Air Asia Indonesia Lost Contact from Surabaya to Singapore

[furbpilot]

1500 hours on basic airplanes with no or little automation,ideally flown as an instructor constantly practicing stalls and basic maneuvers are a background that no AFDS protection can substitute. Stop P2F and enforce such rule worldwide or more and more people will die. If I had to start an airline I would only hire pilots with FI rating and experience. The US are as usual leading..just follow and take geniuses with no real skills and no qualities other than daddy's money out of airliner cockpits .

[Sunamer]

"but the altitude part of ADS is still derived from Mode S transponder altitude, whose encoder is barometric"

Not always.
At least, ADS-B format retains both ways of reporting barometric as well as gps altitude. Different bit flags in the ads-b message need to be used in order to distinguish different readings.

At least, that is what I got from reading technical docs on the ADS-B message format.

[captseth]

The FO was a P2F? And a midlife career change at that - usually the very worst candidates for a professional flying job are the career change guys. If you don't start this profession at an early age, the innate skills aren't firmly planted.

A factor? We won't know until the CVR turns up.

[island_airphoto]

Question for heavy metal pilots from a light metal pilot:
Many posts seem to be something like "a thunderstorm should not be able to take down a modern jet". Down at the lower levels we are all taught a thunderstorm may very well be beyond the ability of the airplane to stay in one piece and to avoid them if at all possible.. I have been through a couple that were rather sporty with 2,000 FPM + climbs at idle thrust and rain like flying under Niagara Falls. It would certainly be a handful for anyone not on top of their game.
Is the SOP in that area of the world to just blast through it or ????

[Ian W]

Originally Posted by ATC Watcher

Ian W

On the horizontal plane, absolutely ,( GNSS is the "politically correct" term ), but the altitude part of ADS is still derived from Mode S transponder altitude, whose encoder is barometric, and unlikely to change in our lifetime if you ask me .

Of course.

I was just pointing out that the basic surveillance by ATC is slowly moving to dependence on GPS (GNSS's). This was the answer to the point about the precision switch being in DOD hands. This is mitigated somewhat by WAAS and LAAS which may be the reason that the precision switch is not so critical and discussed these days.

[172driver]

Here's the gentleman's background. He was a graduate of a very tough engineering university (CalTech or MIT level), held managerial post at TOTAL, then indeed p2f.

I don't think I would describe the FO as P2F. The article linked only states that he financed his licenses and the A320 TR himself through his salary as a manager at TOTAL. It doesn't say anything about a P2F situation in his employ at AirAsia.

[bugg smasher]

No. Avoid, avoid, avoid. It has become especially important with the Airbus product, most recently in regard to the LH experience involving frozen AOA vanes, loss of aircraft control, and the subsequent generation of an emergency AD to all operators.

We seem to be spending a lot of effort these days trying to outwit all of the 'gotchas' the system designers overlooked.

[Ian W]

Originally Posted by bille1319

You are assuming 2 things; that SatNav gives horizontal speed and ignores vertical speed components and that SatNav is unaffected by environmental aspects such as electrical weather systems. Existing Integrated INS gyros do all this successfully in vehicles such as submarines to space craft.

It is normal these days to integrate the INS and the GPS so that any wander in the INS is corrected and any outage of GPS can be covered by use of INS.

It is not a perfect system but it can provide a pseudo airspeed indication. Had it dropped in when the AF447 ADIRUs lost the plot and they just picked up a generated airspeed instead the FMC could have stayed in normal law with just an ECAM message of the airspeed sensor failure, then when they came back a minute later - the system could have reverted. I believe (someone may confirm) that the 787 has something like this built in.

[SaturnV]

Here's the gentleman's background. He was a graduate of a very tough engineering university (CalTech or MIT level), held managerial post at TOTAL,

He was born on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, and graduated from the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (UPMC is part of the Sorbonne). UPMC is well-regarded in the sciences, it does offer engineering, but I believe the Sorbonne's principal engineering school is the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. Supposedly English fluent.

