Hot: Air France Jet Missing (AF 447)
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Minuteman
I HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT AUTOMOTIVE LIGHTING!
It depends on your airspeed. If you're slow enough and the vertical wind is moving fast enough, I would guess the wing will stall.
Assuming a 0.82 cruise at FL350, that's 472 KTAS. 100 mph is 87 KTAS.
atan( 87 / 472) = up to a 10° change in the AOA during the encounter (disclaimer: I may be a monkey and hopefully tgrayson will correct me)
If it was gradual, the AOA and speed can be managed. If not, that's a lot of lift all of the sudden.
seagull
Well-Known Member
I don't have time to crank the numbers, but bear in mind that the force of a gust at FL350 is quite a bit less than the same gust at low altitude due to the reduced q-factor. So significant, in fact, that turbulence at altitude is not a factor in terms of forces, although the AoA can still be exceeded leading to a LOC, the latter of which can lead to actual high forces. Still, with the AI envelope protection, it seems an unlikely scenario to me.
Also, keep in mind that the updraft of a storm is a VERY narrow band, that is quite transient at jet cruise speeds. Might get a momentary stick shaker, but that would most likely be the extent of it.
Minuteman
I HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT AUTOMOTIVE LIGHTING!
At first I did sit down and figure out the numbers, and then realized I was a monkey for going at it like that.
A 100 mph wind at FL350 would have a dynamic pressure of about 7.8 psf (about 48 KCAS). That's compared to an estimated wing loading of 108 psf (resulting in only about a 7% increase in the load factor due purely to the vertical wind component).
Interesting article by a former military aviation weather specialist on what he speculates happened to AF447. Pretty technical, but he concludes severe updrafts (~102mph) associated with thunderstorms probably were a contributing factor.
http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/
http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/
seagull
Well-Known Member
An AF meteorologist may be good at forecasting weather, but may not have any true understanding of how that weather actually affects an aircraft.
future pilot
Well-Known Member
could they have hit a microburst?
pullup
Homewrecker
seagull
Well-Known Member
No, look up what a microburst is (not trying to talk down, but you need to know anyway!). They don't happen at altitude and the only thing dangerous about them at low altitude is not having enough altitude and energy to get through them.
Has anyone seen evidence where this jet was flying straight through the heart of a towering thunderhead? It's not enough to have storms in the area. The updrafts are found in the core of the storm. The only way a severe updraft is in play here is if the plane flew straight into the center of a bad thunderstorm.
Midair break-up seems quite likely here given what we know about the debris field and numerous system failures on the plane.
Question is how does a young jet with an experienced crew become so aerodynamically compromised that it breaks up in midair??
Can't think of a crash where answers from the FDR and CVR were more desperately needed than with this one.
Hope somehow they can be recovered.
Midair break-up seems quite likely here given what we know about the debris field and numerous system failures on the plane.
Question is how does a young jet with an experienced crew become so aerodynamically compromised that it breaks up in midair??
Can't think of a crash where answers from the FDR and CVR were more desperately needed than with this one.
Hope somehow they can be recovered.
FlyChicaga
Vintage Restoration
The pilots of American flight 587 did not think the tail would depart the aircraft through their control movements. I'm not saying overcontrolling is a cause here (never know), but sometimes things occur that nobody would have expected.
I'm actually not to upset about the speculation in this thread, because it's prompting so many quality learning discussions. That's awesome!
I'm actually not to upset about the speculation in this thread, because it's prompting so many quality learning discussions. That's awesome!
SpiceWeasel
Tre Kronor
Not always true.... remember American 581 over Queens NY? They were well within maneuvering speed (yes, not exact; but same concept), but managed to shake the tail off by successive full left- and right-deflections of rudder.
Minuteman
I HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT AUTOMOTIVE LIGHTING!
Wow! It's a French-made jet, operated by a French airline, and it doesn't have the boxes made by the French company that practically invented the flight recorder. That's not a good or bad thing, just surprising.
FlyChicaga
Vintage Restoration
Interesting articles (from an e-mail safety update, hence no links):
Honeywell Recorders Probably Pinging as French Search for Jet
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Honeywell International Inc.’s so- called black box recorders on Air France Flight 447 are probably signaling investigators from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The trick is figuring out where to listen.
The data and voice recorders on the jet that crashed off eastern Brazil on June 1 with 228 people aboard have a water- activated “pinger” that runs for 30 days. Honeywell certifies that the boxes will remain intact as deep as 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers), about twice the depth of where French officials estimate the wreckage to be located.
“We expect the box to be pinging,” said Bill Reavis, a spokesman for Honeywell Aerospace Inc. in Phoenix. “The box is configured to withstand a high impact.”
Investigators are concerned they may not find the signal because the ocean is “not only deep but mountainous” in that area, Paul Louis Arslanian, head of the French Aviation Accidents Investigation Bureau, told reporters yesterday in Paris. The inquiry “is difficult, but not the most difficult we’ve ever had,” he said.
