protectthehornet:
and given a choice between descending and getting my pitot tubes back and using more fuel or NOT getting my pitot tubes back and dying...what is wrong with this question.
I haven't left North America in my flying. But I have had to fly below the Flight Levels in jet transports for various reasons...the fuel penalty isn't that great...it is doable,manageable etc.
GEE GUYS (not dc8 and clues) ...what happens if you lose pressurization...and have to fly at 10,000feet!
shaking my head at some of the stuff I see.
Extended Twin [Engined] OPS require a certain amount of extra fuel to cope for Inflight Engine Shut-Down
and Depressurization. This means that, if one has to descent to 10.000ft in any phase or part of the flight,
one is assured to have enough fuel to reach a suitable alternate airport.
Having that in mind, if a pilot gets (yes it shows on ECAM) a failure of pitot heat, (and is unable to reset or cope with the situation) one can elect to descend to a lower altitude. TAT is the reference temperature to have in mind in such case and a descent to about 15 to 10000' will be enough to get rid off the icing conditions.
Again, in my opinion, they didn't have enough conditions to do it, due to lost of visual and attitude indications. (it doesn't mean they haven't tried it...)
I honestly think that we are loosing the big picture here. What we need to find out is why did that crew elected (or not) to fly into the bad weather and what happened to produce such a great deal of failures, with especial emphasis to [all] IR's and (partially, at least) to the ISIS. The rest is only a consequence, not the reason.
An A330 (or any other aircraft) is not flyable (at night, in weather) without attitude indication. The A330, in particular, may be flown without Flight Control Computers (PRIM's and SEC's), with an Hydraulic Double Failure, in Emergency Electrical Configuration, even without both engines (for a certain period of time, of course), but the failure of ALL IR's and ISIS is unquestionably problematic.(I know this is pure speculation, but - lets face it - that's what we are all doing here).
Just my two cents...ready to be flamed.
Edit to say, in my defense: if those IR's were not failed, why didn't we had a positive and unquestionable statement of Airbus Industrie mentioning a "partial failure"?