Airbus A320 crashed in Southern France

[SLFplatine]

Per French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, the plane’s cockpit voice recorder has been recovered. The data recorder has yet to be recovered.

In the experience of one Olivier Ferrante, a former crash investigator for the French government who now advises the European Commission in Brussels the eight minute descent, if verified, would be inconsistent with a mid-air upset scenario (such as AF447).

While the crash occurred in a remote mountainous area unreachable by land the French had a helicopter overhead shortly after 11 a.m. (local time) and cable dropped onto the crash scene two officers from the specialized mountain police force and a doctor.

[Avfloat]

@Navcant, Lots of people have been on the ground at the site, lowered from helicopters. They certainly could have hauled up a recorder, just as they presumably hauled up the personnel on the ground.

Whether the orange box was the FDR or CVR is unclear, although some coverage has suggested it's the CVR.

[LASJayhawk]

Speed question
Can anyone help me (non pilot, sorry) explain why the plane's (ground)speed didn't increase even though it was descending with almost 4000 fpm?

If you are flying level you fly 4 miles to cover 4 miles of ground. In climb or descent you have to fly more than 4 miles to cover 4 miles of ground.

So if you ground speed is the same (ignoring wind) you have higher airspeed in the climb or descent to maintain the same ground speed

[rafacub]

FL 380

I'm curious about the aircraft Take Off Weight. It seems to me that FL 380 is quite a high flight level for an initial climb.
Anybody knows the maximum altitude at ISA +20?

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by Navcant

CNN is reporting that helicopters have been unable to land at the crash site, yet they've recovered the FDR?

Sounds almost impossible to me.

Apart from winches, helicopters have been known to hover perhaps with one wheel touching, they are amazingly versatile.

[DrPhillipa]

No news or hints of ECAM or other relevant ACARS messages so far. Would decompression not scream some alarm?

[mach411]

Heading change

I had another look at this data which was posted earlier:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/03/rapid%20descent.jpg

It shows that the descent phase started immediately after the completion of a heading change. Also, there is a vertical speed anomaly in the data that coincides with the start of the heading change.

I have read that this turn to 26 degrees heading was part of the flight plan, is that correct? Seems like quite a coincidence that the chain of events would start at the exact same time as the turn. Can anyone speculate how they might be connected?

[CDG1]

This is a paraglider video with an approach to Mt. Tromas (crash site) from South. Y

You may imagine the tragic last seconds of the flight and the cul-de-sac the aircraft entered too low.

from minute 3.35 on:

https://vimeo.com/32227267

[busTRE]

Originally Posted by LASJayhawk

If you are flying level you fly 4 miles to cover 4 miles of ground. In climb or descent you have to fly more than 4 miles to cover 4 miles of ground.

So if you ground speed is the same (ignoring wind) you have higher airspeed in the climb or descent to maintain the same ground speed

Clearly from a non pilot.

Temperature, pressure and thus density altitude all have a big effect in the airspeed/groundspeed relationship. At typical flight angles (even quite large ones) the angular differential is negligible and the above answer does not accurately respond to the question.

[ZeBedie]

I'm curious about the aircraft Take Off Weight. It seems to me that FL 380 is quite a high flight level for an initial climb.
Anybody knows the maximum altitude at ISA +20?

As of 18:00 today, the temperature was ISA -4. With a short flying time and 30 empty seats FL380 doesn't seem unreasonable. And anyway, an upset due weight/alt/temp would not have lost more than, perhaps 10 000'.

[jugofpropwash]

For those who say that it should be possible for pilots to don their masks in less than 5 seconds... How about in the event of a windscreen failure? Now you're trying to get that mask on with a massive headwind hitting you, extreme cold, everything blowing around the cockpit, possibly things frosting up from the temperature change... Even assuming that the mask isn't ripped out of your hand by the decompression, I don't think that anyone is going to get one on in 5 seconds.

[HeathrowAirport]

Here is the Flight Plan.

(FPL-GWI18G-IS
-A320/M-SDE2E3FIRWXYZ/H
-LEBL0835
-N0426F300 DALIN UN870 DIBER/N0434F340 UN870 SOSUR/N0441F360 UN870 MAXIR UN853 BLONA/N0448F380 UN853 DIK/N0408F270 UN853 ARCKY UT853 IBESA T853 NOR T857 BIKMU BIKMU1G
-EDDL0140 EDDG
-EET/LECB0011 LFFF0100 LIMM0045 LSAS0056 EBUR0126 EDUU0125 EDVV0129 EDGG0132 REG/DAIPX PBN/B3B4C4D4O4 SEL/HLJK OPR/GWI DAT/VM DOF/150324 RVR/075 RMK/ACFT CERTIFIED NOISE STAGE 4 TCAS)

[silverstrata]

Can anyone help me (non pilot, sorry) explain why the plane's (ground)speed didn't increase even though it was descending with almost 4000 fpm?

LAS jayhawk:

If you are flying level you fly 4 miles to cover 4 miles of ground. In climb or descent you have to fly more than 4 miles to cover 4 miles of ground.

Lasjayhawk. If you don't fly, please don't post.

In answer to the previous, once you are on an IAS descent (say from 30,000'), the TAS reduces with altitude.
At a steady 295 kt IAS, the TAS reduces from 460 kts at 30,000' down to 340 kts at 10,000'.
This reduction is (ground) speed is normal, and sort of indicates that the aircraft was following a normal Mach-then-IAS descent profile.

IAS .... indicated air speed
TAS ... true air speed (sort of a ground speed).

[HamishMcBush]

Surely ATC would be trying to contact the aircraft once they noticed the descent from FL380? If aviate/navigate/communicate was in play then travelling with no deviation from path, fairly steady ROD/Speed and no radio contact is pretty strange. I have not seen/heard any information about ATC trying to make contact. Very sad news and hopefully the investigating parties will release details from the CVR/FDR quickly to stop the more extreme speculation.

Reports that ATC had tried to make contact numerous times, and with no response had initiated the scrambling of a military jet to investigate

[OzSync]

Question for Airbus pilots:

In a Boeing, a single big spin of the altitude window to initiate a descent from cruise altitude would never spin anywhere near 10000, let alone below. You end up needing to wind it down once established in your emergency descent.

Is this same for Airbus?

(Just thinking of the incapacitation issue)

[Aeromar27]

You can select it to do 100ft per click or 1000ft per click.

[Torque2]

In the Boeing you only have selections in hundreds of feet on the altitude select?
On the Airbus you can have hundreds OR thousands selected so a quick spin can do just that.

[Transsonic2000]

Well, the first thing which came into to my mind when I heard that the Airbus crashed after a high rate of descend from cruising altitude, was the crash of Air France Flight 447 back 2009, due to frozen pitot tubes/sensors. This seems to be still an issue, a Lufthansa crew reported a similar issue with an Airbus a few month ago. However since the crew was able to recover the aircraft and prevent a crash it wasn't reported on the mainstream media/news.

Air France Flight 447 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Narrow Runway]

The A320 altitude selector has a toggle switch, that allows the pilot to select altitude in either 1000 feet or 100 feet amounts.

In most flight phases, it is positioned to 1000 foot selection mode.

[aguadalte]

GreyhoundMUC, you may have a point there. I agree that fumes intoxication could also be a cause for this crash, although with fumes and in a VHF environment, a mayday call would have been more probable.