Air Asia Indonesia Lost Contact from Surabaya to Singapore

[FigBug]

Crash site about six miles from last known position, so went down quickly

I'm not sure about this, it's hard to tell from the media reports if they are reporting the position of the debris, bodies or wreckage. And what position they are referring too. The impression I got is that debris field is 6 miles from last ATC contact position and it may have drifted. Wreckage and last radar contact may be somewhere else.

[ZAGORFLY]

Airplane or crew fatigue

AirAsia said Captain Iriyanto had logged a total of 20,537 flying hours, of which 6,053 flying hours were logged during his tenure with AirAsia, while the copilot, French national Remi Emmanual Plesel, had 2,247 hours.

Error in judgment for this crews should considered nil however a friend suggested me to notice that "One thing that nobody has mentioned yet is that this happened at 5:30 am which means that this crew would have woken up at 2-3 am. What was their roster like vs fatigue?"

[glendalegoon]

joey and james


First off I think Joey is right. I grew up in flying and in my home state 2 planes were vectored into the sides of mountains.

I learned early on you had to constantly check things. I've been cleared to land just after I took off for a destination an hour away. OOOPS

I was cleared for takeoff with a fuel truck right on the runway. OOOPS

I've heard it all, ATC's favorite line is: Another airline went through there with no problems 30 minutes ago....look up the time it takes for a T storm to grow.


WE fly the plane, ATC does its thing, but when push comes to shove, WE ARE THE BOSS, and ATC better do what we say if it comes to the EMERGENCY AUTHORITY OF THE PILOT IN COMMAND

It is my favorite regulation.

Mind you, thinking ahead and avoiding having to use THE EMERGENCY AUTHORITY OF THE PILOT IN COMMAND is the right way to fly, but sometimes...you gotta take charge .

[Richard C]

"And in the regs is the provision that if the Captain declares an emergency - he owns the sky. He may be questioned about it later, but I'd rather be in the office defending my actions than sleeping with the fish."

Absolutely.

I and every other ATC I ever worked with would far rather a pilot declared an emergency and disobeyed our instructions than followed them into danger.

[Capn Bloggs]

Originally Posted by EKW

But I think the automation will perform as designed if the aircraft is not exposed to extreme risk. It is always humans that put it there.

Not it didn't. What was extreme about AF447 (and possibly Air Asia) being flown in conditions which it had been certified to fly in, that is icing Conditions? In that case, the fact is the crew and aircraft were entited to be there. They were not in a Cb, just flying along in Icing Conditions. But nevertheless, because of bad design, the probes iced up and the automation spat the dummy. Unfortunately, the crew couldn't cope. But to blame them entirely is quite frankly ludicrous. The root cause was bad design of the probes and unhelpful automation that failed at the worst time. Throw in autotrim in manual flight and poor training and you have stacked the odds against the crew.

[VH-UFO]

glendalegoon

I dont think anyone has a problem, including ATC, with Pilots ignoring, disobeying ATC instructions, whatever you want to call it, to make sure all are safe onboard.

Its the manner in which you said it.

Contrary to your belief, ATC aren't there to piss you off.

Oh, and Pilots make mistakes as well. Want to list those?

[freespeed2]

Down in the WSJC FIR (it's been a while since I've flown to JKT though) you really do get some buildups, often embedded, that barely paint on the weather radar. In the goo or at night you can be flying along fat dumb and happy and boom, all hell breaks loose. Turbulence, St. Elmo's Fire, airspeed and altitude fluctuations. Then as suddenly as it began, you are back out of it in smooth air.

About 10 years ago I was flying in the same region. 4 hours into a 7 hour flight. Happy at FL410/M.80 but in a thin wispy flat layer with light ocnl mod turb. Suddenly the aircraft pitched up violently, both FGCs and ADCs kicked out as did the autopilot, autothrottles and trims. All the screen speed info red X'd and the mach indicated on the Flt Director panel went instantly to M.74 as the max cruise speed for this altitude (hence the initial pitch-up). The OAT had changed within 5 seconds from -54C to -27C. This temp is outside all the aircraft performance charts. Both FMS's warned that the aircraft was exceeding its ceiling altitude. The was NO severe turbulence at any stage but the aircraft became almost uncontrollable and I was left flying on a standby manual AOA indicator and the mark 1 eyeball on the horizon until we could figure out what the hell to do next. After about 45 seconds (felt like an hour) the temps returned to normal and everything was sequentially reset. During that time all I could was keep the aircraft flying upright. Manual flying at that altitude is a delicate process.

I was fortunate to be in an aircraft with a lot of spare thrust and a large margin above the stall in normal cruise. To be honest it scared the sh*t out of me. In an aircraft with a narrower margin above the stall control could be lost very quickly with a low chance of recovery.

The subsequent investigation identified the cause as a rapidly rising column of warm air being funneled up from a developing Cb below. There were no clouds at our level and nothing on the Wx radar.

I guess my point from this experience is that;
Don't be too quick condemn Airbus for icing pitots/AOAs.
Don't be too quick to suggest that the pilots stalled the aircraft through some positive or negative action.
Don't be too quick to blame severe turbulence.

[freespeed2]

I've read every post in this thread and as far as I can tell I'm the only pilot here that has lived through a 'jet upset' due to a thunderstorm at high altitude.

Eh...post #695?

However I agree with your point. In our incident we simply had too much on our plate to worry about ATC. We hadn't got past the 'aviate' part of the old adage at that stage.

