Ontopic Flight 370
- Thread starter Petunia
- Start date
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
You're assuming people would've been conscious.
Nosedive (like domon said) could easily make it impossible to operate a radio.
a great write up
Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline, is the author of "Understanding Air France 447," an explanation of the details and lessons of the crash of that aircraft in June 2009.
Many people are wondering why there are so few clues about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, beginning with the lack of a distress call.
This lack of a call, however, is not particularly perplexing. An aviator's priorities are to maintain control of the airplane above all else. An emergency could easily consume 100% of a crew's efforts. To an airline pilot, the absence of radio calls to personnel on the ground that could do little to help the immediate situation is no surprise.
This investigation may face many parallels to Air France 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in an area beyond radar coverage in the ocean north of Brazil in June 2009.
The Air France flight's string of events was precipitated by onboard faults that were automatically transmitted to the airline's headquarters during its final minutes. While they lacked any flight parameters, these maintenance fault messages gave key clues, though not a definitive cause of that accident, before any wreckage was found.
Flight data recorders are key
The recovery of the Malaysia aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders would be important in determining the cause of the accident.
Flight data recorders contain data from more than 1,000 aircraft parameters, including altitude, vertical speed, airspeed, heading, control positions and parameters of the engines and most of the aircraft's onboard systems, captured several times per second. The cockpit voice recorder archives the last hours of not just cockpit voices and sounds but also all radio and onboard inter-airplane communications.A multinational team of expert investigators will be looking far beyond just the flight recorders. The detailed history of the flight crew and the airplane will be closely reviewed as well who was traveling on two reportedly stolen passports.
Once the wreckage is located, an examination of the debris and its distribution will tell investigators if the airplane was intact upon impact and the angle at which it hit. Metallurgical and chemical analysis of the parts will determine the stresses and angles that caused the parts to fail, and if explosives were present. These findings of fact will drive the creation of theories by investigators about what caused the loss of the airplane and its passengers.
As an example of investigators' capabilities, we can look at the case of Pan Am 103, a B-747 brought down over Scotland in December 1988. Investigators were able to identify in amazing detail the sequence of events and even the individual suitcase and radio that held the explosives that destroyed the airplane.
Difficulty of the search
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's route heading north from Kuala Lumpur was over sparsely populated and heavily forested mountainous areas of Malaysia and the Gulf of Thailand.
Reports of a possible course reversal observed on radar could be the result of intentional crew actions but not necessarily. During Air France 447's 3½-minute descent to the Atlantic Ocean, it too changed its heading by more than 180 degrees, but it was an unintentional side effect as the crew struggled to gain control of the airplane.
The distance between the north shore of Malaysia and the southern shore of Vietnam of 250 miles is about equal to the distance between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The flight's last telemetry data, as reported by flightaware.com, shows the airplane at 35,000 feet.
Even with a dual engine failure, a Boeing 777 is capable of gliding about 120 miles from that altitude. This yields a search area roughly the size of Pennsylvania, with few clues within that area where remains of the aircraft might be.
The visual search for any pieces of the airplane that may be floating or visible through dense jungle is under way and indeed a daunting task.
In the case of the Air France plane, it was five days of intensive searching before the first floating wreckage was found. It took nearly two years to locate the remains of the aircraft on the ocean floor 12,000 feet below, broken into thousands of pieces by the impact with the water.
Location of the wreckage may be aided by underwater locator beacons on the airplane's flight recorders, if they have not been damaged in the impact like those on the French plane were.
In contrast, the Gulf of Thailand has a maximum depth of only 260 feet, with the average being about 150 feet. If the aircraft is in the water, it should make recovery easier than the long and expensive effort to bring up key parts of the Air France plane from the 2½-mile deep ocean, where most of the airplane and many of its victims remain.
