Bear,
Your post:
Lest we forget.
ChristiaanJ said......
"...engine-eer From another engineer...
I thought the basic problem with the pitots was that the certification specs themselves are totally obsolete..."
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I think that is a red Herring, and it puts one in mind of the "As yet and heretofore "unknown characteristics of FUEL in icing at extremely low temps."
BA038 was surrounded by such "informed opinion" and the TRENT was modified by addressing its "Insufficiencies in thermal performance" rather than some exhaustive research into "dangerous" fuel.
Here, the same artifact of "Tacit" acceptance of what amounts to absolute bs.
The weakness of the Thales install was legend, as was (is) shortcomings in powerplants, avionics, etc.
For my money, I remember that the USAF has operated large subsonic a/c with swept wings at FL500 and above for more than fifty years. They heated their fuel, and if pitots were killing pilots.......
bear is also a cynic. I believe in an honest regulator, and an authority that not only does not give the players the "benefit of the doubt", but carries a small chip in the Public's interest, though they may walk with a "slight limp".
All in all, after thousands of pages of comment, the pitots were known junk, and the pilots acted to burn down the "status quo" (). AF changed out the junk, and what remains is for even an average attorney to make even a weak case. Air Travel IS safe, so safe I am incensed that weak kneed and less than honest folk chip away at it.
end rant.
You are not obviously an engineer and IMHO, you are over the top here. First, Thales does not make junk, neither does Goodrich. Fact is, pitot tubes do ice when encountering abnormal amounts of ice crystals, ice crystals+super cooled water, or supercooled water. This leads to the dreaded observed speed, either high or low. To claim that Thales makes junk, e.g. have a bunch of stupid engineers working there, while Goodrich makes the 100% perfect product is absolutely ludicrous. You should think about how many aircraft, Boeing, Airbus, MD, etc., are flying at this moment. They basically all fly a combination of either Thales or Goodrich pitot tubes. What you think you know, you don't know. That is, a complete story on pitot tube icing, unreliable air speeds across all operators, all makes of tubes, and all types of high flying commercial aircraft. It would seem that Thales pitot tubes on the A-330/340 aircraft do not perform as good when encountering ice crystals at high altitudes compared to Goodrich pitot tubes, but not by much. Goodrich tubes also ice over on A-330/A-340 and Boeings and other aircraft, why? It is because the design as being 99.99% foolproof only is true for those conditions that are, in reality,
measureable and tested against. Both Thales and Goodrich tube met this criteria. Perhaps Airbus aircraft are more susceptible to pitot tube icing than Boeing or others, but that can only be supported by actual data of the entire flying base that isn't apparent at the moment. What is not
measureable, is pitot tube behavior at high altitudes, high mach numbers flying through ice crystals, ice crystals+supercooled water or supercooled water. Until such time someone develops a test cell to create an air speed of mach 0.83-0.86, identifies the geometric makeup and size of ice crystals at 30K-40K altitudes along with the ability to inject supercooled water into the equation, we will not have the "eutopia" you seemingly are looking for in terms of pitot tube 99.99% reliability.
Face the facts, other aircraft have had erroneous airspeeds occur as the result of iced pitot tubes and they recovered and went on. The question for AF447 is why did they not recover and go on, don'tcha think?
Also, don't relate it to the BA Trent/777 incident. That is like comparing apples to pumpkins.
I am an engineer and engineers in the aerospace business do not develop "junk" as you suggest as in the case with Thales. Your just P***ing into the wind.