Ryanair 'used Ethiopian crash jet in Dublin last year' - Local & National, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

The journalists are really clutching at straws here, but thankfully MOL puts them straight at the end of the article.

Any news about the CVR/FDR recovery ?

Did anyone say it was Mr O'Leary? :confused:

SoS

Threemiles:

BOD 1 then:


http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n...BA-SID-BOD.jpg

'I fly on the area quite often. I was also flying there last night. There is a NOTAM of UNIFIL exercises in the area between Cyprus and Lebanon in areas called BARBARA 1 and BARBARA 2 for the last few weeks. I believe there were exercises going on that night as well. You can find this NOTAM in the Nicosia FIR notams. How about a rocket flying loose tha night from all those ships that are in the area???? No surprise they were quick in attending the scene of the accident to help out. We've seen this scenario in the past.'

Just say something like this did happen. Would the pilot have any warning a rocket or missile of some kind was accidently heading for the aircraft? Could the unexplained turn actually have been an attempt to avoid it? The plane is consistently being reported as being on fire before impact and there are also suggestions it broke up in the air. The injuries to the victims recovered from the sea so far are horrific. Wouldn't some of this point to at least the possibility of an explosion?

Air Transport Intelligence reports:

That will get the inner ear fluid spinning!

http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n...-BODturn-1.jpg

I flew over northern Lebanon a few hours before the crash occured. There was a SIGMET issued for the Beirut FIR advising of CBs and although it was only valid until 1500Z we (and indeed the aircraft just ahead of us) needed to take avoiding action over the Lebanese coast in the vicinity of the CAK VOR. I haven't read all the threads on here so haven't seen if anyone has mentioned which runway was in use for departures at Beirut but I can say that if you were lined up on runway 21 to depart via CAK, you could have an awful lot of weather behind you that the radar obviously won't pick up until you've made the turn to the north.
Just found the SIGMET:
OLBA SIGMET N01 VALID 241100/241500 TS OBS AND FCST SW OF OLBA FIR TOP CB ABV FL240 MOV NE 14KT INTSF

In any case, it's a terrible tragedy to all involved.

I understand the message from Flight Global that a direct CAK was negotiated soon after departure. This would cross the final Northwest of BOD. Therefore the controller may have been concerned about separation from ILS 16 traffic. Though a take away on heading 270 is quite rude, I feel.

I believe your red circle brings it to the point.

More or less... but the plane came down much closer to the shore. The impact point (2 NM W Na'ameh) is on a line about 15 degrees to the right from the direction of rwy 21, i.e. the plane crossed its initial outbound track at some point. Flight path might resemble the "&" character :rolleyes:

Does not alter the conclusions anyway, I guess....

60 bodies found so far, according to this:

Walta Information Center - Ethiopia: 60 confirmed dead in Ethiopian Airlines crash

That could mean the hull broke up at some point, but no way to be certain, of course.

Aircrafts usually break at some point when they impact the sea at high speed...

Does his track not suggest he was turning back towards the field?

Aviate.....Navigate.....Communicate

The lack of a reported radio call suggests the crew was overwhelmed.

The red circle in a post above is interesting if only altitude loss was known.

Has any coments been said about altitude changes over time from radar returns?

Not literally, as far as I've seen, but...
From two different news posts in Flightglobal:
-------
Chamieh says that the jet climbed to 9,000ft before contact was lost.
"The aircraft was called several times but it did not respond," he says
-------
ET409 was instructed to turn left onto a heading of 270° but the crew apparently failed to comply. "Instead it turned left, further," says the source, adding that - as the heading wound down to 140° - controllers became alarmed that the aircraft was turning back towards land and high terrain.
Controllers tried ordering the aircraft to turn right, warning the crew of the mountainous area, but the source says that radar contact was lost with the jet shortly afterwards.
-------

One way to interpret the above is that the aircraft reached 9000 ft at the point when its was heading west, and everything still looked OK on the controller's screen. Then when it continued its left turn it would have descended - prompting the terrain warning from the controller.

There has been no mention of possible technical communication faults, so presumably the ATC radar data is good including altitude data, until contact was lost. But this is still speculation.

If the red drawing is correct, one would think that they were trying to turn back to the airport!!!

They probably realized something went terribly wrong and were trying to make the airport again...

Assuming they still had the ability to communicate you would have expected some attempt to inform ATC of their desire to do that and ask for a runway.

Even Sullenburger had time to do that in NYC and he was much lower and still very busy.

Whatever happened seems to have been both quick and unexpected.

SoS

Maybe they tried. We dont know what their comm system status was at the time, and we also haven't heard tapes yet.

I think that it's more logical to err towards the notion that two competent pilots sat at the controls and did a "pilot act" rather than the opposite notion that they had no idea what they were doing.

Air france never communicated anything either. El-Al in AMS communicated very little. Aloha Air back in the 80's tried to communicate but came out very broken.

When structural damage occurs, sometimes time is limiting and communication very unreliable.

BBC reporting recorders found.

BBC News - Ethiopian crash jet flight recorders found off Lebanon

wondering:

is there a cycle of testing for electrical continuity of the airframe to ensure that a bolt of ligtning can pass from one point to an exit point without creating a spark gap which might trigger a fume explosion?

Hornet

C & D checks cover electrical bonding and static dissipaters.

[QUOTE]How about a rocket flying loose tha night from all those ships that are in the area???? No surprise they were quick in attending the scene of the accident to help out. We've seen this scenario in the past.'

Just say something like this did happen. Would the pilot have any warning a rocket or missile of some kind was accidently heading for the aircraft? C/QUOTE]

An El Al pilot would, yes. But on Ethiopian Airlines, no.

