Air France Plane down

Sorry for the wrong link. here is the correct link about the bomb threat and Air France.

www.foxnews.com...

Maybe the pilots where distracted by another famous Air France Stripshow..

www.liveleak.com...



[edit on 3-6-2009 by emergencyresponseteam]

reply to post by sy.gunson

Look there's no need to make this a contest, you obviously have substantial knowledge on the subject and as far as I can see your probably correct in your assumptions. However you appear to me to have taken your evidence and made up your mind that it is fact; Yes as I said your highly likely to be very close to if not at truth.
If that's the case then lets close the thread and send off a link to the NTSB and the French Investigators save them the bother, time and money because "you solved it" well done.
Objectivity and discussion should be encouraged not dismissed as arrogance or lack or reading capability.

Originally posted by sy.gunson
Pilots in dark at 35,000ft do not fly visually. They use weather radar to visualise weather systems ahead. These guys diodn't bother to look at their radar.

It seems you know what you are saying but did you ever thought that a lightning could destory their radar and weathersystem (since they reported electronic malfunction) and they flight blind into the cloud wall?

Aswell you mentioned the size of the could. How would you evade it? Blind not knowing the exact position and size of the thunderclouds?

i you look at teh second picture sy.gunson posted you`ll see the TS he was lying in , a full on thunder and lightning storm - going rond would have meant quite a substantial divert - and were they on splosh fuel for the trip back? did the reserves cover a 200mile+divert and have 30 mins at the end?

it could be fuel was a major factor of ploughing in and not going around.


as for needing the data box - they as long as its not too badly danaged they can use the data and plug that into a flught sim , and watch what happened.

So basically, what sy.gunson and others are saying, is the pilot most likely did the equivalent of deliberately driving a car into a tornado. A blatant disregard for safety and common sense.

If this is the case, that raises other questions. I think someone would have to be mentally unstable, even suicidal to do such a thing. Lazy doesn't even cover it. I wonder if this will be a case like that Egypt Air crash, where the pilot was suicidal and deliberately crashed the plane.

I really hope not.

reply to post by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf


what if there was a fuel issue?

a several hundred mile divert could have left him on not alot of fuel for the trip?

[edit on 3/6/09 by Harlequin]

reply to post by Harlequin


I was under the impression that planes were usually loaded with alot more fuel than they need.

Fuel issues still wouldn't make sense. If flying into a thunderstorm has a survivability rate of next to zero, I still don't think a sane pilot would do it, fuel problems or no. if fuel was an issue, they could have decided to turn back and land. Sure, it may have caused massive delays, and their supervisors might have been irrate. But I think the desire to keep on breathing would override such worries.

I keep hearing reports that a wife of one of the victims' mobile phone was ringing yesterday, after the disaster, eventhough normally he has it switched off all the time. She has hope that he is not killed in the crash but she has not heard from him since then. I am not sure what that means but I thought I should mention it.

Originally posted by Mikey84

Originally posted by Haunebu

Yes, it is wrong, Bild www.bild.de... published pictures of the German victims yesterday on their front page.

Their picture is terrible!




Why would a paper put a picture like that on the front of the page?

Mikey

They were the (only) one that published a picture of Lady Diana dying in the car.

Originally posted by emergencyresponseteam
Maybe the pilots where distracted by another famous Air France Stripshow..

www.liveleak.com...

That's totally unrelated. It wasn't onboard an Air France flight but onboard an AOM flight.

Correct however as you can see from the above evidence this pilot did an insane act and flew into a wall of thunderclouds.

Two Lufthansa aircraft flew through the storm within half an hour of the Air France. Are those pilots also insane?

BTW, Turbulent Air Penetration speed is pretty much cruise speed and is in KIAS / MACH. In the 777 it's 280 / 0.82.

[edit on 3/6/2009 by C0bzz]

reply to post by C0bzz


the quesion is , is there a storm trak for the time they went through?

Originally posted by Harlequin
reply to post by C0bzz

 

the quesion is , is there a storm trak for the time they went through?

GENEVA, June 2 (Reuters) - Two Lufthansa jets believed to have been in the same area half an hour before the missing Air France flight are to provide clues for the investigation, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said.

www.reuters.com...

