Political (not related to the Elections) News and Updates

[CedarJet]

Originally Posted by Revolution1989

I'm afraid you're right... Apparently the new (lighter) materials used for airplane construction offer less protection against thunderstorms but you're the expert...

From Lemonde.fr

"La dernière zone de contact est très éloignée des côtes", a indiqué le directeur général d'Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon. L'appareil venait alors de dépasser les îles Fernando de Noronha, à 350 km de la côte brésilienne. Après avoir perdu la trace de l'avion, l'armée de l'air et la marine brésiliennes ont mis en place une mission de secours dans cette zone. Un avion militaire français a également quitté Dakar, au Sénégal, pour participer aux opérations de recherche. "Cette mission de secours va être très longue", a prévenu Douglas Ferreira Machado, membre de l'Agence civile aéronautique du Brésil, selon la télévision brésilienne O Globo. "La boîte noire risque d'être au fond de l'océan."

All airplanes of this calibur have a certian degree of stress that it's body can go through, we call it the G loading, before seperation occurs. They are tested for conditions that we usually don't operate in.

I had a look at the radar shot this morning when I heard about this, and it was not pretty. A line from South America to Africa of thunderstorms, some severe cells associated. What you get with thunderstorms is a high updrafts and downdrafts wich will cause the airplane to either climb or drop at high rates, up to 6,000 feet per minute and higher. This is severe turbulance and will lead to a high G Loading on the wings of the airplane, and may cause inflight seperation. Now the airplane flew through some turbulance and reported it to controllers, then the airplane's ACARS system, sent an automated message to Air France headquarters advising of a maintenance issue. This issue dealt with electricity onboard. Airplanes generate their own electricity, and have backups, either APU (auxilary power unit), or batteries. Now this could indicate that it got struck by lightning, which sometimes has minimal effect on the flight, and othertimes may cause significant issues to the airplane.

Having to ditch in the Atlantic ocean, blind (no electrical power), in the dark, and ditching in severe weather in the ocean is not a scenario that can have a high survivability rate.

I know I drew a dark and gloomy picture, and my hopes are for a miracle.

p.s. I don't want people thinking that turbulance = crash. Let's make it clear that every flight goes through bumpy weather, so don't be afraid of flying, and next time you fly and hit a bump, don't start screaming and yelling. Air is like water, when you're riding a boat in the water, you will hit waves. Similarly, when flying in the air, you will hit waves as well. So next time you're flying, think of it as riding a boat. It's all fluid.

[Souss]

Originally Posted by CedarJet

All airplanes of this calibur have a certian degree of stress that it's body can go through, we call it the G loading, before seperation occurs. They are tested for conditions that we usually don't operate in.

I had a look at the radar shot this morning when I heard about this, and it was not pretty. A line from South America to Africa of thunderstorms, some severe cells associated. What you get with thunderstorms is a high updrafts and downdrafts wich will cause the airplane to either climb or drop at high rates, up to 6,000 feet per minute and higher. This is severe turbulance and will lead to a high G Loading on the wings of the airplane, and may cause inflight seperation. Now the airplane flew through some turbulance and reported it to controllers, then the airplane's ACARS system, sent an automated message to Air France headquarters advising of a maintenance issue. This issue dealt with electricity onboard. Airplanes generate their own electricity, and have backups, either APU (auxilary power unit), or batteries. Now this could indicate that it got struck by lightning, which sometimes has minimal effect on the flight, and othertimes may cause significant issues to the airplane.

Having to ditch in the Atlantic ocean, blind (no electrical power), in the dark, and ditching in severe weather in the ocean is not a scenario that can have a high survivability rate.

I know I drew a dark and gloomy picture, and my hopes are for a miracle.

p.s. I don't want people thinking that turbulance = crash. Let's make it clear that every flight goes through bumpy weather, so don't be afraid of flying, and next time you fly and hit a bump, don't start screaming and yelling. Air is like water, when you're riding a boat in the water, you will hit waves. Similarly, when flying in the air, you will hit waves as well. So next time you're flying, think of it as riding a boat. It's all fluid.

With such severe weather expected, how come the flight wasn't diverted or cancelled?

[CedarJet]

Originally Posted by Souss

With such severe weather expected, how come the flight diverted or cancelled?

That's something that the crew have to answer.

When dealing with weather, you have ground radars and airborne radars. In that region, they wouldn't have had any support from the ground radars via Air traffic controllers, so they were probably on their own using the airplane's weather radars.

I really can't say why they didn't divert, perhaps the event had nothing to do with the severe weather that was ahead, so it's just speculating.

When you're plowing through the air, you look at your radar screen, you see if you can outclimb it, if you can go around it. If you're going around it, you have to use your judgement and decipher the information on the radar, and it's not the easiest thing to read, since the picture changes rapidly with it's moister content changing, and the airplane is moving at fast speeds and getting closer to it. So a what seemed like a whole 20 miles back, as you get closer might now be a solid wall.

[Danny Z]

Originally Posted by CedarJet

That's something that the crew have to answer.

Err answer to God you mean?

[BEAST]

Originally Posted by Danny Z

Err answer to God you mean?

Probably.....


"ايرفرانس" تعزّي عائلات وأقارب الّذين كانوا على متن احدى طائراتها

01 حزيران 2009

اصدرت شركة طيران "ايرفرانس" بيانا قدّمت فيه تعازيها الحارة لجميع عائلات وأقارب الأشخاص الّذين تواجدوا على الطائرة التي اختفت صباح اليوم خلال رحلتها من مطار شارل ديغول-باريس والريو ديجانيرو-البرازيل.

[CedarJet]

Originally Posted by Danny Z

Err answer to God you mean?

Unfortunatelly with these accidents, it's so difficult to figure out exactly what happened. The black box is probably at the bottom of the atlantic.

Most of these boxes transmit a signal once it comes in contact with water. Perhaps it can be recovered and shed some light as to what happened in order to avoid it from happening again.

[Danny Z]

Aren't airplanes supposed to be shielded by a farady cage type of shield and even if lightning hits it, there is no passage to earth so why would lightning affect it?

[Dark Angel]

Originally Posted by Danny Z

Aren't airplanes supposed to be shielded by a farady cage type of shield and even if lightning hits it, there is no passage to earth so why would lightning affect it?

the cage will protect from electromagnetic interference for a given range of frequencies, but if the plane was hit by a direct bolt of electricity, the discharge could cause some serious damage to the electronics on board mainly due to a current surge, the discharge will reek havoc onboard if the paratonnaire's design is flawed.

[Marianne]

Originally Posted by BEAST

Probably.....


"ايرفرانس" تعزّي عائلات وأقارب الّذين كانوا على متن احدى طائراتها

01 حزيران 2009

اصدرت شركة طيران "ايرفرانس" بيانا قدّمت فيه تعازيها الحارة لجميع عائلات وأقارب الأشخاص الّذين تواجدوا على الطائرة التي اختفت صباح اليوم خلال رحلتها من مطار شارل ديغول-باريس والريو ديجانيرو-البرازيل.

But why they already consider them as dead? The plane is still missing.
Do they know something?

[CitizenOfTheRepublic]

Originally Posted by Dark Angel

the cage will protect from electromagnetic interference for a given range of frequencies, but if the plane was hit by a direct bolt of electricity, the discharge could cause some serious damage to the electronics on board mainly due to a current surge, the discharge will reek havoc onboard if the paratonnaire's design is flawed.

There might be a design mistake pertaining to a very rare and overlooked case.
I believe it is more likely that it would be a malfunction resulting from a mistake in maintenance.
But at this stage, with no black box, it would be very hard to figure out what happened.