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Still no news on the lost Airbus which left Rio bound for Paris.

Lots of specualtion going on regarding turbulance and lightning strikes etc.

Planes don't just fall out of the sky.

Hope and prays for the passengers, crew and relatives.

Authorities prediction - It is crashed. v sad.

Chocoholic, I work in the Aviation industry so i'll qualify your statement as such:

Well maintained planes don't just drop out of the sky.

Air France have an ok safety record (I think the last fatal crash might have been Concorde), but the Airbus A330 is one of the safest aircraft in the skies.

Sad news all the same.

The airdisaster.com website has some stats on airline safety records, but then I saw it is pretty out of date (2004). Anyhow, here is their article on the latest crash. http://www.airdisaster.com/news/article.php?id=56

Dr Strangeglove wrote:Chocoholic, I work in the Aviation industry so i'll qualify your statement as such:

Well maintained planes don't just drop out of the sky.

Air France have an ok safety record (I think the last fatal crash might have been Concorde), but the Airbus A330 is one of the safest aircraft in the skies.

Sad news all the same.

I know! It could be a very long sad story when we finally know what happened.

One of my shop managers at work here was the father of the only 2 americans on the flight, his daughter and new son-in-law were traveling back to AUH from their honeymoon in Brazil

I know it's premature, but are initial reports suggesting that the plane maintenance or lack of it, could have been a cause for the crash?

No idea. Initial reports say an electrical error was reported.

its very sad .... i always picture the chaos that must ensued... looks like theyve managed to locate debris though last i heard.. Id like to take a poke at it though
Turbulence = engine stall = dual engine loss = total loss of electrics + hydraulics = plunge into sea
cant really say .. but finding the black box is the key.. The airbus 330 is a plane with a gr8 track record. It also believe it or not holds the longest glide record bcos a Transat flight once upon a time ran out of gas in flight (courtesy a fuel leak)!! and the pilots managed to land after nearly 15-20 min of pure glide with only one shot at the run way and using only the rudder and the tail plane... but during extreme turbulence u never know...
It is however something to think about the next time your on an airplane and trying to select which movie you want to watch or while downing the budweiser....
God bless their souls and may some good come out of this if ever there was any human error involved ... we can only look forward

Oliver ur conclusion is great u look like a pilot cum engr
but why its hapen ,due tech failure (radar fails to detect wx)
Why pilot entered in that sevear turbulence wx
Why diversion was not made?
May be he reduced the speed to get the more lift and stall the plane

erm you wouldn't reduce your speed to gain height, you'd increase it to give you more thrust!

Aircraft are built to withstand all sorts of inflight occurances. Turbulence is very unlikely to ever bring down an aircraft, you can see turbulence on the radar and weather instrumentation, and pilots will request control towers to allow them to fly over, under or around it. You will occassionally get the sort which cannot be seen, in which case the aircraft will suddenly drop - had a horrendous experience with that, which is why you should always wear your seatbelt!

Lightning strikes are also unlikely. The energy normally hits one sharp point on the aircraft and exits another. Only if electrical systems aren't properly grounded could this cause an issue. However, unlike the Boeing's, Airbus use the 'fly by wire' system, where flaps, rudders, etc are controlled by electrical systems instead of hydraulics, therefore it is a possibility (very small) that these could be damaged by a severe lightning strike.

Turbulence = engine stall = dual engine loss = total loss of electrics + hydraulics = plunge into sea

Even in the hugely unlikely event that an engine stalls during turbulence (not because of it), the plane still has basic electrical function via the APU. In the case of the A330, the APU will supply hydraulic power for a time.

you can see turbulence on the radar and weather instrumentation

Technically, you can see areas of low pressure (storms) on radar and determine the likelihood of turbulence. Clear Air Turbulence (which happens up at cruising altitude) can't be seen by radar, mostly it's communicated by other aircraft flying similar routes and providing feedback. Either way, for any kind of turbulence to bring down a plane at that altitude is virtually unheard of.

Statistically the two most likely causes are mechanical fault or human error. I hope it was neither.

informative. hopefully the black box when found will reveal all.....

There's little hope of finding it, you're talking about searching hundreds of square mules of ocean. It is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

true....but with today's technology i believe they can. The ill fated columbia shuttle was worse in terms of area debris was spread over - but they miraculously did find the recorder.