The wreckage of the Air France flight was located in April 2011, with the flight recorders recovered and analyzed that May. The cause of the crash was the crew's loss of control of the airplane after the speed sensor probes became clogged while flying through a storm in the tropics. It caused the loss of reliable airspeed indications, the autopilot to disconnect and the flight controls to degrade.
The investigation of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be sure to take many months, if not years. We will know the truth of what happened when the aircraft is found and the recorders and wreckage are analyzed. In the meantime, speculation is often inaccurate and unproductive.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/opinion/palmer-malaysia-aircraft-air-france/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline, is the author of "Understanding Air France 447," an explanation of the details and lessons of the crash of that aircraft in June 2009.
Many people are wondering why there are so few clues about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, beginning with the lack of a distress call.
This lack of a call, however, is not particularly perplexing. An aviator's priorities are to maintain control of the airplane above all else. An emergency could easily consume 100% of a crew's efforts. To an airline pilot, the absence of radio calls to personnel on the ground that could do little to help the immediate situation is no surprise.
This investigation may face many parallels to Air France 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in an area beyond radar coverage in the ocean north of Brazil in June 2009.
The Air France flight's string of events was precipitated by onboard faults that were automatically transmitted to the airline's headquarters during its final minutes. While they lacked any flight parameters, these maintenance fault messages gave key clues, though not a definitive cause of that accident, before any wreckage was found.
Flight data recorders are key
The recovery of the Malaysia aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders would be important in determining the cause of the accident.
Flight data recorders contain data from more than 1,000 aircraft parameters, including altitude, vertical speed, airspeed, heading, control positions and parameters of the engines and most of the aircraft's onboard systems, captured several times per second. The cockpit voice recorder archives the last hours of not just cockpit voices and sounds but also all radio and onboard inter-airplane communications.A multinational team of expert investigators will be looking far beyond just the flight recorders. The detailed history of the flight crew and the airplane will be closely reviewed as well who was traveling on two reportedly stolen passports.
Once the wreckage is located, an examination of the debris and its distribution will tell investigators if the airplane was intact upon impact and the angle at which it hit. Metallurgical and chemical analysis of the parts will determine the stresses and angles that caused the parts to fail, and if explosives were present. These findings of fact will drive the creation of theories by investigators about what caused the loss of the airplane and its passengers.
As an example of investigators' capabilities, we can look at the case of Pan Am 103, a B-747 brought down over Scotland in December 1988. Investigators were able to identify in amazing detail the sequence of events and even the individual suitcase and radio that held the explosives that destroyed the airplane.
Difficulty of the search
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's route heading north from Kuala Lumpur was over sparsely populated and heavily forested mountainous areas of Malaysia and the Gulf of Thailand.
Reports of a possible course reversal observed on radar could be the result of intentional crew actions but not necessarily. During Air France 447's 3½-minute descent to the Atlantic Ocean, it too changed its heading by more than 180 degrees, but it was an unintentional side effect as the crew struggled to gain control of the airplane.
The distance between the north shore of Malaysia and the southern shore of Vietnam of 250 miles is about equal to the distance between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The flight's last telemetry data, as reported by flightaware.com, shows the airplane at 35,000 feet.
Even with a dual engine failure, a Boeing 777 is capable of gliding about 120 miles from that altitude. This yields a search area roughly the size of Pennsylvania, with few clues within that area where remains of the aircraft might be.
The visual search for any pieces of the airplane that may be floating or visible through dense jungle is under way and indeed a daunting task.
In the case of the Air France plane, it was five days of intensive searching before the first floating wreckage was found. It took nearly two years to locate the remains of the aircraft on the ocean floor 12,000 feet below, broken into thousands of pieces by the impact with the water.
Location of the wreckage may be aided by underwater locator beacons on the airplane's flight recorders, if they have not been damaged in the impact like those on the French plane were.
In contrast, the Gulf of Thailand has a maximum depth of only 260 feet, with the average being about 150 feet. If the aircraft is in the water, it should make recovery easier than the long and expensive effort to bring up key parts of the Air France plane from the 2½-mile deep ocean, where most of the airplane and many of its victims remain.