[AirScotia]

On Twitter, purported to be leaked radar screenshot:

https://twitter.com/TheGlobalflight/...159424/photo/1

[threemiles]

This is interpolated radar data from a refresh rate of probably a couple of seconds.
Geo vertical rate is not available from Mode-S nor is Ground Speed or Track with a resolution of 1/100.
Nothing worth in my eyes.

[acad_l]

He was born on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, and graduated from the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (UPMC is part of the Sorbonne). UPMC is well-regarded in the sciences, it does offer engineering, but I believe the Sorbonne's principal engineering school is the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. Supposedly English fluent.

According to the link posted, he did not graduate from either, but Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees.

As to Université de Technologie de Compiègne, I don't believe it is anywhere near the same level. Engineering at UPMC look fairly good OTOH.

[ATC Watcher]

Airbubba : we are talking 2 different things, I was reffering to the global 0.1NM EMBEDDED in the FMS to counter GPS nav accurracy. ( disccussed in ICAO on initiative IFALPA ATS committe after the Sioux Lookout collision in 1995.) long debate about it, also here on PPrune . But off topic .

Sunamer:

ADS-B format retains both ways of reporting barometric as well as gps altitude

Yes but the ICAO standard chosen was Mode S/Baro, not the GPS Alt. No single a/c ADS equipped flying today uses and transmit GPS Alt.

Ian W :

the precision switch is not so critical and discussed these days.

Agreed , and this will disapear completely with Gallileo coming in. However a future hypothetical switch from barometric to GPS Alt would have to be globally coordinated on a specific date ( similar to RVSM) and old airframes retrofitted, which has always been THE main problem , especially on your side of the Atlantic (since you still use Jurrassic jets overthere)

[Propduffer]

@AirScotia

The location given places PK-AXC about 17 miles south of the earlier reported LRP.
It is also about 6 miles west of the location given on George Hatchers' site.

I can't imagine where these minor discrepancies are coming from - unless someone is trying to trace leaks.

[captplaystation]

furbpilot said



"1500 hours on basic airplanes with no or little automation,ideally flown as an instructor constantly practicing stalls and basic maneuvers are a background that no AFDS protection can substitute. Stop P2F and enforce such rule worldwide or more and more people will die. If I had to start an airline I would only hire pilots with FI rating and experiencdr. The US are as usual leading..just follow and take geniuses with no real skills and no qualities other than daddy's money out of airliner cockpits ."


With you there , but, the problem is the "suits"/ accountants ain't gonna let it happen, as FO's are now a revenue source too, and, well, one or two crashes every couple of years is still affordable . . . right ?

[ATC Watcher]

AirScotia: I agree with Threemiles, this is not a Mode S Extended Squitter data block. So this was not transmitted by the aircraft.

If this is genuinely coming from inside AirNav indonesia , then maybe a track extrapolation of the flightplan processing system. But guesswork.

[Airbubba]

Airbubba : we are talking 2 different things, I was reffering to the global 0.1NM EMBEDDED in the FMS to counter GPS nav accurracy. ( disccussed in ICAO on initiative IFALPA ATS committe after the Sioux Lookout collision in 1995.) long debate about it, also here on PPRuNe . But off topic .

Thanks for the clarification, I appreciate it.

Hmmm, this .1 nm offset must not have made it to the real world. When FMS planes with GPS pass in opposite directions on the airway they are certainly not 600 or 1200 feet offset in my experience.

[Livesinafield]

why has no one seen this photo of a large shadow on the seabed that they keep going on about?

[MaxJack]

Disappearance-proof planes...

From "The Indipendant".

Canadian airliner, First Air, installes tracking systems.

"After AirAsia and MH370 flight searches, one airline finds way to make its planes nearly disappearance-proof"

Doesn´t say if they are "turn-off proof"

[captplaystation]

I would be very surprised if there are any "large" shadows, would have thought much more likely tens of thousands of small ones