Air France went missing at, 02:14 UTC.

www.weathergraphics.com...

So unless, "same area", indicates 300 miles west, then those jets went through the storm, too.

[edit on 3/6/2009 by C0bzz]

great picture that - it indicates quite clearly that at the of loss of ACARS , the aircraft had been flying through and area of strong updraft for 4 minutes:

It appears AF447 crossed through three key thunderstorm clusters: a small one around 0151Z, a new rapidly growing one at about 0159Z, and finally a large multicell convective system (MCS) around 0205-0216Z. Temperature trends suggested that the entire system was at peak intensity, developing rapidly around 2300-0100Z and finally dissipating around dawn. From a turbulence perspective, these cold spots would be the areas of highest concern as they signal the location of an active updraft producing new cloud material in the upper troposphere.

says it all , sadly. bold is mine - but it seems that it hit the entire formation at its worst.


now , the frieghter that went the same way - was that exactly the same path? or slightly to the right or left?

[edit on 3/6/09 by Harlequin]

A few questions...

1. How far (time and distance) ahead of a huge storm system like that can a flight crew see it on onboard radar and take action to divert and navigate a way around it? My guess is that crews have plenty of advance warning, but I defer to the aviation members. By the way, that storm cluster as seen on the orange screen shot posted on this thread was geographically larger than a lot of countries and states, I mean that thing was HUGE.

2. Are there any factors other than pilot error (overconfidence) that might explain flying into a huge CB? Being from North Texas where we have violent supercells, I cannot imagine flying into one. Is there any other reason at all that a pilot would make such a horrible mistake?

3. It would be great if the black boxes could be somehow designed to detach and float to the surface via a self-activating flotation device. I'm guessing this is not possible because they have to be held tight to some part of the frame?

4. What pieces of the wreckage would investigators be most keen to recover in order to confirm that the force of the storm ripped apart the plane (other than obviously the black boxes, or would the black boxes alone tell the tale in enough evidentiary detail)??

whats interesting is something said on the weathergraphics site - uless there is actual rain (precipitation) then the radar cannot pick things up - the comment being , that AF447 could have run into a `young` updraft which was `dry` and wouldn`t have known about it till they started bouncing.

just been reported *tech wise* that the AIDRU are not the same as Qantas

Another question for aviation members... the decision to fly into a storm cloud... can any member of flight crew actually overrule the CO? Can someone on flight crew basically refuse captain's insane notion of flying through a CB? Can someone say "No sir, we are going around!" What are the dynamics of this, other than the obvious which is that there is a chain of command and it would take a lot of courage to overrule the captain? They don't put decisions like this to an informal vote or do they? Anyone know the protocol?

[edit on 3-6-2009 by switching yard]

reply to post by switching yard

1. How far (time and distance) ahead of a huge storm system like that can a flight crew see it on onboard radar and take action to divert and navigate a way around it? My guess is that crews have plenty of advance warning, but I defer to the aviation members.

Good questions, I didn't copy them all...but as to this one: Depending on the manufacturer of the RADAR they can range up to over 300 miles....although accuracy suffers greatly, and seeing that far, when it is still over 30 minutes away, at normal cruising speeds, means that it will be a very different "picture" when you arrive...and, as I said, accuracy is affected by attenuation. This is, simply...a wall of water in a cell that is 'painting' at say, 80 miles will effective block or 'mask' anything behind it.

When properly using WX RADAR a range of 20-30 miles is useful..longer ranges for an overall bigger picture, to for planning purposes.

We are recommended to avoid very strong returns by at least 20 miles...there is no problem with "offsetting" from your planned track, with ATC permission...you can program to parallel your original course. Good planning ahead will minimize excess fuel burn, and time delay.

And, for Harlequinn (or someone who asked) it is US Regulation for Int'l flights to have, in addition to the minimum 30 min reserve, fuel also for the approach at destination, miss and divert to an alternate. AND, I suspect that is an ICAO common practice as well. AND I know of no pilot today who wouldn't more more fuel, as well. Most airlines even use a standard "Min Fuel" over destination, dependent on aircraft model, that will sometimes exceed the legal minimums.

Hope this helps, with at least the fuel question. And RADAR, for weather avoidance questions.