Hot: Air France Jet Missing (AF 447)

Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

wow MSN says that we may never know what happened. They could be at the bottom of the ocean already. Scary.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

AirAlgerie said:
this is the planes registration number A330 F-GZCP
what caught my attention in this quote is that the AF pilot asked another portuguese pilot (probably same AC) if it was normal to be short of Fuel in the middle of the flight .
the lightning strike theory came after the plane emmited electrical problems messages at 0414 Z
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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.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

And the 'pingers' are rather close range signals that really only work once the debris field is found.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

SeanD said:
They did send something. This is from MSNBC. RIP to all aboard. What a terrible accident.


Signal indicated electrical problems
About a half-hour after that, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said.
The plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence" at 10 p.m. EDT Sunday and an automatic message was received fourteen minutes later reporting electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure.
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That sounds like some sort of automatic mx fault messaging through ACARS
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

How exactly does a system report an electrical failure? What does it run off of to make that report?
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Murdoughnut said:
How exactly does a system report an electrical failure? What does it run off of to make that report?
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Maintenance computer sends an ACARS message. Probably Doug T would know this better, but some airlines use HF and a few have satcom. Being Air France and a new 330-200 I would guess satcom. HF can be cantankerous especially around lightning.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

There was a October 2008 Qantas A330 upset during cruise. I SPECULATE that conditions at the loss of contact with the AF flight were similar to this incident (near-cruise conditions), but not that a similar thing happened here. The A330 doesn't have a terrible history to point to.

The aircraft was flying at FL 370 or 37, 000 feet with Autopilot and Auto-thrust system engaged, when an Inertial Reference System fault occurred within the Number-1 Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU 1), which resulted in the Autopilot automatically disconnecting.
...
The faulty Air Data Inertial Reference Unit continued to feed erroneous and spike values for various aircraft parameters to the aircrafts Flight Control Primary Computers which led to several consequences including:
  • false stall and overspeed warnings
  • loss of attitude information on the Captain's Primary Flight Display
  • several Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitoring system warnings.
About 2 minutes after the initial fault, ADIRU 1 generated very high, random and incorrect values for the aircrafts angle of attack.

These very high, random and incorrect values of the angle attack led to:
  • the flight control computers commanding a nose-down aircraft movement, which resulted in the aircraft pitching down to a maximum of about 8.5 degrees,
  • the triggering of a Flight Control Primary Computer pitch fault.
The crew's timely response led to the recovery of the aircraft trajectory within seconds. During the recovery the maximum altitude loss was 650 ft.

The Digital Flight Data Recorder data show that ADIRU 1 continued to generate random spikes and a second nose-down aircraft movement was encountered later on, but with less significant values in terms of aircraft's trajectory.

At this stage of the investigation, the analysis of available data indicates that the ADIRU 1 abnormal behaviour is likely as the origin of the event.

The aircraft contains very sophisticated and highly reliable systems. As far as we can understand, this appears to be a unique event and Airbus has advised that it is not aware of any similar event over the many years of operation of the Airbus.
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Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

HF is useless in lightning.

Whether or not you have SATCOM doesn't have much to do with the age of the airplane and more to do with the boneheads that ordered it. None of the 767-400's came with SATCOM and then they were retrofitted with it at a much later date.

A lot of transport category aircraft send telemetry data, engine trend information and fault data automatically ever so often.

Also, "disappearing on radar" is normal for trans-Atlantic crossings. Large parts of South America has no radar and they rely on position reports for traffic management. I'll tell you a story about Piarco one day.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

cencal83406 said:
Whenever it says embedded - that's a red flag.... you won't be able to see the T-Storm you're flying into (even at night).... and your radar return of such a storm may be lying to you since there is potentially a lot of rain in the return in front of it.
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I dunno I've never really had any issues picking my way thru storms even if they are embedded at night, as long as the tilt is adjusted accordingly. Air France has an issue with flying thru t-sorms it seems, remember the Toronto A340 accident? They landed in a microburst or something.

