Once again 23 of the 24 messages can be traced back to air data.
I must be a bit slow - can you please explain how air data disagreement can lead to the IR portion of the ADIRU failing? The ADR can be switched off leaving the IR running - but not vice versa. Thanks, TP
I am sure the accident report will eventually answer a lot of questions but I have been wondering about this since the acars stuff came to light.
Do any of you KNOW how possible it would be for the acars system to transmit after it had been detached from most of the aircraft? was it sending messages as it fell?
Could part of the avionics bay remain intact and functioning as it plummeted from the sky telling everyone listening that there was no reading from the static and pitot sensors? Maybe the pitots had not iced over, maybe they were functioning well but not wired to anything due to a break up.
All this uninformed speculating seems based on the idea that the messages came from an intact aircraft falling from the sky. Maybe, like Clipper 103, the forward section is miles away from the rest of the aircraft and was trying to tell us it could not communicate with sensors rather than suggest the sensors were faulty.
How probable would it be that the A330 had a "minor" techical fault, spotted on the ground in GIG, before the aircraft left for CDG, but after pressure put by AF ops on the captain, insisted he returned to CDG to have it sorted there? And then, a lightening strike or adverse weather conditions made the problem worse...?
Does AF have engineers at Rio or would they have had to fly someone out, thus delaying the arrival of the Aircraft in Paris, which most probably was going to fly somewhere else after?
Is AirFrance Ops worrying now that this could leak out and are wondering who to point the finger at?
I'm just wondering whether the focus on the pitot head issue, isn't a bit of a distraction i.e. whilst there is a acknowledged design flaw, that only comes to the fore in really extreme conditions.
Isn't the issue really that commercial passenger aircraft shouldn't be routed through areas known to have problems with convective clouds and wind shear, especially when El Nino is on - a known enhancer of these conditions.
Taking the great circle route, in this instance, sends aircraft directly through the crucible of the weather for this tropical zone - just take a look at the NOAA sea/air temperature graphics for the area.
Surely, sticking to the South American east coast for a few hundred miles more, before heading across the water would reduce the risk.
1. Have the radar turned on- sounds wierd but I`ve seen a few folk fly along with terrain on instead of weather.
2. Deviate early enough(90% of the time the CBs are above you in the tropics especially)then you don`t tend to increase the track miles by much and ergo you don`t burn too much extra fuel either....So fuel shouldn`t be an issue. If you take the gamble to `look` at the storm first by flying up to it you will have more track miles to cover to deviate around it...
3. Often the return on the weather radar will `disappear` the nearer you get to the CB..Are you above it, or not? Or is your weather radar not picking up the ice near the top of the cell. You have to play with the tilt...On really dark, moonless nights I remember the distance from the cell to the next waypoint and if I deviate I know not to turn back until I`m well inside that distance incase the return does the `disappearing act`.
Questions; That last acars msg....cabin vertical speed...Does it mean the cabin is going to `over take` the outside ie airplane in a dive or does it mean decompression??
...Interesting that "male bodies" have been found....Could they have fallen out of a breakking up aeroplane or does it mean that the impact was less severe??
Since the crew primary task then, is to try to regain control before anything else gets done, it is not surprising that distress calls were never made.
If situations can arise then, where using the radio to call a mayday is not possible due to the work load in the cabin, then its time voice activated radio was introduced, if not one simple button to send a distress message.
To not be able to transmit in an emergency situation is a serious flaw that needs to be corrected.
As mentioned in my previous post. THE AOA's bother me in the fact that the Perpignan A320 SEEMED to have frozen with No Crew warning.
Icing of the aircraft in this thread would surely mean the AOA's subject to the same icing conditions & again IF they Froze with No crew warning that takes part of the Crew instrument assistance away.
.... if not one simple button to send a distress message.
To not be able to transmit in an emergency situation is a serious flaw that needs to be corrected.
Oh mickk.....