[con-pilot]

Eh...post #695?

Yes sir, I read that, but your aircraft did not go out of control at FL-350 and we were not able to recover until around 12,000 feet when we were tossed out of the side of the thunderstorm into VMC and we were in severe turbulence. I think I still have bumps on the top of my head from hitting the overhead panel.

You would be surprised how much crap comes up from the floor of the cockpit that will end up on the overhead. I have no idea if we were ever inverted, but if not we pulled some zero Gs to have all that crap come up.

However, well done on your part, excellent flying!

[andrasz]

So he's saying that US pilots are more prone to deviate without ATC clearance?

Yes he is, and the safety implications are rather clear, just read con-pilots last post.

Having been in managerial positions around the world, including US and several places in Asia, I can fully appreciate the point. In the US, and western culture in general, professionals are expected to do their job first with full authority and report later on the task accomplished. In Asia even highly qualified professionals will revert to their superiors for permission, even if those superiors are in no way qualified to judge on a particular action. It would be considered extremely impolite not to, I myself have played this game several times, both on the giving and receiving end.

Getting back to the topic of the thread, this discussion may or may not be relevant, however there are some red flags here. The PIC was a military pilot with the majority of his 20k+ hours earned in military aviation with a rigid command structure. He MAY have been hesitant to override ATC clearance. On the other hand he was paired with a French co-pilot who I'm sure would have been both vocal and assertive if there were a recognized threat to safety. I'm not privy to whether this pairing pattern was intentional, but if so I can only concur that indeed AA has balls. I have heard of very few Asian airlines with this pattern, usually it is the other way around with experienced western PIC paired with low hour locals, sometimes with disastrous effect (e.g. AIE Mangalore).

[Sky Dancer]

Bngr you are right , the Thales probed had problems with the drainage of water resulting in a blocked pitot , many carriers had switched to Goodrich which resulted in better performance.Once again not very sure of this , needs to be ratified.

[truantmuse]

Sonar image

Unconfirmed reports from Wall Street Journal state that Indonesia has a sonar image of what may be the body of the plane, apparently upside down on the ocean floor (about 24 to 30 meters)

[Qantas_A380]

Airbus FBW

Why is it every time an Airbus FBW airliner suffers a LOC crash we get opinions everywhere about how FBW / computers were somehow responsible for the accident?

I don't remember anyone suggesting Boeing should revise their cockpit design after Adam Air 574 crashed or after ET409 crashed out of control 4 years ago.

Both cockpit designs are safe and fully certified. Side sticks have advantages & disadvantages just like yokes have advantages / disadvantages.

These accidents are usually a result of a larger system wide shortfall where pilots are not trained appropriately and/or panic in an unusual situation. The industry as a whole needs to address this and we really shouldn't see an accident like this again in the developed world if sorted out right away.

[Qantas_A380]

Sonar Image

Blackboxes should be recovered in a matter of days by the looks of it.

[skytrax]

I have a question regarding the items found. Im not very familiar with the A320.

First the O2 cylinder. Was that A320 fitted with gaseous cabin drop out O2 system? If so where are these fitted? Are they in the cargo lining?

Also, the slide found floating. Normally, the doors would be armed and girt bar would be engaged into the floor brackets. So the slide would be attached to the fuselage. I can imagine that anything is possible upon impact and soon details will follow but jst trying to work some things out at this stage.

[caa]

Qantas A380 - the first wide body jet was designed, built and certified in record time, these days it can take that same(as all above) time to agree on the wording to change a component on any aircraft type even if it is VERY clear the replacement component is far superior. These days it takes long to change anything because of regulation.

[tarkay01]

The bottle was recovered along with an evacuation slide. I believe that the slides are inflated with high pressure gas, CO2 or N2. is it possible that the bottle is part of the slide activation mechanism?

[einhverfr]

Both cockpit designs are safe and fully certified. Side sticks have advantages & disadvantages just like yokes have advantages / disadvantages.

As I have been trying to be clear, I don't see this an Airbus vs Boeing issue. Some of the earliest automation paradox-related crashes have been in Boeing 757 aircraft (I see it as a contributor to the Aeroperu 603 crash for example). The yoke vs sidestick and feedback issue is one issue but IMO it is a minor issue and both have advantages and disadvantages. The fact is, the differences between the cockpit designs are dwarfed by their conceptual similarities and the issues are more fundamental than folks tend to like to think.

People like to think "this couldn't happen in a X" but the problem isn't sidestick vs yoke. Its disconnecting the autopilot at the worst possible time, handing manual flight back, and then distracting pilots with lots of extraneous warnings. That can as easily happen in one as in the other.

I think that almost all bad weather crashes of current generation aircraft should ask how automation was a factor.

Interestingly the first incident mentioned by the IEEE article I referenced was an ADIRU misbehavior in a 777, showing the hazards of turning this into a vendor philosophy problem. The problem is a more fundamental information management one.

[skytrax]

Yes, that's right but that bottle looks a bit too big that purpose. Anyone can clarify? also what is the place where that bottle would be fitted exactly as well as the exact purpose?

[WingNut60]

Adam Air ??

Qantas A380

Not sure about the other mentioned event, but my recollection of the Adam Air incident was that it did not involve failure of the aircraft control system at all.
Unless you count having the AP's, the Captain and the FO all disengaged simultaneously as being a control system failure - which, I guess, in a sense it is.