Hot: Air France Jet Missing (AF 447)

[derg]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

(Sorry for my naivete). Is there a point on transoceanic flights where you must continue to your destination should you encounter a problem? There's a guy in my crashpad who was explaining that to me, and I want to make sure I understand it.

Well, we have mid-ocean diversionary airports depending on what's wrong.

If you lose an engine, you'll exit the track system and haul ass for your diversionary airport. Like say "ETOPS 120" means that you're planned, at most, 120 minutes from a suitable diversionary airport.

There's a thing called a PNR/'Point of No Return' or the more politically correct ETP/'Equal Time Point' at which point you're better off continuing depending on fuel and wind.

When you're over the ocean, it's all about fuel, wind and suitable airports. For example, if you have a medical, you might want to fly to a more distant airport than your diversionary airport depending on the situation.

 

[GlenA]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

I don't know much about the airbus, but I do know that these planes are fly by wire. So had to ask any of you that do know, could an electrical failure lead to complete control surface failure?

 

[fender_jag]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

There's a thing called a PNR/'Point of No Return' or the more politically correct ETP/'Equal Time Point' at which point you're better off continuing depending on fuel and wind.

ETP - that's the phrase he used. Thanks for clearing it up, Doug.

 

[derg]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

ETP - that's the phrase he used. Thanks for clearing it up, Doug.

No problem. That's what I'm here for.

 

[Screaming_Emu]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

All speculation of course.

Dont....

 

[H46Bubba]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Yahoo news has a new article in which Air France has said that the automated message also stated that the aircraft lost cabin pressure.

 

[mjg407]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Back when I was a Nav, I remember trying to talk to Gander or Santa Maria during the diurnal period. No joy. That was mid 90s. I would have thought by now, all the ICAO comms would be done via satcom. I got talking to a mainline guy the other day about oceanic procedures, and he said they still use HF for voice! How archaic. Not to sure he was in long haul, I think he was 320 with some flights to latin america.

To me, the FIR controlers should be able to see position and vector information on each track, and be able to contact them via satcom. Is there even talk of doing this?

Lol, we use the same crap HF's in our Ferry kit delivering the Alphas to Brazil and Portugal. You are VHF from the US to Rio the whole way. Last trip we went popeye and used the "force" to pick our way around it.

 

[meritflyer]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

What is this chart called again?

Total brain cramp...

 

[derg]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

It's a "Prog Chart".

 

[SFCC/UND]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

not really, you got occasional embedded cumulonimbus tops are at 48,000 feet

 

[Polar742]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Well you are going to be "short" on fuel because your company is gonna "re-dispatch" you a few times in route to cut down on that 10% number that you carry extra on international flights.

Just to clarify on the re-dispatching:

You will have enough fuel to fly to your destination (at least we do).

the international reserve rules are more than just the 10%...

You need fuel to the destination + 10% of the enroute burn + fuel to the [most distant] alternate + 30 minutes of holding at 1500 feet.

A real world example:

Trip from LAX to ICN, the expected burn is 287000 lbs., so the 10% would be 28,700 lbs + 24,900 lbs to the alternate + 8500 lbs for 30 mins of holding at 1500' above the alternate airport. Giving a non-redispatch fuel of 349,100 lbs.

The flight is dispatched from the LAX to ANC [it's on the way....you just have to trust me] and a rerelease point of about 7+25 into a 11+51 flight.

So then the 10% extra is based on the burn from the re-release point to the destination, which is about 97515 lbs, giving a 10% fuel of 9751 lbs.

so you still have your trip fuel of 287000 lbs, your alternate fuel of 24,900 and the 8500 lbs, but a 10% fuel of 9751 lbs, for a dispatch fuel of 330,150 lbs., saving 19000 lbs of fuel.

So realistically, you only keep about 2/3s of the extra fuel, so only 12,000 lbs would be available as 1/3 of that would be burned due to the extra weight.