"In the case of the A330, the APU will supply hydraulic power for a time."

Aux Power Units dont provide hydraulics... only electrics and pneumatics (bleed) for aircon. The only way to recover hydraulics then would be to use the standby electric pumps (if electrics was restored). The only other emergency hyd unit is the RAT. Anyways I was only taking a shot in the dark. An air crash itself is a extremely unlikely event statistically and considered they didnt even have time to declare emergency .... its safe to assume whatever happened , happened in seconds. I doubt they had time to use VHF let alone try and spool up an APU.


"unlike Boeings, Airbus use the 'fly by wire' system, where flaps, rudders, etc are controlled by electrical systems instead of hydraulics, therefore it is a possibility (very small) that these could be damaged by a severe lightning strike."

U stand corrected the BOEING 777 is a completely fly by wire aircraft... just bcos it doesnt have a side stick doesnt mean its not FBW. The airbus 330 has 3 primary flight computers and 2 secondary thats a total of 5 computers and separate wiring to individual servo valves which deflect the control surfaces with hydraulic actuators. Hence I agree that chances are slim.

michaeldubai wrote:true....but with today's technology i believe they can. The ill fated columbia shuttle was worse in terms of area debris was spread over - but they miraculously did find the recorder.

Yes but Columbia was scattered over 'ground' not over the ocean floor!

Do you guys still believe if there still a survivor on that crashed? puzzle's are starting to be evident hoping for the best thing to happen prayers help. And apart from this have you guys seen on the 7days front page I just knew that there was a couple who are newly wed from Dubai and it is part of the crashed.

Chocoholic wrote:Yes but Columbia was scattered over 'ground' not over the ocean floor!

Pessimistic! Whatever - Still very possible. There are enough experts to in the field. I hope for the passenger' sake and for future improvement in safety's sake - they find the recorder. Wouldnt the families and all get to sleep in peace knowing what exactly happened that fateful day?

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time saying he was flying through an area of "CBs" — black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning. Satellite data has shown that towering thunderheads were sending 100 mph (160 kph) updraft winds into the jet's flight path at the time.

Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.

The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure — catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.

"This clearly looks like the story of the airplane coming apart," the airline industry official told The Associated Press. "We just don't know why it did, but that is what the investigation will show."

French and Brazilian officials had already announced some of these details, but the more complete chronology was published Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, citing an unidentified Air France source, and confirmed to the AP by the aviation industry source.

Air France spokesman Nicolas Petteau referred questions about the messages to the French accident investigation agency, BEA, whose spokesman Martine Del Bono said the agency won't comment. Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim also declined to comment, saying that the accident "investigation is being done by France; Brazil's only responsibility is to find and pick up the pieces."

Other experts agreed that the automatic reports of system failures on the plane strongly suggest it broke up in the air, perhaps due to fierce thunderstorms, turbulence, lightning or a catastrophic combination of events.

"These are telling us the story of the crash. They are not explaining what happened to cause the crash," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "This is the documentation of the seconds when control was lost and the aircraft started to break up in air."

Voss stressed that the messages alone were not enough to understand why the Air France jet went down, noting that the black boxes will have far more information to help determine the cause.

One fear — terrorism — was dismissed Wednesday by all three countries involved in the search and recovery effort. France's defense minister and the Pentagon said there were no signs that terrorism was involved, and Jobim said "that possibility hasn't even been considered."

Where is that info from NewDubai?

The latest reports I've read this morning say that particular aircraft was checked and in perfect working by technicians.

Air France has now admitted it received a bomb threat against a flight from Argentina to Paris four days before.

So they're now taking the possibility of a mid-air explosion seriously.

Information is bleak and then there are these theories. Horrific!

It's heart breaking when one thinks of the passengers....

OMG but we don't know yet. Hope they will explain soon the cause of crashed. I don't believe it's TERRORISM.

Sadly you just don't know. I find it almost impossible to believe that an aircraft in perfect working order, would have so many failures at once. It's unheard of. Pilots who have flown these aircraft for decades also discount these 'theories'.

There's something sinister with this crash, now why would the french authorities or air france for that matter release informations in piecemeal.

DDS wrote:There's something sinister with this crash, now why would the french authorities or air france for that matter release informations in piecemeal.

