kenya airlines 737-800 missing
I believe the DC9 was caught in the windshear during landing and was unable to climb out. At any rate none of the windshears that I'm familiar with led to a nose into a 15 ft crater.
I'm still waiting for any photos of the wings or engines that might at least give an indication of the attitude of the plane when it hit.
I'm still waiting for any photos of the wings or engines that might at least give an indication of the attitude of the plane when it hit.
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ELT garbled position
It is unclear why the signal was so far off the mark, but it appears the plane's emergency locator beacon's final signal was garbled — indicating a false position.
May 11, 2007
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Kenya Airways 737 Search Satellite Fix was "Red Herring"
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Cameroon aviation officials are claiming that data offered up by the French Satellite Tracking Centre in Toulouse was misleading as it centered their initial search area 150kms away, roughly along the Kenya Airways 737's planned track. The Communication Minister Ebenezer Njoh Moulle said: "The information they furnished pointed to two areas, one in South Africa and the other in Nyong and Soo (southern Cameroon). That is why the initial search for the plane was directed to Lolodorf and its surroundings, which is about 150 km from the actual crash site," he told reporters in Yaounde. "The question is why the plane's distress signal frequency failed to operate automatically, as ought to be the case," Moulle said.
The explanation would seem to be in two parts. Firstly the Emergency Locator transmitter (ELT) located in the tail of the aircraft would only have emitted a few short bursts before being immersed in the rapidly filling crater. That 406MHZ transmission may have only been picked up by two satellites within Line of Sight of the ELT in its location below the partly shielding crater sides. The brief transmission would produce two line-of-position (LOP) arcs that intersect twice (likely quite geographically dislocated) at very shallow angles (visualize two intersecting circles overlapping by half radius)). If a third satellite cannot produce another confirmatory LOP, the two points of intersection will represent two rough fixes, only one of which will be approximately correct (and therefore chosen). A four satellite ELT fix by contrast will be quite accurate and without any fixing ambiguity....particularly after a brief resolution process based upon continuing transmissions. ELT's below the lips of craters have done this before....however a crash crater that fills rapidly with water provides a new challenge for ELT designers. Perhaps a floating antenna buoy that detaches upon impact? Related Story
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Kenya Airways 737 Search Satellite Fix was "Red Herring"
Current state of the art for solving this problem, at least from a gee-whiz point of view, is "smart dust", consisting of a very large number - (millions plus) of self-powered or solar powered intelligent radio transmitters that can collaborate with each other as a network or work alone, each one not much bigger than a flyspeck. Relatively cheap to have and brainless to deploy.
Released or ejected as a cloud, a partial population of these will survive any sort of accident with high probability, then distribute on the breeze and be readable by satellite, portable, and surface equipment.
Won't do the aircraft passengers and crew much good in a case like this, but such gadgets might shorten the search cycle, if and when deployed.
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An alternate hypothesis to the (location mystery) position taken by Cameroon authorities is that the location was known and understood by airport officers and others relatively soon after the accident. The proximity of concentrated population areas near the airport and timing of the events in the departure cycle suggests that the belief the site could be 150 km distant from the airport might require a mystical transformation of some sort on the minds of the ATC people and others.
Maybe the airport people were trying to delay the inevitable until someone with appropriate authority could be called into the loop? Or maybe they had concern about looting and site intrusion by the local population before rescue,
investigation, and salvage personnel, etc. could get to the site.
Days have passed and we still have not seen aerial pix of the site disseminated to news channels, although both officials and private parties presumably do have aircraft and cameras at hand, and the trip to the accident site is not a very long one..
Who knew what when is an interesting puzzle in itself.
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FTLs ?
I am not aware of the crews planned duty that night but suspect that it was an all-nighter , starting from Abidjan , stopover in Douala , on to Nairobi arriving at dawn , a real red-eye ? Anybody please correct me if I am wrong.
IF this was the case , a BIG IF , and if the aircraft had no faults ,then this may have been a classic case of clock-watching because of FTLs , and the usual dose of get-home-itis. The weather did the rest.
Probably no crew in Douala to take over if limits were exceeded , the flight would have to be postponed / delayed , find hotels for crew and pax , 12 hours delay etc etc ??
This would not be the first time this has occurred and it certainly will not be the last. How many of us have got away with it and thought afterwards 'It is not worth it and I will NEVER do it again ?'
Apologies if my speculations are hurtful - they are not meant to be , just my 2 cents worth. I am ex- Kenya and feel very sad about this episode . KQ have been doing so well in recent years , deservedly so , and nobody deserves this.
Keep your chins up guys.
IF this was the case , a BIG IF , and if the aircraft had no faults ,then this may have been a classic case of clock-watching because of FTLs , and the usual dose of get-home-itis. The weather did the rest.
