Pay attention.
 

The rubbish on this website flows on and on. Richard Quest (CNN) is an able representative of such rubbish. A foolish man.

As an experienced A330 pilot, I can inform those PPrune posters and TV/radio commentators who have no experience-based knowledge, your stupid postings/TV commentaries are evident and obviously ignorant to aviation professionals and sadly they appear plausible to people who have little understanding. (BBC/Sky News included)

The idiots abound. Thank God for professionals, including the AF pilots who doubtless did their best. When your time is truly up, that is it. My thought is that the situation was beyond resolution. This happens, albeit rarely, in life. And aviation.

The chances of a sucessfule ditching are none!

It´s a big aircraft and it would brake up on a normal day, this was during night. The pilots couldn´t see the water coming, the current constantly changes and there was waves. So no I don´t think the ditching went god if there was one.

Even if there was a ditching and survivors, I don´t think they are still alive by now.

Do not forget that you, British, are in charge of wings and everything attached to the wings on these aircrafts!

P.S. I'm not anti-British and I have many friends in U.K. but I must say that you mostly suck when it's time for business, although you may show friendly at the pub!

:yuk:

Let me take a wild guess. You don't actually fly airplanes for a living, do you, but rather teach Conspiracy Theory 101 at your local internet message board. :ugh:

i have been flying next to CB s and sometimes in the less severe part of it not because i wanted to but because i had no choice and i can tell that it is by far the most dangerous thing in aviation considering that i am flying in war zones. having said that , my gut feeling is a catastophic failure of some sort since no mayday call was sent. only time will tell.

carolos

I can't help but feel this lightning thing is a red herring. I mean, there have been ~600 A330's built since 1994, if all of those flew 12 hrs a day, that's more than 2.6m hours a year. Never mind all the other very similar Airbus aircraft flying around with similar composite parts. Never mind all the Boeing aircraft. It seems to be so unlikely as to render it almost impossible that a single strike could take down a transport category aircraft that it and it's counterparts have doubtless been struck thousands of times before with little to no effect.

Seriously, transport category aircraft get struck by lightning all the time, I bet there aren't many jet drivers out there that haven't been. Hell, I bet there aren't many frequent flying pax out there that haven't experienced it. It's not like the A330 is short or metal parts to strike either.

How many other Airbus aircraft have ever had difficulties following a lightning strike? How many have had problems with turbulence? Both are generally non-events.

I think we need to take a step back and wait for more information.

We are talking about a modern, well equipped aircraft, with a well trained, experienced crew. Clearly something is missing, I hope we get to find out what it is.

Just saw some kind of "press conference" on CNN, in french but "dubbed" in english stating "several warning messages coming from the aparatus [sic]".

Any french person around that can provide us with some *proper* translation of the press conference contents ? Guess something was "lost in translation" ...

./J

I'm not even a frequent flyer but I was on a plane struck by lightning a couple of years ago. Just happened to be looking out of the window during approach to MSP when it hit the wing on my side. None of the passengers talked about it until we were on the ground though.

It doesn't have to be metal to get hit. Lightning hits lots of non-metalic things like trees. It's a matter of electrical potential. Electrical charges will flow (They're called lightning) from a region of high potential to low potential, regardless of the material. With enough potential difference to overcome the resistance of the medium in the middle, charges will flow.

There is a first time for everything. Think about BA038.

Transmissions
 

Some people seem to have made the error of stating (or assuming) that the pilots didn't make any transmissions after reporting INTOL (one post in particular seems to have been since removed?). The correct statement is that transmissions (apparently) weren't received.

If the first statement is true, the assumption might be rapid catastrophic airframe failure or that the pilots were far too busy until an airframe failure occurred.

If the second statement is true, a far larger number of possibilities open up. In an area with no radar coverage and unreliable radio contact compounded by huge electrical activity, the aircrew may well have been transmitting and not being picked up. Perhaps even in a controlled descent.

An extremely unfortunate note is that (if the Norwegian news story is true) PAX have superior communications technology available to them via satellite uplink and the most reliable company communication is a similarly uplinked automated fault annunciator useful to company mechanics and operations managers but woefully inadequate to address infinitely more pressing matters.

I couldn't imagine anything worse then loosing your weather radar over the middle of the atlantic, at night, when there are CBs in the vicinity.

@Smilin_Ed

Granted, but flow of charge tends to take the path of least resistance, so preferentially "avoids" composite parts without conductors when placed along side a metal part.

Translation of DenisG post (#325)
 

Aeronautica keeps up the search for the lost flight during the night
marcio falcao of folha online, Brasilia
The search actions of the Brasilian Air Force (FAB) for the AF plane missing since Sunday night will not be interrupted during Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
The Hercules C-130 will perform a night search using electronic equipment in an attempt to capture signals from the emergency devices of the Airbus 330 of flight AF447

The aircraft disappeared on the route from Rio, from where it took off to Paris at around 19hours on Sunday, with 228 persons on boar -, 216 passengers and 12 crew. According to AF, there were 58 Brasilian passengers on board.

During today, Bandeirantes aircraft flew over a region of the atlantic ocean, in which contact with the airbus was lost, reaching the limits between Brasilian and Senegalese airspace. the Bandeirantes performed low level flights in an attempt to get visual contact with the Airbus.

French govenrment communicated to FAB command that two aircraft performed searche sweeps on the Senegalese side.

In total, Brasilian air force put 5 aircraft into the search operation, 2 helicopters, and 3 navy aircraft.

FAB initiated search actions at around 02h to localize the lost aircraft, after receiving notice from air space control at Ilha do Sal.

The search aircraft are based on Fernande de Noronha island (PE state) and in Natal. Coordination is done via Cindacta 3 in Recife.