You lose about 45 minutes of theoretical fuel you never loaded. But, with out the redispatch, you'd have to make a fuel stop in ANC anyway. So if there are more winds than expected, you'll stop in ANC, otherwise you'll make it.

We are VERY conscious about fuel trends and are usually aware if we're going to make it or not.

So I don't see where a redispatch would have lead to "being short of fuel", unless the jet was misfueled, and the mistake should have been caught prior to coasting out, IMHO

However, this will be an interesting one to follow....

 

[granlistillo]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Lol, we use the same crap HF's in our Ferry kit delivering the Alphas to Brazil and Portugal. You are VHF from the US to Rio the whole way. Last trip we went popeye and used the "force" to pick our way around it.

Yikes! Scaredest I've ever been was in an airplane was in a Aries I derived from the B model airframe, 1963 vintage. We were support NATO ops over Bosnia, but the bombs had quit dropping and there were boots on the ground... We were not that needed. My JO buddy who was a hotdog decided to take the airplane into the slot with no operative wx radar nor the biglook radar, into forecasted embedded CBs. I ask him not to try it. Sure enough he found one. Lightning blew holes in both wing tips. Radome had a hole in it. Every wetted surface (wings, stabs, radome) suffered damage from hail. Cracked windshield, separated HF attenna, with the loose end banging on top of the empenage as it was nearly wrapping around the tail. In order to hold altitude he was loading it up about 3 g positive to 0 gs. NATOPS called for a descent down to 10K but he leveled it off at 12K cause we had the mountains of Greece at around 10k. Not that he could maintain altitude +- 500 ft. Oh btw, before the descent we were turning around in the goo, no radar contact along a busy commercial corridor.

I remember saying to myself: "Okay, if the wings come off, dont say expletive , dont say expletive" as I did not want that to be my last word before DOJ.

All because some hotdog couldn't follow longstanding written squadron policy about flying into forecasted embedded CBs without one of the two radars operating. He should have, got FENAB'd for that stunt. The skipper was an adolescent, who actually thought it was pretty cool he brought the plane back. uugggh.

 

[derg]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Air France jet crashes into Atlantic with 228 aboard
By Estelle Shirbon
28 mins ago

PARIS (Reuters) – An Air France plane with 228 people on board was presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Monday after hitting stormy weather during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The airline offered its condolences to the families of the passengers, making clear it did not expect any rescue.

"It's a tragic accident. The chances of finding survivors are tiny," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport after meeting passenger relatives.

The plane was packed with 216 passengers including seven children and one baby, Air France said. Most of them were French or Brazilian but they included around 20 Germans and several other nationalities. Twelve crew members were also on board.

The full Airbus jet flew into storms and heavy turbulence four hours after take-off from Rio and 15 minutes later sent an automatic message reporting electrical faults, the airline said.

There was no sign that the crew had sent a mayday message or any indication that signal-emitting emergency locators had activated on impact as is normally the case in crashes.

A company spokesman said several of the plane's mechanisms had malfunctioned.
"It is probably a combination of circumstances that could have led to the crash," he said, adding that the airliner might have been hit by lightning.

Aviation experts said lightning strikes on planes were common and could not alone explain a disaster.

Senior French minister Jean-Louis Borloo ruled out a hijacking, saying the plane would have landed somewhere, but said it was too early to exclude any other scenario.

The Brazilian air force said the plane was far out over the sea when it went missing.
If no survivors are found it will be the worst loss of life involving an Air France plane in the firm's 75-year history.

INTERNATIONAL SEARCH EFFORT
Military planes took off from the island of Fernando de Noronha off Brazil's northeast coast to look for it and the Brazilian navy sent three ships to help in the search.

France sent one of its air force planes from west Africa and several ships. Sarkozy said Spain was helping in the mission and Paris had asked the United States to assist in locating the crash site using U.S. satellite data.

"It seems the zone has been identified down to within 10 nautical miles," Borloo said on France 2 state television.

The plane left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 2200 GMT (6 p.m. EDT).