Probably no crew in Douala to take over if limits were exceeded , the flight would have to be postponed / delayed , find hotels for crew and pax , 12 hours delay etc etc ??
This would not be the first time this has occurred and it certainly will not be the last. How many of us have got away with it and thought afterwards 'It is not worth it and I will NEVER do it again ?'
Apologies if my speculations are hurtful - they are not meant to be , just my 2 cents worth. I am ex- Kenya and feel very sad about this episode . KQ have been doing so well in recent years , deservedly so , and nobody deserves this.
Keep your chins up guys.
aka Capt PPRuNe
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I think in this case, this "Fairy Dust" is about a better method of signalling where a downed a/c may be located. At least that is my understanding even though the poster was not too clear about the theory.
In this case I'll allow it, even if only theoretical at the moment as it is related to the fact that it was difficult to locate the wreckage initially.
In this case I'll allow it, even if only theoretical at the moment as it is related to the fact that it was difficult to locate the wreckage initially.
Originally Posted by arcniz
If wishes were horses....
Current state of the art for solving this problem, at least from a gee-whiz point of view, is "smart dust", consisting of a very large number - (millions plus) of self-powered or solar powered intelligent radio transmitters that can collaborate with each other as a network or work alone, each one not much bigger than a flyspeck. Relatively cheap to have and brainless to deploy.
Released or ejected as a cloud, a partial population of these will survive any sort of accident with high probability, then distribute on the breeze and be readable by satellite, portable, and surface equipment.
Won't do the aircraft passengers and crew much good in a case like this, but such gadgets might shorten the search cycle, if and when deployed.
Current state of the art for solving this problem, at least from a gee-whiz point of view, is "smart dust", consisting of a very large number - (millions plus) of self-powered or solar powered intelligent radio transmitters that can collaborate with each other as a network or work alone, each one not much bigger than a flyspeck. Relatively cheap to have and brainless to deploy.
Released or ejected as a cloud, a partial population of these will survive any sort of accident with high probability, then distribute on the breeze and be readable by satellite, portable, and surface equipment.
Won't do the aircraft passengers and crew much good in a case like this, but such gadgets might shorten the search cycle, if and when deployed.
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an all-nighter , starting from Abidjan , stopover in Douala , on to Nairobi arriving at dawn
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"chuckles- that correspondent you brought up wrote some strange posts with strange ideas. He is Kenyan and doing it in a foreign language."
Then might I respectfully suggest the mods ban him before his words are taken out of context and assumed to be representative of the industry in general?
Then might I respectfully suggest the mods ban him before his words are taken out of context and assumed to be representative of the industry in general?
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Originally Posted by chuckles1066
"chuckles- that correspondent you brought up wrote some strange posts with strange ideas. He is Kenyan and doing it in a foreign language."
Then might I respectfully suggest the mods ban him before his words are taken out of context and assumed to be representative of the industry in general?
Then might I respectfully suggest the mods ban him before his words are taken out of context and assumed to be representative of the industry in general?
(I'm NOT referring to you, chuckles, in hat respect.)
The subject was discussed elsewhere, so let's drop it here.
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Rainboe says:
Can someone please tell me why we are talking about Fairy Dust now?
Can someone please tell me why we are talking about Fairy Dust now?
Surely it must be difficult to be the annointed barking-dog. Those cold spring nights out behind the shed, etc.
I have admired some of your past work, but in this instance must suggest that you have totally lost the plot. The first tip-off is that you felt the need to change the name of the thing in order to mock it. Different names and words often correspond to different things, in people language, and so each needs be regarded for what it is, rather than what barks most neatly. I have occasionally made this mistake myself, so please do not take the thought as harsh criticism.
Should you wish to continue barking, here is a link to where you can roll in 'Fairy Dust'
The relevance of the 'Smart Dust' paradigm to the ELT Inop problem is as follows: Even with crash-resistant design, ELT's are subject to failure in high energy impact situations due to a) the requirement that the ELT remain tethered to the aircraft; b) the need for the ELT to transmit at relatively high power via an antenna which itself needs to "see" the sky, which may be broken off or covered up; c) the ELT is a relatively expensive and cumbersome subsystem requiring regular maintenance, so highly-plural ELT's(to possibly solve a,b) are not very practical, and d) the civil ELT 'guard' frequencies are but two in number for the entire planet, causing the design and use of ELT's to be strongly biased to prevent false triggering that can jam valid signals - but this constraint limits useful effect in some cases.
A 'Smart Dust' approach to augment ELT ops hypothetically could provide a secondary mechanism for locating downed aircraft via sat, ground, aerial, etc searching, which could be a totally passive system when not in use and would require very little systems-integration effort for retrofit to the existing fleet. When triggered by impact or signal, the SDELT would release hundreds or thousands of low-cost, micro-miniature transponders into the nearby environment, with a high probability that some would be in view and able to respond to search means. Because of very low signal power and other technical measures, direct identification would be possible, with false triggering and jamming not a major consideration.
