An Air France A330 flight from Rio De Janerio to Paris was lost last night.  From what I have heard, no one knows what happened.  They simply disappeared . . .

Any info on this is appreciated.

I heard it got hit by lightning. and loss power and sent a emergency signal about the power lost. thats what I have heard so far.. very sad. 200 + people on board.

Well, I know that a lightning strike will do pretty much nothing to one of these planes. I've seen what goes into the design process to prevent accidents from happening. I was just going on the news I had at the time.

Same holds true for the message behind the error, no one is going to know until after an investigation and the results are released. All that I can figure out is that the message was about an "electrical circuit malfunction".

Although, it does look like the plane did run into storms. And something really bad had to have happened for it to disappear so quickly and without a mayday.

I feel that there could be persons alive over the watter ,waiting to be rescued

beaky wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2009 at 9:44am:



While I'm not an aviation accident investigator, I am a bit of a decently trained "normal" accident/incident investigator........

.......and I would think that even at a slow-ish speed, at a moderate altitude, a break-up may leave a bit more than a 3-mile debris field/trail.

But it's been reported that last (automated) comm was from FL350-ish at 450, or so, knots.  A breakup at that FL and IAS seems like it may leave more than a 15,000' long spot on the sea.  

Augerring in at high velocity, and given the elapsed time between incident and discovery, would seem to lend itself to credible speculation that all was intact til impact.

Just a guesstimate, IMHO.

BUT, like I said, I'm no aviation detective, just a guesstimator at this point.

Brings a chill to think that all of them may have been aware of the goings-on during the almost seven mile journey to the sea.

i hope they find the black box. they said it emits a sonar signal for 30 days. so sad

Update:

Doomed Air France Flight 447's last terrifying few minutes in the air have already been pieced together by accident investigators.
Aviation sources in France said automated messages sent by the plane's systems had allowed them to reconstruct events which appeared to show the Airbus broke up in mid-air as it flew through a hugely violent storm carrying 228 people from Rio to Paris.

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11pm local time saying he was flying through an area of CBs - electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning.
Satellite data has shown that towering thunderheads were sending 100 mph updraft winds into the jet's flight path at the time, several hundred miles of the coast of Brazil.

Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: automatic messages to Air France HQ indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well. The last automatic message, at 11.14pm, signalled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure - catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.

The French accident investigation agency, BEA, refused to comment on the findings, as did Brazil's defence minister Nelson Jobim who said the "investigation is being done by France; Brazil's only responsibility is to find and pick up the pieces".

Meanwhile, the pilot of a Spanish airliner flying near where the Airbus is believed to have gone down reported seeing a bright flash of white light that quickly plunged to the ocean, said a spokesman for the Spanish airline Air Comet.

"Suddenly, off in the distance, we observed a strong and bright flash of white light that took a downward and vertical trajectory and vanished in six seconds," the pilot wrote in a report for the airline and Spanish civil aviation authorities.

The Spanish plane was flying from Lima, Peru to Madrid. The pilot said he heard no emergency calls.

I'm only in the learning stages of aircraft maintenance, and I've learnt some pretty horrible things during training, but when I first read that story, my jaw was on the floor. I'm obviously no expert when it comes to pilot training, but surely the weather radar would have built up a nice red picture on the display and the pilot would have changed course. 

So many explanations to this I guess. Some light has been shed on what happened, but it's clearly best to wait for the first official report to come out.

Alec

The-Black-Sheep wrote on Jun 4^th, 2009 at 1:33pm:



I am rather interested to know, how a aircraft suffering "catastrophic electrical failure" was able to still send out so much information. The system that sends this information is done via the ACARS computer and uses if memory serves, VHF on radio mode control panel three. If no other radios were working, why was this one, it all goes through the same boxes and antennas? The BEA have a habit of telling the story that Air France want to tell

Matt

Sounds like now they aren't even sure they found the wreckage, just a bunch of trash floating around the ocean.  Maybe it was hijacked and few to Africa or remote South America and hidden.

Quote:


Yes.. that is curious indeed, though would not the batteries or the ram air turbine (if there was electrical failure) to supply enough power for VHF or SATCOM to operate?  

Of course, with the whole ACARS thing, I thought I saw on CNN or BBC that there was something like four minutes of messages; kind of sounds like every darn thing failed on the aircraft .  What really happened, we will have to see once they find the black boxes (if they find them).  If the pilots didn't send any distress signal, it might be either that they did not have enough time, or that their radios really did fail.  But for some reason, I think its the former.  I dunno.

I've been away while this has been going on but the news reports I've seen appear to be mostly based on pure supposition. From what I can make out, nobody can possibly know exactly where to look for any wreckage as they don't know when or where during the flight the events took place. The remains could be anywhere in a very large area of ocean.

If reports that the aircraft disintegrated in mid-air & not on contact with the sea are correct any wreckage will be spread over a wide area. There is already a large amount of debris (sea trash) spread over the ocean so identifying what might be very tiny parts of an aircraft in terrible weather conditions could be very difficult, if not impossible.

What puzzles me is that the "authorities" seem so certain of what happened. This makes me wonder if they know more than they're prepared to admit.

They've found two bodies and a briefcase:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/brazil_plane

So sad. 

