Just a quick question/s from a non expert humble apoligies if stupid ones

Both the UPS and Asiana accident so soon after take off from hot destinations. Any trend?

Would the batteries be the source of the fire or just add to it.

Why no ban surely?

God bless the crew

I don't know if anyone has suggested it before but I think it should be mandated that a load supervisor be included in the min crew whenever DAC is carried. I'm sure there are other tasks they could help with, chivi-ing the loaders etc as well. There are plenty of Air Stewards/esses that would volunteer for the extra role.

Seems like the ideal solution to me...

Henra,
As far as I know this is a physiology thing. Somehow the body cannot handle the low pressure above 25000 ft, even while having an oxygen mask on with 100% oxygen. Above 25000ft, there would be a need for pressure suits and pressure oxygen. Anyone able to confirm this for a fact?

Interesting that you should bring this accident up because I was only thinking about the parallels (or lack of them) today. It wasn’t an SP it was a -200 Combi.

I viewed the reassembled wreckage of the Helderberg in the old SAA apprentice hanger at Jan Smuts some 20 odd years ago and a very somber experience it was. More so because I had drunk more than a beer or 2 with a member of the flight crew on numerous occasions. (Hanger 5 anyone!!!)

Although the investigation left a lot to be desired and there are too many conflicts of interests to clearly establish the true cause and exactly what happened in the final moments, the reassembled fuselage clearly showed that the control cables had been torn apart as opposed to being damaged by the fire and there is no doubt that this was a very significant fire.

The heat within the cabin was so intense that the top of the reassemble fuselage which should have been white was discolored brown and the fire damage aft of the rear most galley had to be seen to be believed.

What I find surprising is that with both the UPS tragedy and now Asiana, it appears from reports that quite early on control problems were experienced, however from what we know of the Helderberg disaster, they didn’t experience any.

The CVR also gave no indications of control problems up until the point when the airframe apparently failed (IIRC Boeing disputed this).

My question therefore is – are the B744F control runs and/or protection significantly different to those on the B742? It seems odd that the 742 experience a massive 1000C+ fire for a similar if not longer timeframe than the B744Fs yet the integrity of the controls appeared to be maintained.

Pressure suits are not needed , oxygen masks will do just fine.
Only above 60.000ft a absolute need for a constant pressure suit becomes an issue.

While the answers are found
 

These materials should not be on aircraft in commercial quantities. Does it really need a third accident for that to happen ?

Parachutes and ejector seats may sound great in theory, but they are not a lot of use if the emergency happens in the middle of a 10 hour overwater flight. The priority (IMHO) really needs to be on preventing the fires from occurring in the first place.

Is it the lack of understanding about the mechanics and dynamics of such battery fires or that freight/airline company choose to ignore the facts?

We have seen videos of battery fires in our DG safety classes and it is patently clear that the festering heat remaining even when the fires are extingushed can keep reigniting when the correct conditions reappear. The thermal runaway can only be contained by sustained cooling.

Sadly, no one cares that a "CARGO" aircraft crashed. Only 2 fatalities. That's not enough to interest the general public. But, thankfully, management always puts safety ahead of profits. :ugh:

Why can't they ship these damned batteries on boats?

Ejection seats on freighters? Get a clue. Have you ever sat in an ejection seat for a 1 hour sortie? You sure as hell do not want to fly a long-haul sector on a seat with nearly no cushion, no means of reclining and no armrests. Besides the fact that management would disarm them all permanently the first time a crew punched out and lost millions of $$$ of profits.

Lithium Ion batteries being certainly a great candidate. With the plane under water, I wonder if they will be able to establish the source of the blaze? Maybe it wasnt the li-on batteries? Are these batteries no danger if not charged? IF so that solves that problem in future.

If we're being creative here, how about a RPV a la Global Hawk to carry DG?

Or maybe more bizzare, a towed cargo glider with autoland after it's cut loose? It could be a blended wing-body for minimum drag; no need for a pax version which would need windows.

Somebody suggested shipping Li-ion batteries in discharged state. Here's from wiki: GB

Out of interest are you a test pilot?

Reason being I flew with a test pilot who also happened to be a doctor (damn overachievers) anyway he said prolonged flight unpressurised above FL200 is not a good idea.

Quote:
As far as I know this is a physiology thing. Somehow the body cannot handle the low pressure above 25000 ft, even while having an oxygen mask on with 100% oxygen. Above 25000ft, there would be a need for pressure suits and pressure oxygen. Anyone able to confirm this for a fact?"