The wreckage of the Air France flight was located in April 2011, with the flight recorders recovered and analyzed that May. The cause of the crash was the crew's loss of control of the airplane after the speed sensor probes became clogged while flying through a storm in the tropics. It caused the loss of reliable airspeed indications, the autopilot to disconnect and the flight controls to degrade.
The investigation of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be sure to take many months, if not years. We will know the truth of what happened when the aircraft is found and the recorders and wreckage are analyzed. In the meantime, speculation is often inaccurate and unproductive.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/opinion/palmer-malaysia-aircraft-air-france/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
I suppose
There are like 200 plane crashes a year worldwide with 400+ fatalities.
You just dont hear about them.
People dont always die in crashes. Last year a Boeing 777 crashed in San Fransisco, 3 fatalities.
"Aircraft hit a sea wall located between the Bay of San Francisco and the threshold of runway 28L"
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Once again, that's the free market. Airlines deciding that it's not worth their profit margin to install such things. The only way to make that happen is with government regulation but certain people argue against that.
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
I get that it's free market. & I'm not really concerned if the Airlines are the ones deciding to add it or not. it's the people that actually use the planes and search for them that it makes the most sense for. You'd think that they'd want to be able to track them for cost and safety reasons alone. Also, it would be silly to argue against the gov't regulating what the major airline carriers already do - log a flight plan, passenger list, etc. All the tracking mechanism does is give accuracy to location.
Further, we're comparing this disappearance to past ones. As if the need for this technology to be installed didn't exist before.
From a government perspective alone, it would be cheaper to have tracking devices installed and working on planes rather than multiple countries sending jets, ships, and subs to 'search' for the ones that go missing. Not to mention the shit the airline has to go through trying to coordinate everything 'while we wait to see what happens.'
Installing it is money saver and great PR move for everyone involved. & I'm not even thinking about puddle jumpers at this point, but you know if you got the system up & running it would be easy to let it spread to the tiny aircraft.
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First you said "redundant global surveillance" now you say "tracking devices installed and working"
They already have transponders (ADS or something), hell go to http://planefinder.net/
They also are in almost constant contact with traffic controllers when over busy areas... What more?
ETA: If it broke apart, I mean, you'd find the locator but it wouldnt necessarily help find "da plane"
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Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
redundant. like google. one location stops working for some reason, and the other locations are still functioning and there's no loss of info or operation. Most power grids, and cable TV grids are being installed this way - to ensure full time operation. You'd need 'redundant' global surveillance and plane mounted 'tracking devices installed & operational.'
only 'over busy areas,' and 'almost constant' isn't good enough. We need to be able to find that plane within a small area, and a helluva lot faster than is happening now. Also, we're digitally adept enough to negate needing the 'black box' why not broadcast all that info too.
Again, even on aircraft where the technology is available you can only harden a device so much against an explosion and slamming into the ocean from 35k feet. Even most military grade equipment won't survive that kind of damage.
Valve1138
I like the AB in the GB
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
sticking with that example, if you knew within a few hundred feet where the transmission stopped and had specific plane information, wouldn't it be easier to locate the wreckage and problemsolve?
I meant the global surveillance part. Would require constant, human, visual, contact worldwide of every flight, every day, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day...
Air Traffic Control, i.e. traffic control, and live human radio contact and monitoring of all flights over specific airspace. It's practically unnecessary in some places, and doesn't eist at very low altitudes. It would be more than a huge waste of money.
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
you don't need visual to have real-time tracking. You just need the data coming in. If it stops, it triggers an alarm & a person gets involved.
again, if multiple computers are tracking the info coming from a plane, you don't need a human to do 100% tracking. The redundant computers can be set up to allow for some variance and if the plane's information goes outside of that variance an alarm goes off & a person gets involved. At the point a person would get involved, that person could look at considerably more useful info about the plane than we have now.