Crash of AF447

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Wednesday, June 3. 2009

An A330 of Air France crashed into the ocean. They already found the debris of the aeroplane. I find this crash really strange: The ACARS (think about it like SNMP traps of an aircraft send via radio) of the system did it´s swan song and send out several messages including electrical problems and an loss of pressure in the hull.

Some media outlets citing "experts" mentioning thunderstorms as a possible cause, but i´ve heard from friends and aviation forums that there were A330 hit by dozens of lightning strikes and were still flightworthy to proceed their way. Nevertheless it looks like an possibility. There is an interesting document vailable at weathergraphics.com . Furthermore there wasn´t any voice radio transmissions from the aircraft .... as the airways between Europe and South America are really frequented at that time of the day, you would expect that there would be at least some local-area emergency calls in the case the wide-range radios were out of order.

It looks like the water is 3000 meters deep at the crash site thus the insights into the possible crash cause may be buried in orange blackboxes beneath a large heap of water. At the moment there is just speculation. Just a large heap of speculations ....

Posted by Joerg Moellenkamp in Aviation, English at 12:31 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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Maybe they tried to reboot it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4WNgmvqgAU&feature=related

A co-worker said it happened to him and his wife, too, during a flight from Venezuela to Europe, two years ago.
Cabin lights were flashing almost immediately after take-off, cabin-crew didn't serve anything but got in position on the exits...
Pilot wanted to be brave and not return to Caracas, but changed mind over Martinique and landed there.
They "rebooted" the plane (sort of like pulling the plug) and everything started to work again.
Requests by passengers to leave the plane were not granted, of course.

Can't they make planes that fly with less software and computer-hardware instead of more?
They don't fit three and four wings to the planes either, in the hope that no more than two ever fail at the same time, right?
They fit two that actually work.

I don't think it's impossible to locate and lift to the surface those blackboxes - but it's a question of political will and capital expenditure.

#1 Rainer (Homepage) on 2009-06-03 20:22 (Reply)

I've just read this on SPON (http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,628313-2,00.html) where they argue that the craft's position is unknown to the flight coordinators. I thought we are living in a time where you can have Internet and phone via satellite while flying, why on Earth are they not broadcasting their GPS location every 30 seconds? Every commercial plane uses GPS and has so for years...

#2 Carsten Aulbert on 2009-06-04 08:19 (Reply)

At first: You don´t need GPS for the position in the aircraft. Inertal Navigation Systems are standard for years know. This was the reason why there aren´t navigators on the aircrafts anymore. Before the introduction of INS you used sextants for this tasks. Older aircrafts have windows for this above the main cockpit windows. You can see them at older 737 300 or 500 ... because their were build in for a long time after they got useless (it´s a part of the certified structure, so it isn´t easy to get rid of it). The INS is corrected by other means ... GPS for example. So GPS doesn´t have the meaning in commercial aviation than you may think. It´s a precision problem and what happens when GPS fails (tech probs or jamming).

Why aren´t they send more frequently? I assume because radio bandwidth is a precious resource, but i have to ask an expert on this. With a single aircraft a position message every 30 seconds may be possible. But just think about the density of aircrafts over the north atlantic ocean. You would easily get into an unswitched ethernet like problem. Any you would block the bandwidth of the transmission media for really important messages. Of course you could use satcom but that´s an expensive and precious resource, too. And for normal it suffice just to report the crossing of waypoints.

Believe it or not: Some of the solutions in aviation are really low tech (like the north atlantic track system) but they are proven and work with a extremly high realibility.

#3 Joerg+M. (Homepage) on 2009-06-04 08:57 (Reply)

I'm just an amateur ... but ..

Why not one just simple GPS box for the crew ... like those very simple less than U$ 100 that could tell the guys if they were going up/down and what speed ...

As far as I read INS is not precise and needs external help !!??

I don't mean use of GPS just to nform the aircraft position but have it available to crew even not to be used as regular equipment but as emergency equipment ... OK ... U$ 100 fot each airplane !!!

As you said "some solutions are really low tech" Agree ...

In this case one GPS device would SAVE hundred of lives ....

Why NOT?

Thanks for the opportunity

#3.1 Roberto Rodrigues (Homepage) on 2011-05-31 14:59 (Reply)

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