Searchers will probably use underwater microphones to help track the signal, among the processes that often prove successful in locating debris, said John Nance, who runs a Seattle aviation consulting firm under his name. The recorders are likely to be found as well, he said.
“Those things are almost indestructible and they almost always find them,” said Nance, a retired Air Force and commercial airline pilot with 40 years of flying. “If they can narrow down the search field and bring in the right equipment to hear it, I think they’ve got a good chance of finding them.”
Underwater Mountains
The strength of the audible pinging signal may be affected by colder water near the ocean floor. If ocean temperatures are constant, a pinger 2.8 miles below can be heard from the surface, said Reavis, who wouldn’t speculate on whether the boxes will be found. In this case, with varying water temperatures, searches with underwater microphones may be necessary, he said.
Investigators will have to contend with “constant” severe thunderstorms at this time of year, with wind gusts to 50 miles per hour that whip up high waves, as well as underwater mountain ranges, said Henry Margusity, a meterologist at State College, Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather.com. “It’s a hilly area on the ocean floor, with some trenches that go deeper and some shallow areas” that are only a mile deep, Margusity said.
The Atlantic is about 2 miles deep in the search area, according to AccuWeather.com, which gathers data on weather and topography. Searchers are focusing on an area about 400 miles north of the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, off the coast of the country’s northeastern tip.
Mini-Submarine
France is sending a mini-submarine to the site that can dive 3.7 miles to recover data recorders once the wreckage is found, Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said yesterday.
Searchers will combine calculations of currents with scanning the ocean floor, said Richard Healing, former National Transportation Safety Board member and now a senior partner with R Cubed Consulting LLC in Alexandria, Virginia.
“They are going to be able to use drift patterns and currents and winds on the surface” to find the wreckage, Healing said. “They should be able to go back and create what they believe would be a good starting point to look for debris. They can do bottom mapping, using sophisticated sonar.”
Earlier Crashes
The NTSB has located “all the recorders from airliners that crashed into the sea in the last decade or so,” said Ted Lopatkiewicz, a spokesman. At least one recorder was retrieved from about 16,000 feet below the Indian Ocean after a South African Airways Boeing Co. 747 crash in 1987, he said.
The recorders are designed to withstand 3,400 times the force of gravity on impact, Reavis said. Honeywell, based in Morris Township, New Jersey, is not actively involved in the search at this point, he said.
The black boxes are actually painted vivid orange to stand out from other equipment housed in black or gray casing. They are bolted to the frame of the aircraft near the tail and data have been recovered even when the inside is wet.
The recorders for the deadly February crash near Buffalo, New York, of a flight operated by Pinnacle Airlines Corp.’s Colgan unit were retrieved.
Seeking ‘Pinger’
A U.S. Navy ship found the flight data recorder of an Indonesian jet that crashed off the coast of South Sulawesi in January 2007, 24 days after the accident. The wreckage was on the ocean floor in 6,000 feet of water and the boxes were recovered “because the pinger was doing its job,” Reavis said.
The data boxes were retrieved in the ocean-floor wreckage of TWA Flight 800 that crashed in 1996 off the coast of East Moriches, New York, after a fuel-tank explosion, and the quality of the recording was “good” even though the magnetic tape used at the time was wet, according to the NTSB report on the incident.
The recorders from Swissair Flight 111 that crashed in 1998 near Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, after an in-flight fire were also found, though a power failure stopped the recordings about 5 minutes before the plane went down, according to the Canadian Transportation Safety Board report.
The black boxes of the jets that crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were never found.
The recorders’ capabilities are “vastly better” than 20 years ago when they included magnetic tape-recording devices with moving parts, said Bill Waldock, a crash investigation professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.
“If they’re able to get a lock on the pinger in the next couple weeks, chances are pretty good they’ll find them,” he said.
France orders deep-sea vessel to A330 search area
France's ministry of transport has dispatched a research ship to the South Atlantic with equipment capable of searching ocean depths up to 6,000m (19,700ft) in a bid to recover any wreckage from the missing Air France Airbus A330-200.
Brazil's air force has located debris, including an aircraft seat and oil traces, around 700km north of the Fernando de Noronha islands, which increasingly points to the destruction of flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
A statement from France's transport ministry says a research and exploration ship has been ordered to the area with immediate effect in order to set up a local command centre in the framework of the continuing search.
"This ship carries...heavy equipment capable of going to 6,000m depth and able to explore more than 97% of the ocean bed area, specifically in the search area," says the ministry.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
Honeywell Recorders Probably Pinging as French Search for Jet
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Honeywell International Inc.’s so- called black box recorders on Air France Flight 447 are probably signaling investigators from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The trick is figuring out where to listen.
The data and voice recorders on the jet that crashed off eastern Brazil on June 1 with 228 people aboard have a water- activated “pinger” that runs for 30 days. Honeywell certifies that the boxes will remain intact as deep as 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers), about twice the depth of where French officials estimate the wreckage to be located.