'Smart Dust' is a very modern signal networking and modularity concept (with somewhat unfortunate name) that was articulated, publicised and developed toward commercial reality over the last ten years by Prof. Kris Pister at the University of California Berkeley. Should you wish to be informed, these links may prove helpful:
collaborative Smart Dust project backed by General Electric Corp. (April 2007 press rls) LINK
Company founded by originator of concept LINK
a broad-brush news treatment about applications LINK
prototype image -- biig LINK
Danny says:
I think in this case, this "Fairy Dust" is about a better method of signalling where a downed a/c may be located.
I think in this case, this "Fairy Dust" is about a better method of signalling where a downed a/c may be located.
One willl strive to be more clear.
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Given the young age of the Kenya 737-800 it certainly was fully ADS-B transponder equipped and transmitting its GPS ground and flight coordinates every second into the dark African night on 1090 MHz.
A simple ADS-B receiver (commercially available for less than $800 plus a laptop) at Douala airport tower would have recorded its flight path to a text log until it was down, i.e. position coordinates, altitude, ground speed, vertical velocity, true track. A quick view to the text log after radio comm was lost would have led to the event than happened - within minutes rather that days.
A simple ADS-B receiver (commercially available for less than $800 plus a laptop) at Douala airport tower would have recorded its flight path to a text log until it was down, i.e. position coordinates, altitude, ground speed, vertical velocity, true track. A quick view to the text log after radio comm was lost would have led to the event than happened - within minutes rather that days.
Last edited by threemiles; 14th May 2007 at 10:47.
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Why have they not found the CVR? Despite the total destruction of the aircraft, it has to be within a very tightly defined area.
This investigation requires the best in the business. So often have African investigations be little more than publication of a vague idea of what might have happened + taking into account of political sensitises. I fly the sister ship of this aircraft regularly - so you might say I have a vested interest in discovering the truth.
Can anyone from Kenya Airways tell us whether you were carrying out the mandatory Spoiler inspection prior to every departure?
This investigation requires the best in the business. So often have African investigations be little more than publication of a vague idea of what might have happened + taking into account of political sensitises. I fly the sister ship of this aircraft regularly - so you might say I have a vested interest in discovering the truth.
Can anyone from Kenya Airways tell us whether you were carrying out the mandatory Spoiler inspection prior to every departure?
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<To quote Cheney, 'you fight with the army that you have, not with the army that you want'. >
Yes, but you win with the army you build .
for example: the US Marine corps prior to Dec 7, 1941 was smaller than the police department of New York city . The Marines grew and helped win the war.
So did all branches of the service. Perhaps that is why the USA is not doing well in Iraq...bush decided to fight the war on the cheap.
I think the smart dust radio information was a fine addition to this thread and shows how things could be improved.
I fully expect you to zap my post, but hope a few people read it and remember it.
Yes, but you win with the army you build .
for example: the US Marine corps prior to Dec 7, 1941 was smaller than the police department of New York city . The Marines grew and helped win the war.
So did all branches of the service. Perhaps that is why the USA is not doing well in Iraq...bush decided to fight the war on the cheap.
I think the smart dust radio information was a fine addition to this thread and shows how things could be improved.
I fully expect you to zap my post, but hope a few people read it and remember it.
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I think the smart dust radio information was a fine addition to this thread and shows how things could be improved.
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Originally Posted by lomapaseo
How many B737 size planes have been knocked out of the air on takeoff into weather ?
http://aviation-safety.net/database/...php?Event=ACEP .
Why have they not found the CVR? Despite the total destruction of the aircraft, it has to be within a very tightly defined area.
Cameroon officials disorganised
...The most important component that is yet to be recovered is the cockpit voice recorder.
Some of the Kenyan officials here and the next of kin have been feeling dejected because of the disharmony with Cameroonian officials..... Equipment that would have speeded up the rescue is also not available. This includes heavy-duty pumps as well as protective gear, which have had to be transported from Kenya.
...The most important component that is yet to be recovered is the cockpit voice recorder.
Some of the Kenyan officials here and the next of kin have been feeling dejected because of the disharmony with Cameroonian officials..... Equipment that would have speeded up the rescue is also not available. This includes heavy-duty pumps as well as protective gear, which have had to be transported from Kenya.
Can anyone from Kenya Airways tell us whether you were carrying out the mandatory Spoiler inspection prior to every departure?
Here is a link to the Boeing AD which includes the aircraft serial numbers that are affected.
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/0/d08e486777976e508625729e006ebcde/$FILE/2007-06-52.pdf
CC
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Where is the 737-800 CVR located? Forward avionics rack or rear fuselage?