Kenyan Airways- Cameroon - Lessons Not Learnt - Or Even Known.
 

As I understand things:

- Black Boxs went to Canada for analysis.

- Canadians cannot reveal what they reveal, under ICAO rules, because Cameroon has not given ‘permission’.

- This means that they may (I emphasise may - I have no idea), be information of great relevance to 737-800 pilots contained in those black boxes.

- We won’t know until Cameroon, the world's leading aviation power and authority on civil aviation - gives its ‘permission’ to the Canadians to reveal all. :ugh:

Good point
 

Bridge Builder raises a good point. Letting national authorities control the release of the flight data is not the ideal situation. The Tunisian ATR ditching is a good case in point. Prosecutors want to put a spin on the CVR tapes that many pilots felt was dead wrong. Having the tapes to listen to made a big difference in that case. Canada will not even allow the release of CVR transcripts, let alone the recordings themselves.
I know this is a hot button item but at some level I think ICAO should insist that the raw data be available to a wider audience.

20driver

I wonder if they have an obligation to share the info with the aircraft manufacturer for flight safety purposes only?

It's commonly done when something needs to be fixed. Of course in many cases it's the pilot training that needs to be addressed at the operator level.

Is there any sourced report of the voice or data recorders actually being retrieved form the bottom? I see such reports of their pinger signals being received, but not of the boxes being raised to the surface and sent to Canada, or anywhere else for analysis.

The search still continues. It seems the exact location was not yet pinpointed on Thursday evening.

Interesting article from Flight Global.

Pilot disorientation accidents have become a phenomenon

This accident is discussed in the article.

We spend such little time on basics of flight. Once you are flying for a big airline, we seem to forget the little things.

The transition from visual to instrument flight is tough...especially at night...especially over the sea.

I remember quite an article about losing engines in the mighty 757 and the high nose attitude in normal two engine climbing flight. The article had to remind pilots to lower the nose.

We must stay on instruments and be able to transition from visual to instruments as easily as canadian controllers switch between english and french.

We must practice such things, just like we must do physical exercise.

And remember, if you can't avoid thunderstorms, check out the AIM for good advice...including watching your instruments and turning on the cockpit lights to protect from lightning flash.

also, try to know a ''safe'' attitude and power setting...one that you can reliably go to when all else fails...most jets will survive a pitch of 10 degrees up and max power...level wings of course...at least below 20,000feet.

Flight Global is at it again.
 

Who is not going to fly the numbers particularly in scenarios such as most of these?

...save AF447, where apparently some of their more important numbers went missing, or worse, wobbly.

I have just flown to Addis Ababa on Ethiopian from Harare via Lusaka. The flight was delayed by 4 and a half hours. Conflicting reasons were given by Ethiopian and the pilots for the delay. There was however heavy CB activity in Harare though.

Despite the delay, the flight was exceptionally good and enjoyable.

There have been inordinate delays on Ethiopian this week - not totally unusual but somewhat extreme. I have not found anyone that has been given a valid reason yet. My wife returns tomnight after a 3+ hour delay for a midnight departure on her way out. Will be interested to see if she gets the same again.

Hey guys,
stop complaining about delays. After all they are one frame short.

And one crew :uhoh:


Poor guys, just like you and me.

Maybe someone sent them a "really wide ball" that evening, or maybe they just cocked it up, but they didn't go home, and all we know they did was go to work.

F----ng sad.

Voice & Data Box Recovery
 

This appears to be the most current status:
Lebanon’s Transportation and Public Works Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said on Saturday that advanced submarines were on-route to Lebanon to aid in search operations of the Ethiopian Airlines flight ET409 crash.
“We did not expect to discover that 10 kilometers from the Lebanese shore, there are depths that go beyond 1300 meters.” Aridi said
During Friday’s cabinet meeting it was revealed that the company that owns Ocean Alert ( which identified the location of the black boxes ) will send Odyssey Explorer, which has the capability a deep diving ROV that will help in recovering the plane’s boxes from the bottom of the sea .

Ocean Alert is currently in the Beirut area, but Odyssey Explorer is in the English Channel doing 8.5 knots. You can follow its path while in areas where its AIS signal is received at this web site: Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions. As of 31 Jan 2010 Odyssey Explorer is out of AIS contact with web site.

On 30 Jan 2010 the Odyssey Explorer was near Falmouth, UK, approximately 3,200 Nm from Beirut. Based on its speed of about eight knots, it will be mid February before it could arrive at the crash site.

My sister Dolly tells me that within Lebanese aviation circles the track publicly provided and discussed here is expanded with rather more dynamic data.

It is suggested that the maximum altitude of around 9000 feet was reached during or following the mysterious turn to the left. There was a very rapid climb to that altitude from around 6500ft associated with a remarkable decrease in ground speed - from more than 250 knots down to less than 150.

would IMC, loss of instruments tempo due to ??? lightening strike, and then spacial disorientation be an explanation?
Quite a bit of direction change, with ? no visual horizon following departure.
The last post talks of a rapid ascent at declining airspeed, 6550 to 9000-ft, with 250kt to 150kt.

a sudden increase in the rate of climb and a decrease in ground speed (one must also suppose a decrease in IAS)...could this be a sudden problem with the pitot/static system...

a massive stab trim runaway?

Today's Search Activity
 

Deep water exploration vessel Ocean Alert is searching the track displayed here today:
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?zoom=10&mmsi=667932000&centerx=35.38093&centery =33.74397

This is real time data so it will change as time goes on. As I am writing this Ocean Alert is running back and forth on a line parallel to the shore about three miles west of Damour at 4.5 knots. He is most likely towing sonar equipment.

that would be hard to miss and easy to stop.