I have to wonder if there was a solid line of storms (not occasional like the forecast said) and they had to penetrate somewhere, I doubt they carry enough fuel to substantially alter their route.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

I haven't looked at the lat/long of the last position report, but oftentimes we have to deal with the ICTZ, which is the "Intertropical Convergence Zone" where there are massive lines of thunderstorms.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

The more I think about it. That had to have been one hell of a storm to bring down an A330 from cruise. :(
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Doug Taylor said:
HF is useless in lightning.

Whether or not you have SATCOM doesn't have much to do with the age of the airplane and more to do with the boneheads that ordered it. None of the 767-400's came with SATCOM and then they were retrofitted with it at a much later date.

A lot of transport category aircraft send telemetry data, engine trend information and fault data automatically ever so often.

Also, "disappearing on radar" is normal for trans-Atlantic crossings. Large parts of South America has no radar and they rely on position reports for traffic management. I'll tell you a story about Piarco one day.
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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?
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Generally, either the CPDLC or the FMC does automatic position reporting at 10 degree increments or required reporting points.

Here's a South Atlantic chart which shows the Sal Island OCA:
South-Atlantic.jpg

Or they may have been a little further north where most of the traffic usually is (depending, of course, what time it was flying):

Here's a North Atlantic chart, but if you notice, none of the OCA's involve Sal Island:
North-Atlantic.jpg

The news will probably report that "they lost the jet on RADAR" but you're generally off radar pretty soon after you "coast out".
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

granlistillo said:
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.
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Yup, we still primarily use HF to check in when entering changing OCA's or when you get SELCAL'ed to speak -- even if you have SATCOM onboard. Remember, companies are cheap and they're more concerned about "OMG, do you know how expensive it is to use SATCOM? Try HF a few zillion times first". In emergencies, I don't know anyone that wouldn't go to SATCOM first.

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?
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I think positions are plotted using voice and FMC/CPDLC data. Position reports are generally +/- 3 minutes over particular points so it's fairly reliable without RADAR.

Whenever anything happens higher up in the N. Atlantic, there's generally a bunch of airplanes monitoring 121.5 or chatting away on 123.45 where if your flight has problems, you can at least talk to another pilot. Assuming they were approaching Sal, they might have been one of very few airplanes down there... which is creepy.
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

wheelsup said:
I dunno I've never really had any issues picking my way thru storms even if they are embedded at night, as long as the tilt is adjusted accordingly. Air France has an issue with flying thru t-sorms it seems, remember the Toronto A340 accident? They landed in a microburst or something.

I have to wonder if there was a solid line of storms (not occasional like the forecast said) and they had to penetrate somewhere, I doubt they carry enough fuel to substantially alter their route.
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Yea, I agree with the first part. Flying around embedded T'storms is a normal night for us. On another note, maybe their electrical problem caused their wx radar to fail at a really bad time (Murphy's law). That, combined with a lack of ATC radar/wx coverage in that area could put you "up the creek" real fast if you were IMC and dodging T'cells.

Thoughts and prayers for the families involved....:(
 
Re: Hot: Air France Jet Missing

Doug Taylor said:
Yup, we still primarily use HF to check in when entering changing OCA's or when you get SELCAL'ed to speak -- even if you have SATCOM onboard. Remember, companies are cheap and they're more concerned about "OMG, do you know how expensive it is to use SATCOM? Try HF a few zillion times first". In emergencies, I don't know anyone that wouldn't go to SATCOM first.



I think positions are plotted using voice and FMC/CPDLC data. Position reports are generally +/- 3 minutes over particular points so it's fairly reliable without RADAR.

Whenever anything happens higher up in the N. Atlantic, there's generally a bunch of airplanes monitoring 121.5 or chatting away on 123.45 where if your flight has problems, you can at least talk to another pilot. Assuming they were approaching Sal, they might have been one of very few airplanes down there... which is creepy.
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(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.
 
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