On its flight northeast from Rio, the aircraft would have had to pass through a notorious storm patch shifting around the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

"It is a zone in the tropics where you can have particularly deep thunder clouds," said Barry Gromett, a meteorologist at the London Weather Center.

Tearful relatives were led away by airport staff in Paris to a private area where psychologists were ready to assist them.

Executives from French tire company Michelin and from the Brazil unit of German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp were among the passengers, the companies said.

The plane was an Airbus 330-200 powered with General Electric engines. If the plane is confirmed to have crashed, it would be the first time an A330 has been lost during an operational airline flight.

Air France said the plane had 18,870 flight hours on the clock and went into service in April 2005. It last underwent maintenance in a hangar in April this year. The pilots were also very experienced, the airline said.

The last incident with major loss of life involving an Air France plane was in July 2000 when one of its Concorde supersonic airliners crashed just after taking off from Paris, bound for New York.

At least 113 people died in the disaster.

(Additional reporting by Clements Guillou, Jean-Baptiste Vey, Gerard Bon, Astrid Wendlandt and Tim Hepher in Paris, Pedro Fonseca in Rio; editing by Crispian Balmer and Richard Meares)

 

[JA Yawd Bwoy]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families! Man this has not been a good year for aviation at all regarding incidents...

 

[unclenobby]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

I don't know much about the airbus, but I do know that these planes are fly by wire. So had to ask any of you that do know, could an electrical failure lead to complete control surface failure?

A Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deploys to supply enough power for essential equipment. See Air Transat 236.

 

[Center_Mid]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Were the automatic messages regarding electrical malfunction and depressurization simultaneous or was there a time gap in between them? If simultaneous, doesn't that suggest a catastrophic event, such as a major component (one or both engines) separating from the rest of the airframe?

 

[H46Bubba]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Were the automatic messages regarding electrical malfunction and depressurization simultaneous or was there a time gap in between them? If simultaneous, doesn't that suggest a catastrophic event, such as a major component (one or both engines) separating from the rest of the airframe?

From what I've been getting from several articles, is that they were seperate messages, but AF is not divuldging when it received the last message that reported electrical failure and loss of cabin pressure.

 

[Polar742]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Were the automatic messages regarding electrical malfunction and depressurization simultaneous or was there a time gap in between them? If simultaneous, doesn't that suggest a catastrophic event, such as a major component (one or both engines) separating from the rest of the airframe?

Another consideration for the timing of messages: Just because they were sent at different times, does not mean they occurred at different times.

If the ACARS sent one, then lost connections, the second may have been in Queue awaiting for a connection to transmit the message. I'm not sure if the messages will have a time stamp from the maintenance computer when the malfunction was encountered.

However, if the aircraft was having problems communicating on HF, they were probably out of VHF range and the ACARS would be using either HF (which was not terribly reliable if you can't transmit voice over it) or SATCOM, either way, it was probably searching for a connection.

Then again, one might have happened and led to a downline cause of the other....

The more you look at it, the more questions arise, and I have a very high doubt that many, if any at all, will be answered.

 

[wheelsup]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Isn't it crazy that in the day and age of always on internet, GPS tracking embedded in mobile phones, etc. a 250 seat wide body aircraft gets swallowed up whole and can't be found?

Doesn't it broadcast an ELT even if under water? You'd think they'd find at least some debris on the surface.

 

[granlistillo]

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Isn't it crazy that in the day and age of always on internet, GPS tracking embedded in mobile phones, etc. a 250 seat wide body aircraft gets swallowed up whole and can't be found?

Doesn't it broadcast an ELT even if under water? You'd think they'd find at least some debris on the surface.

RF doesn't penetrate the water, and has huge attenuation after a couple of feet. Not gonna work at all on the bottom. The CVR FDR should have sonar pingers designed to ping for a month. They would be hard to hear from the surface any more than 4k meters. Hopefully there are subs going to the area, that can get under the thermocline to hear the signals better.