There is nothing sinister with this crash. Its a simple tragedy, unexplained however.

Reason for 'piecemeal' information release is simply because they haven't got much to share...

Soon you'll see bodies floating in the Atlantic. Then you'll have news.

new dubai ... those are some pretty hefty claims made by the source... i doubt authenticity though ... the only way to figure the time line is with a synchronised comparison of the Voice recorder and Flight data recorder...
Autopilot disconnection doesnt mean anything as pilots do take over and fly manual sometimes during turbulence. However the rest is pretty serious stuff.

Chox is right in that airplanes in working order dont just break down in that it has to be an external factor causing this and not some systemic failure of the aircraft.

Airbus is pretty careful with info bcos manufacturers will do anything and evrything to prove that the aircraft was ok as its a matter of credibility. Its highly unlikely that airbus would release these facts although airfrance and airbus would have vital data regarding the aircraft with a system called AIRMAN.

French authorities have been saying for several days that we have to be extremely prudent," Bussereau told France's RTL radio. "Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing."

Bussereau said the search must continue and stressed that the priority was finding the flight recorders. The plane went down Sunday night with 228 people on board in the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.

The plane's creator, Airbus, is warning airline crews to follow standard procedures if they suspect speed indicators on their crafts are faulty, suggesting that technical malfunction may have played a role in this week's Air France crash, Reuters reported.

Investigators know from the aircraft's final automated messages, which were sent over a period of three minutes, that there was an inconsistency between the different measured airspeeds shortly after the plane entered a storm zone, according to Reuters.

Such warnings from Airbus to its clients are only sent if accident investigators have established facts that they consider important enough to pass on immediately to airlines, an industry official told Reuters.

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The French air accident investigation agency (BEA) has said the speed levels registered by the slew of messages from the plane showed "incoherence," Reuters reports.

France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved. Brazil's defense minister said the possibility was never considered.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, speaking Thursday in Rio de Janeiro where he attended a Mass honoring the crash victims, said experts had not found signs that would back up a "terrorism theory."

"But we cannot discard that for now," he told reporters. "Nothing leads us to believe that there was an explosion, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one."

"All the paths are open and we will not give priority to a single premise because that would be immoral," he added.

Investigators are looking into whether malfunctions in instruments used to determine airspeed may have led the plane to be traveling at the wrong speed when it encountered turbulence from towering thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean.

Two aviation industry officials told The Associated Press on Thursday that investigators were studying the possibility that an external probe that measures air pressure may have iced over. The probe feeds data used to calculate air speed and altitude to onboard computers. Another possibility is that sensors inside the aircraft reading the data malfunctioned.

If the instruments were not reporting accurate information, the jet could have been traveling too fast or too slow as it hit turbulence from violent thunderstorms, according to the officials.

Jetliners need to be flying at just the right speed when encountering violent weather, experts say — too fast and they run the risk of breaking apart. Too slow, and they could lose control.

But Gerard Feldzer, a former Air France pilot who flew A330s from 2000 to 2004, cautioned against drawing conclusions about the cause of the crash.

"We don't know whether there was depressurization. Perhaps a quarter of an hour later it was resolved and it (the cause of the crash) was something completely different."

European planemaker Airbus has sent an advisory to all operators of the A330 reminding them of how to handle the plane in conditions similar to those experienced by Flight 447, which was an Airbus A330-200 version.

Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon said the planemaker sent a reminder of A330 operating procedures to airlines late Thursday after the French agency investigating the crash said the doomed flight had faced turbulent weather and inconsistency in the speed readings by different instruments. That meant "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear," Dubon said.

In such circumstances, flight crews should maintain thrust and pitch and — if necessary — level off the plane and start troubleshooting procedures as detailed in operating manuals, Dubon said.

Meteorologists said the Air France jet entered an unusual storm with 100 mph (160 kph) updrafts that acted as a vacuum, sucking water up from the ocean. The moist air rushed up to the plane's high altitude, where it quickly froze in minus-40 degree temperatures. The updrafts also would have created dangerous turbulence.

The jetliner's computer systems ultimately failed, and the plane broke apart likely in midair as it crashed into the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris Sunday night.

But investigators will have little to go on until they recover the plane's "black box" flight data and voice recorders, now likely on the ocean floor miles beneath the surface

Where did the rest of this thread go?