“We expect the box to be pinging,” said Bill Reavis, a spokesman for Honeywell Aerospace Inc. in Phoenix. “The box is configured to withstand a high impact.”
Investigators are concerned they may not find the signal because the ocean is “not only deep but mountainous” in that area, Paul Louis Arslanian, head of the French Aviation Accidents Investigation Bureau, told reporters yesterday in Paris. The inquiry “is difficult, but not the most difficult we’ve ever had,” he said.
Searchers will probably use underwater microphones to help track the signal, among the processes that often prove successful in locating debris, said John Nance, who runs a Seattle aviation consulting firm under his name. The recorders are likely to be found as well, he said.
“Those things are almost indestructible and they almost always find them,” said Nance, a retired Air Force and commercial airline pilot with 40 years of flying. “If they can narrow down the search field and bring in the right equipment to hear it, I think they’ve got a good chance of finding them.”
Underwater Mountains
The strength of the audible pinging signal may be affected by colder water near the ocean floor. If ocean temperatures are constant, a pinger 2.8 miles below can be heard from the surface, said Reavis, who wouldn’t speculate on whether the boxes will be found. In this case, with varying water temperatures, searches with underwater microphones may be necessary, he said.
Investigators will have to contend with “constant” severe thunderstorms at this time of year, with wind gusts to 50 miles per hour that whip up high waves, as well as underwater mountain ranges, said Henry Margusity, a meterologist at State College, Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather.com. “It’s a hilly area on the ocean floor, with some trenches that go deeper and some shallow areas” that are only a mile deep, Margusity said.
The Atlantic is about 2 miles deep in the search area, according to AccuWeather.com, which gathers data on weather and topography. Searchers are focusing on an area about 400 miles north of the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, off the coast of the country’s northeastern tip.
Mini-Submarine
France is sending a mini-submarine to the site that can dive 3.7 miles to recover data recorders once the wreckage is found, Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said yesterday.
Searchers will combine calculations of currents with scanning the ocean floor, said Richard Healing, former National Transportation Safety Board member and now a senior partner with R Cubed Consulting LLC in Alexandria, Virginia.
“They are going to be able to use drift patterns and currents and winds on the surface” to find the wreckage, Healing said. “They should be able to go back and create what they believe would be a good starting point to look for debris. They can do bottom mapping, using sophisticated sonar.”
Earlier Crashes
The NTSB has located “all the recorders from airliners that crashed into the sea in the last decade or so,” said Ted Lopatkiewicz, a spokesman. At least one recorder was retrieved from about 16,000 feet below the Indian Ocean after a South African Airways Boeing Co. 747 crash in 1987, he said.
The recorders are designed to withstand 3,400 times the force of gravity on impact, Reavis said. Honeywell, based in Morris Township, New Jersey, is not actively involved in the search at this point, he said.
The black boxes are actually painted vivid orange to stand out from other equipment housed in black or gray casing. They are bolted to the frame of the aircraft near the tail and data have been recovered even when the inside is wet.
The recorders for the deadly February crash near Buffalo, New York, of a flight operated by Pinnacle Airlines Corp.’s Colgan unit were retrieved.
Seeking ‘Pinger’
A U.S. Navy ship found the flight data recorder of an Indonesian jet that crashed off the coast of South Sulawesi in January 2007, 24 days after the accident. The wreckage was on the ocean floor in 6,000 feet of water and the boxes were recovered “because the pinger was doing its job,” Reavis said.
The data boxes were retrieved in the ocean-floor wreckage of TWA Flight 800 that crashed in 1996 off the coast of East Moriches, New York, after a fuel-tank explosion, and the quality of the recording was “good” even though the magnetic tape used at the time was wet, according to the NTSB report on the incident.
The recorders from Swissair Flight 111 that crashed in 1998 near Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, after an in-flight fire were also found, though a power failure stopped the recordings about 5 minutes before the plane went down, according to the Canadian Transportation Safety Board report.
The black boxes of the jets that crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were never found.
The recorders’ capabilities are “vastly better” than 20 years ago when they included magnetic tape-recording devices with moving parts, said Bill Waldock, a crash investigation professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.
“If they’re able to get a lock on the pinger in the next couple weeks, chances are pretty good they’ll find them,” he said.
France orders deep-sea vessel to A330 search area
France's ministry of transport has dispatched a research ship to the South Atlantic with equipment capable of searching ocean depths up to 6,000m (19,700ft) in a bid to recover any wreckage from the missing Air France Airbus A330-200.
Brazil's air force has located debris, including an aircraft seat and oil traces, around 700km north of the Fernando de Noronha islands, which increasingly points to the destruction of flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
A statement from France's transport ministry says a research and exploration ship has been ordered to the area with immediate effect in order to set up a local command centre in the framework of the continuing search.
"This ship carries...heavy equipment capable of going to 6,000m depth and able to explore more than 97% of the ocean bed area, specifically in the search area," says the ministry.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news