"Pressure suits are not needed , oxygen masks will do just fine.
Only above 60.000ft a absolute need for a constant pressure suit becomes an issue."

Wouldn't recommend going above 25,000 feet unless you have been on pure O2 for an hour to purge the body of nitrogen. If you don't, nitrogen can be released into the blood stream causing all sorts of nasty problems with your body/central nervous system.

If my memory serves me correctly, from my military days:

• Oxygen (air/O2 mix in proportion increasing with altitude) above 10,000ft.
  
• Unpressurised flight up to 25,000ft. As an aside, British fighter types had a cockpit pressure schedule of "half altitude +2" so a fighter at 40,000ft would have a cockpit altitude of 22,000ft.
  
• 100% O2 from 25,000ft.
  
• O2 under pressure above 33,000ft.
  
• Only Lightning, Starfighter, U2, SR71 and Aurora pilots needed pressure suits (60,000 - 100,000ft).

I stand to be corrected.

Let's pretend we know already that Lthium batteries might be te culprit in this and the UPS crash as well. Notices about so-called 'thermal runaway' reactions on Li-batts have been circulated fairly early. The Dangerous Goods Regulations have been extensively rewritten on that subject too...
Yet, remember the cellphones of the early days ? Weighed you down and even fresh off the charging unit they barely made it through the day - in stand-by mode. Today you're usually good when you hook it up maybe twice a week. Means that manufacturers are cramming ever more oomph in ever smaller space, one wonders if the regulatory powers are able to keep on top of this fast paced development.
I have some - only some - doubts about the notion that the manufacturers getting cut some slack due to heavy lobbying, because insurance companies are sitting on the other side of the fence and they have a vested interest to keep risks at a level where they collect premiums instead of coughing up serious money. It's cheaper to pay a few more cents for packaging then settling for a whole aircraft with cargo. Also, two people died; can't really put a price tag on a human life, IMO.
No amount of money can't undo that...

So, if there is a feeling that the current regulations aren't sufficient - look them over, rework them.

Then there's smoke detectors. They detect just that - smoke. Smoke means that the contents of the package(s) has already developed eough heat to torch the packaging. So much heat actually, that it might be too late...

Thermal imaging hardware used to be heavy, cumbersome and hideously expensive. Today, a thermal imaging camera fits in the palm of your hand.
Why not install a few of these in the holds? Could tell the crew of any cargo growing a 'hot spot' long before the smoke detectors would come into play. Possibly early enough to intervene or buying you more time. Time that could make the difference between coming in or going down...

Too expensive ? Heck, then stick temperature controllers in the boxes. Pharmaceuticals, perishables, most of that stuff travels already with temperature sensing and recording devices (mainly to figure out whose butt to kick when it gets spoiled). shouldn't be too much of an engineering challenge to hook them up with some kind of alarm device...

Might be irrelevant, but having myself put one of these mob. phone under a hammer (I know.. what for??? long story following an impressive phone bill by my 16 yo kid), I was surprised by the heat produced by the dammaged lit. batt.!!
Therefore, packaging might be an issue, one has to consider (summer heat on the apron in Dubai ... may be??), but also very adequate handling between factory all the way to the aircraft??? We have all seen some of the loaders operating (inluding with pax suitcases!!)

How about ...
 

Dayglo painted shipping containers mounted on a set of rollers on a dedicated deck area of the ship with hydraulics to push em overboard in the event of ....

Why fly them in the first place ?

Look what's being printed here :ooh:

BERNAMA - Missing Asiana Airlines Pilot Took Out Huge Insurance Policies Before Crash

Interesting twist to the story, however: stallspeed's post about thermal imaging sounds very appealing!

Alistair - Now I need to be sign up on insurance policies in a timely manner. Preferably right at the start of my annual leave.

Does Aurora really exist? I thought it was a myth...

Just hearing that a Singapore Airlines 747-400F has landed after reporting a main deck cargo fire?

source?

More likely he was worried about what he was flying round with?

unfortunately thermal imaging 'sees' the temperature of the first non-transparent surfaces in its field of view so the engineers will need to come up with some gadget that's more intimate with the battery cargo that can get the "it's getting hot in here" message to the crew.

Without that hydraulic injector any heat alarm might not buy much more time, though. My gut feel is that by the time any practical device notices the temperature rise of a sizeable mass of batteries, the reaction is well established. OTOH, if there's a suitable flat surface nearby an extra minute's warning is no doubt praise-worthy.

from avherald.com

Note: This is SQC's first and just recently converted BCF (ex. 9V-SPA). Not the first time I hear of false cargo hold fire warning's on the BCF.

