Air velocity correlation to aircraft location
 

When real time streaming of position and aircraft parameters becomes the norm over black box recording, there might be enough collective data to derive wind velocity maps. i.e. comparing GPS with working pitot static data in the majority of working planes travelling known routes. Apart from general meteo' data gathering uses, might that be useful for an aircraft with trouble to at least have a stab at estimating local wind from GPS as secondary / backup - or could there be a use for comparing the two sirspeed data sets if pitot dynamic (and possibly static) information is lost ?

All good stuff but the 787 already has 'alternative' input airspeed based on corrected AOA input.


Seems like the answer, you're not going to block an AOA vane.

Yes, you can. In fact there a whole bunch of ADs out thee regarding exactly that (at least one of the airbus ADs has an active thread I think)

What you do gain is having a (slightly) different means of sensing airspeed, but both are ultimately sensors, in the airflow, somewhere on the nose. That means the are still common cause failures that need to be addressed. The goal is to design those to be sufficiently improbable that a procedural solution is acceptable . i.e. pitch/power tables.

Isn't there a role for the INS here, admittedly not for sensing AoA ? OK won't help avoid a stall but the initial developing downwards motion must be sensed by the INS and integrated up to give the speed? Could be that today's clever data fusion technology mean that currently the output is potentially contaminated by bad ADR data but the inertial calculations over a short period would be good wouldn't they?

Must have missed that MadScientist.


Do you know of an incident where both AOA vanes stopped working ?

XL Airways A320, 2 of 3 AOA sensors froze.