Following FAB information, the last contact with the lost aircraft with a Brasilian control occurred at about 22:30. After that, a contact was foreseen for 23:20, with TASIL, controlling a region about 22 km to North of Natal, which never occurred.

Brasilian air space command realised some contacts with Dakar control, to obtain flight condition information. According to Aeronautica, in the region where the loss occurred, there is no radar coverage, and communication is done via long distance radio links.
FAB attempts to establish the approximate distance between Recife and the area where the aircraft was lost.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The online article has several links, which I do not translate unless requested.
My thoughts go to all families.

Aditional input
 

Ok,
First of all, may their souls rest in peace.
Secondly, today in Portuguese TV ( im portuguese), there were some TAP pilots that refered that Yesterday ( day before de acident) they crossed the same area ( Portugal to Brasil and vice versa) and they mentioned that they barely could transmit their message in HF to brasil traffic controlers. this was confimed with other aircrafts because they all could speak with each other but not the ATC control. Static/poor radio propragation/whatever. Plus they said that the weather was not bad, only some light turbulence. But you know that weather changes quickly in that area.

Nowadays there is the technology that allow an aircraft to relay a normal mobile phone. The Phone is on permanent roaming while aboard the aircraft. http://www.onair.aero/admin/fil/02_A...nAir_voice.pdfSiemens and Airbus develop joint aircraft GSM solution
so, smsing is possible if aircraft was fitted with that equipment.

now,
Look into what happened in recente past:
Hudson, dual engine failure=> still pilots able to comunicate.
TWA 800, catastrophic colapse of airframe (after center tank explosion)=> no comunication at all.
MD11 from swiss: Was able to comunicate failures ( electrical short/overcharge of system) before crashing.

But again, we dont know if brasil was able to listen any coms.

One thing is for sure: AF pilots are very good and obviously they would be very proeficient in aplying the emergency measures, if they had the chance. So, what ever happened it was fast.

My final opinion, AF saying that it was a ligthning strike, it is a prematurly one, looks like a "not in my backyard" message from AF. like if it was Act of God. Maybe it was, maybe it wasnt. Nobody knows for sure. A huge amount of things could have happened. But flown several time in A330, i still consider onde of the best aircrafts in the world.

Best Regards,

JB

PS: Just a thought: doesnt the Karnivore system from CIA scans for these frequencies?

italianjon

Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: London, UK
Posts: 111


There is lots of discussions about weather maps a speculation about the conditions in the vicinity of the last known postion, although does anyone know if there were any other aircraft following the same or parallel routes that experienced turbulence, CBs or other.

If this was the second AF flight from Rio to CDG, what routing did the first flight take and what en-route weather was experienced?

I am not speculating (famous last words before I get flamed http://static.pprune.org/images/smilies/wink2.gif ) I just feel that putting a map up and saying "ooo looks bad" and getting a confirmed report from another aircraft in the same bit of sky are two completely different things in understanding what weather the aircraft experienced.
*******************************************************

The weather you experience can be completely different for the flight 5 minutes in front of, or behind, you. Same goes for 5 miles either side, or even 1000' - 2000' above or below you.

We don't even know, at this point, if the aircraft was exactly on the airway or had deviated slightly for any weather.

I had some reports from pilots that flew around that time the area and said that the area had a lot of CBs. The comms were difficult (but that's nothing new). One of them even gave some back-up frequencies to an AF, but not sure if it was AF447. Anyway, there wasn't any distress call heard by them be it 123.45 or 121.5

Our condolences for the friends and families of the victims.

Check Six , Krueger...:(

Strongresolve

Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Valencia
Age: 34
Posts: 37


This is fact:

The planes was close to an area of intense CB and TS activity.

*******************************************************


Actually the link provided in this thread had an area of OCL EMBD TSTMS. We get terminology or verbiarge creep and the theories start developing. Intense wasn't on the weather charts.

Looked at the link provided with the weather forecast for the route of flight with 2 other wide body pilots. 55,000 hrs combined experience, including that portion of the world, and to us the predicted weather was normal for the ITCZ.

misd-agin,

What you hear is the usual internet 'knowledge of everything, 'understanding of nothing'.

I heard Greg Feith on CNN today. At least there are some voices of reason out there.

Nothing is known, everything is known, seems to be the current motto.

http://static.pprune.org/images/statusicon/post_old.gif Today, 18:01 #308 (permalink) Airbubba

Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Rockytop, Tennessee, USA
Posts: 1,940


If they were on top, the moon was up last night while AF 477 was in flight.

I hit the ITCZ mostly in Asia. There are cells that tower in the moonlight but are all but invisible on radar. You can be cruising along fat dumb and happy and suddenly find your self in a cell. I try to stay high but keep a good stall buffet margin in case the bumps start.

*******************************************************


What sort of radar management settings are you talking about when you say the cells "are all but invisible on radar"?

At the recommended settings many cells are "all but invisible on radar". For that reason alone most guys don't use the recommended settings and instead set the radar at it's most sensitive settings and work backwards, towards less sensitive settings, from there.

PUG :D

Yes please... I believe a lot of information was already provided in French but these :mad: from CNN and the beep keep on translating with voice over and the translation is done by people with no aeronautical vocabulary at all.

I'm pretty sure that I heard earlier today on CNN the CEO of AF saying (among others) that they believed that both engines may have quit... but couldn't get this sorted out properly. Unfortunately AF PR stuff does a not so good job in not getting the speeches up on their webpage and have at least an English version available...

So, is there anybody from France who could give a bit more precise info please to what was said and not what the media makes off it?

And please dear Mr. Turner pull the plug on Richard "Blubbla" Quest!!!

Appreciated!