Oxygen needs
 

Air is a mixture of components the proportions of which change only slightly with altitude. For humans the two most significant in the short term are oxygen and carbon dioxide, oxygen makes the systems work carbon dioxide has control influences

The proportions may considered as having partial pressures in accordance with their fractional volumes. Normal air mix provides sufficient oxygen partial pressure up to about 10,000 ft although some reduction in body functions are detectable above about 8,000 ft. Above 10,000 ft increasing percentages of oxygen are required to be the equivalent partial pressure of air at 10,000 ft. Above 25,000 ft the equivalent partial pressure of even pure oxygen is insufficent because the overall pressure is so low that is less than the partial pressure would be at 10,000ft

The answer is to breath pure oxygen at increased pressure. This is called pressure breathing and is available to military crews who fly at these altitudes for short periods should the cabin pressure fail or the pressure hull be penetrated by enemy fire. In combat it is common to reduce the pressure setting to a lower level to reduce explosive damage from hull damage and the severity of cabin altitude change should it happen.

There are systems in place to allow crews to use high pressure oxygen but they involve carefull individual fitting of specialised equipment and are not practical for commercial flights. Pressure breathing is very tiring and ordinary oxygen masks don't work because the pressure makes the throat swell. The whole head must be encased.

There were other RAF aircraft using these systems but sadly they are gone. Those were the days

Connie Kalitta tested this theory in a DC-8 a while back, it didn't work so well:

NTSB Report

A lot of strange things seem to have been tried at Kalitta...

Any rough estimate yet on the ocean depth around where the plane likely went down? (i.e., ease or difficulty of conducting a proper investigation.)

Amazed there were no comments on the Greenies now trying to deprive us of Halon as one means to deal with in-flight fires....

Asiana Crash
 

Hardly a blip on the media radar screen here in the US!
Same as with the UPS crash in DXB.
A couple of "freight dogs" crash in a far out place. Sadly no one gives a damn!
Now, if a bunch of civilians had died and happened to be a slow news day, we would perhaps hear a little more!

Captain Ross "Rusty" Aimer
(UAL Ret.)
CEO
My Aviation Expert, LLC
Los Angeles, CA

Very true. The standards do seem to be different. As one of the major U.S. cargo outfits has proven, you can have a hull loss every three or four years and the public has little awareness since there is 'no significant loss of life'. And the feds don't shut you down.

Has FedEx ever made it five years without a hull loss in the past couple of decades? Much larger pax carriers like United, American and Delta certainly have as I recall.

New development on the Asiana accident.

Chosun Online is reporting that an insurance policy taken out by the Captain of the doomed aircraft is arousing suspicion, and an official investigation has been put into action.

Seems like the Captain signed up for life, medical, and accidental coverage, with payout totaling $3040089 USD in case of death. To make things worse, it seems the Captain signed up for all these policies in late May/June, thus had only paid into this policy for one month before the accident.

A new conspiracy begins......

Conspiracy?
 

Sorry if this is thread drift, butas the subject has arisen...Some years ago, a colleague of mine in his late 40s took out LOL Insurance, paid one premium and then went for his bi-annual medical. Whilst on the dyno-bike gizmo his heart began to flutter, the test was stopped and he was rushed to hospital with an incipient heart attack. Never flew again! These things happen.

Very true. Captain Tsu Way Ming took out large insurance policies before he crashed Silk Air 185 in 1997. Before that, FO Auburn Calloway bought insurance policies payable to his children before he tried to hijack and crash FedEx 705 in 1994.

It certainly may just be coincidence. Or, maybe not.

Kalitta
 

Connie Kalitta tested this theory in a DC-8 a while back, it didn't work so well:

And the Captain never flew again from what I heard.

Life Insurance
 

You bloggers are a joke, crew had a cargo fire, airplane quits flying at altitude and you call it insurance scam, YOU should be ashamed of you'r self.:=:=:=

@ free at last

Nope, just sharing hardcore facts that was readily available on the net. ;)

Asiana pilot have taken out 7 insurance policies Asiana Airlines crash may have been a suicide - eTurboNews.com

Would you care to share a FACT, not your BS intuition?? But before you do, learn to spell you YANK:ok:

Good to see that at least one other (;)) blogger has his brain switched ON here! :rolleyes:

Come on people wake up!

It's been about 4 full days since the accident, the wreckage, the bodies and CVR haven't even been fished out of the ocean yet, and only one blogger is smart enough to know the exact accident cause already?!

There's room for improvement here... :hmm: