thunderstorms over the Atlantic and/or Caribbean are still towering to 50,000+ feet and have quite a bit of updraft/downdraft activity with heavy lightning but are NOT producing enough rain to give you a return on the radar. D*mn near stumbled into one in the Lear over the Gulf back in January coming back to Miami from Mexico, just a little over 100 miles offshore of Miami. I JUST happened to be looking outside (was looking for the outline of the coast at night - it's a nice sight) and the lightning highlighted enough of it for us to split the tops of two cells - we were at 43,000 feet, less than 10 miles from the cells when we caught it, the tops were another good 5k-7k above us. There was absolutely NOTHING on radar, at any tilt. We got lucky; if I had been inside the airplane continuously, we'd have bounced right into one of them.

Until (unless) we get the FDR and CVR data back, we won't know anything, but my gut instinct tells me they wandered into one of those by pure accident, radar on but no return...

 

[Fly91]

A fire in flight would lead to bus failure and depressurization very quickly.

Its pretty obvious that a fire will LEAD to bus failure. It will also LEAD to the person sitting in row 40 to get his feet burned.

If there's a fire onboard a plane, warning systems almost immediately detect it and warn the crew. The crew would have plenty of time to make MANY radio calls. Just like ValueJet in the Everglades did, and that thing turned into a roman candle at 11,000 feet in 1 minute.

Unless you want to throw into the mix that a flame-thrower behind the captains seat accidentally went off in the cabin. Then I'll go along that the bus failed from the fire........... lol

 

[Monster Buck]

Lightning damages electrical equipment...heavy turbulence damages airframes.

Heavy thunderstorms produce both.

They had electrical problems and loss of cabin pressure.

Two pilots made horrible decisions to fly into HEAVY thunderstorms.

Chaulk another crash up to "pilot error." We're never gonna reverse this damn trend.

Feel bad for all those people that died because of a stupid decision.

I have had idiots like you in the sim. Mr quick to take in what they can quickly, with limited info and make that snap decision when you didn't need to rush to judgment. The same a-hole that grabs the wrong handle because they are in a rush to judge the cause. The worst kind of pilot out there. And here you are doing the same thing about an accident that you heard about in the news with.....drumrole.....exptremely limited info.
Nice job LEROY!

 

[StaySeated]

Both Air France Maintenance Control (or whatever they call their version) and Airbus receive continuous data from every operating aircraft. They may never find the CVR or FDR, but they already have an insane amount of data. In fact, mx control receives aircraft malfunctions that do not appear as an ECAM or warnings to the flight crew. I have experienced this personally on more than one occastion. Big Brother is always watching when you fly the 'bus.

 

[Fly91]

How can you be so sure of the cause there Fly91? I heard on the news on the way in to work about 8 hours after the disappearance that the authorities have ruled out sabotage already-and they still haven't found the plane! So many conclusions without even a bit of the aircraft found.

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?

 

[Fly91]

I have had idiots like you in the sim. Mr quick to take in what they can quickly, with limited info and make that snap decision when you didn't need to rush to judgment. The same a-hole that grabs the wrong handle because they are in a rush to judge the cause. The worst kind of pilot out there. And here you are doing the same thing about an accident that you heard about in the news with.....drumrole.....exptremely limited info.
Nice job LEROY!

And I've had wat too many azzholes in the sim like you who can't think for themselves and figure things out using common sense and logic. Very sad.

 

[Monster Buck]

You are one of the biggest idiots I have seen on here. In the first part of your last post you use bold print to show THE OBVIOUS CAUSE and by the end of the post "What moron would rule that out!" I know one.

 

[HA25]

You are nothing more than a Piece of TIHS!

I've had multiple people report this thread for being uncivil and containing language that is disallowed by the forum rules.

I know what Flyboyike said was out of line for this type of thread, but I have to remind you that foul language (even in disguise) is prohibited, however you are not going to be issued a warning because you're correct in admonishing him for his comment.. I am inches away however from giving flyboy a short term ban for a combination of reasons not the least of which is inappropriate language.

If I have to get involved in moderation here again, the thread will be closed, and the offender issued a citation.

 

[SennaP1]

I'm 34. And I wasn't at ORD today.

You deserve the airline you are flying for.

 

[OneBadLT123]

I wonder if we got anyone with some decent amount of A330 time here that could chime in? Just for discussion sake.

 

[Dornier 335]

Big Brother is always watching when you fly the 'bus.

More than that. It has become commen practice in Euroland. Even smaller airlines flying the E145 and Dash 8 have systems that either tell in real-time what you are doing or it'll be downloaded by the end of each day. It's called Flight Data Monitoring.