What is your aviation background ?
If a pilot of some sort, did none of your instructors teach you A . N . C . ?
In a complex aircraft such as a Boeing or Airbus, are already sufficient alarms and annunciators to deal with. I would like to think that all line pilots are perfectly capable of making a mayday call by the traditional means where cirumstances permit.
To not be able to transmit in an emergency situation is a serious flaw that needs to be corrected.
If the Air France pilots were so maxed out by the situation they were in (and this is just supposition) then what value would have come from a radio transmission from them? They probably wouldn't have had the physical and mental bandwidth to communicate any useful information.
In a sudden and extreme situation it it is likely they would have been trying to disambiguate multiple readings, warnings and symptoms.
As it stands, we don't know whether they attempted any transmissions on HF.
As an Airbus A330/340 pilot, theres a few questions on here Id like to answer:
Interflug, when any airplane is built, the weight is calculated by the design engineers as weight is one of the biggest enemys, if you like, of aircraft, in that, the heavier they are, the more fuel they burn etc etc. When the aircraft is built, they are weighed, and in the aircraft we have a revenue and a training weight index. Revenue includes everything, crew, catering, the works. Baggage and cargo are loaded and we then have our ZFW, which is sent to us by dispatch, and which we double check on our loadsheet. We also know how much fuel is on board, in our airline, we are given the fuel in Litres, multiply this by the Specific Gravity to calculate the weight in KGs, we add that to our ZFW and that is the aircraft Gross Weight. You are correct in that this will decide our max alts. There is no discprepancy allowed with the weight.
ILS26L....highly unlikely, we fly to probably a hundred destinations, and we have engineers at every port. Usual practice is to contract out the home ports airline engineers that are rated on type, and train them up on your airlines procedures etc. I cant think of a "minor" fault that would lead to this.
dougydog, the 'Cabin Vert Speed" message on the ACARS was probably because the vertical speed was above 1800ft/min, which doesnt cause an ECAM msg, the value pulsates on the System Display...the ECAM warning pops up when the Cabin Alt is above 9550ft. The masks drop at approx 14000ft. Cabin Alt.
mickk, ask yourself what help would a mayday call really bring in this instance? None. What help would focussing all your efforts on the problem in hand give you? It might keep you alive!
If you are late downwind and burst into flames a quick call to ATC that you are turning finals immediately will bring immediate help. In the middle of the atlantic faced with an catastrophic situation what help will a radio call provide???
The WXR as fitted to modern aircraft should be sufficient.
However remember its purpose, weather avoidance NOT weather penetration.
I have seen a P3 Orion with a significantly better output power and resolution RTB with major hail damage as the Radar Picture was misinterprated.
spot on Captain Crunch and with so many messages related to one item its not coincidence.
If you received any messages at all from an aircraft that was in the process of breaking up they would most likely be completely random. These AF 447 messages are not random but they are also not conclusive evidence of what exactly happened.
I suspect over time though they will become extremely relevant.
ACARS Management Unit
Satellite Data Unit
Beam Steering Unit
Antennae
Power supplies
Faulted Reporting System.
These Reports Can be generated in milliseconds The aircraft has not traveled very far in space between the warning & the data transmission
Do Not look at just what Has failed on these report look at what has Not,
And without those ACARS messages, where would the SAR, investigation, rumours and theories be? Even if it's not the main purpose of those maintenance messages, it's a definitive improvement in crash rescue and investigation for sure, especially without CVR and FDR, and even no plane at all.
Quote: Airbus takes control away from the pilots. Yet pilots are still the number one cause of aircraft accidents. To all things, a balancing act.
Unfortunately, you're absolutely right. And the fact that in most cases the pilot is not there to explain what went wrong, makes it even worse. It's left to investigators to "speculate", in many cases, what happened. There have also been "cover-ups" in accident investigations where the crew was unable to defend themselves as well.
We've come a long way, but still have a long way to go.
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