U.S. Public TV - Nova - Flight 447

[robertbartsch]

Did anyone see this TV show recently broadcast on public television in the U.S.?

The show included opinons from aviation experts and the likely causes were:


A small storm ahead of a larger storm likely blocked the instruments so the crew was unable to see the bigger more dangerous storm
Super cooled liquid water was present and likely clogged the pitots
A rapid shut down of automated flight controls ocurred within minutes
The crew was likely overwhelmed by cascading system failures and did not apporpriately adjust aircraft speed
The AC experienced a slow stall and impacted the ocean at a high rate of speed - belly down

[Turbine D]

If you are interested, you can go to this site where the weather that night is discussed in detail. It is interesting, but in this troublesome zone of the Atlantic Ocean, these large storms seldom contain lightning as you might expect in a overland thunderstorm. So at night, with no visual clues, the pilots depend on their weather radar. Chances are they had the radar set on a shorter range setting and couldn't see the bigger storm hiding behind the first one they were approaching. Also, I think the radar is aimed something like 3° down from horizontal which may not have helped the situation.

Air France 447 - AFR447 - A detailed meteorological analysis - Satellite and weather data (http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/)

Turbine D

[Torque Tonight]

Jambone - Until you have some experience you should probably refrain from laying into the crew and pontificating like that. I'd love to see you put in a simulator under the same conditions and see how long you'd last - and I'm not talking about Microsoft Flight Simulator.