Steve, that was actually a flight out of argentina and was a hoax, but yes an airfrance flight was delayed for that reason.
Nothing should be ruled out. There is just as much reason to suggest this could have been a bomb as well as a freak weather accident.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to tell whether this was a midair or near to or ground caused break up will be the debris spread. If its more than a few miles apart then it was a midair thing, if its confined then it went into the water in fairly one piece. It should be possible even with a mid ocean accident to figure that one out. A mid air break up would make finding parts easier as silly as it sounds, the lighter stuff will hit the water at a much slower speed and is less likely then to submerge immediately.
The recovered bodies will also tell a story as to what might have happend.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090607/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane

expat wrote on Jun 4^th, 2009 at 6:48pm:


Surely a modern aircraft still has the ability to run at least one radio (ie a VHF box) even with a "complete" electrical failure. It'd be a backward step if it couldn't - I assume the A330 has a RAT of some description.

C wrote on Jun 10^th, 2009 at 9:19am:


The-Black-Sheep wrote on Jun 10^th, 2009 at 11:04am:



If as beleived at the moment, the aircraft was breaking up in the air, then the rat would probably be one of the first things to be ripped off. It also has a max speed deployment. However, next twist to the story

Matt

I find it hard to believe it was terrorism to be honest. If ACARS sends out information stating that the aircraft was suffereing numerous faults, then we're surely not looking an explosive device taking it out. It would have just disappeared without ACARS sending any info what so ever.

With another recent "discovery" saying the aircraft was flying too slow, is it possible that it had stalled after flying into this thunderstorm (severe turbulence affecting the airspeed), then the stall becoming unrecoverable, maybe slipped into a dutch roll, ACARS sends out all this information about systems being affected while it's "falling" out of the sky, and because of the sheer forces being acted upon the aircraft, it breaks up. Wind then might have helped spread aircraft pieces over a large stretch of ocean.

Just a theory, I'm sure Matt might be able to point out if there is any flaws with it, but it's just an idea I guess.

Alec

Seems to be just a matter of finding the black boxes now and listening to what the guys on the flight deck said when it all went incredibly wrong.

Alec

Just a question but shouldnt a airline captain be able to tell if their going to fast or slow without the airspeed indicator working, i mean it would show on the GPS units with distance traveled, Ive never flown in IFR conditions like the airbus but even then it seems to me you would be able to tell if the airspeed indicator was acting weird and even then you could probably balance the speed out

DaveSims wrote on Jun 10^th, 2009 at 10:08pm:



Aerodynamically in a stall, the rudder play very little part in an Air Bus. An Air Bus stalling at 35000 feet in reality is no big problem. This is due to the aerodynamic design of the tail. When the aircraft enters a stall, the air flow over the tail actually forces the nose down. It is a feature of all Air Bus aircraft. The aircraft then descends in a gentle swoop down and then when the nose starts to rise, the tail forces it down and the whole process starts again. However, stalling a modern airliner is quite hard. Regardless of what the computers are telling you, the seat of your pants should always be a good indicator. The wing design of Air Bus's (in fact all modern aircraft) will have the wing begin to stall at the wing root. This ensures that the lateral control of the aircraft is not lost by keeping the ailerons out of the stall. During the stall of the wing root, the aircraft will be subject to pre stall buffet, also designed to start in the design of the wing early enough to give the pilot a mechanical feel through his backside. With the Air Bus a bit of over kill because aerodynamically regardless of the computers, an Air Bus is self recovering in a stall. The pilot if he wanted to, could take his hand off the stick and she would do all the work herself to recover. This is not a well know fact about Air Bus, but as I have just spent a week studying Air Bus aerodynamics, I can tell you it is true.

Matt

Hagar wrote on Jun 11^th, 2009 at 4:43am:



That is the whole idea behind this aerodynamic design. If the entire fly by wire system failed then the aircraft can be flown by differential thrust alone. We have seen with for example with the Soux City crash that it was possible with a DC 10, but it is designed into the Air Bus not to be possible, but to be able to do it. This is one of the reasons why the flying control surfaces are aerodynamically neutral. Without power, they droop on the ground, but in the air without power they go naturally neutral with the airflow and cannot freeze in an up or down position. Can the pilot over rule, the answer is a big NO! Against this, outside of one very public accident, when have the computers got it wrong agaist the rather large number of pilot error accidents? As for the pitot tubes going tits up, for start there is not just one. The pilot has one, the co-pilot has one and then they have a standby. It cannot boil down to just a pitot failure. The right and left systems are separate as is the standby system. What is common to the three systems is pitot heating, but even that has different channels. Without the CDR and CVR it is just speculation and window dressing by anyone who decides to replace fleet wide pitot tubes.

Matt

DaveSims wrote on Jun 11^th, 2009 at 9:08am:


OK, my misunderstanding, however this aircraft was only four years old and the attachment points post NYC aircraft were changed so that this failure could not happen again. In service aircraft have a large point in the pilots note about over use of the rudder as modification is not possible as it is a structure redesign for newer aircraft. However, all this still does not tell us how three independent systems failed at the same time. After all that is why we have three, to make this eventuality not possible

Matt

Hagar wrote on Jun 11^th, 2009 at 12:44pm:


As I said with the pitot probe replacement, I think it is just window dressing, keeps the punters happy. Without the CDR and CVR it is pissing in the dark and hoping you will hit the bowl. As to the engine question, that is a common misconception with fly by wire. A FADEC (full authority digital engine control) is not part of the fly by wire system. It is an electric system, but it has nothing to do with the fly by wire system. It is a totally separate entity. It is a bit like saying the landing lights and the cabin lights are the same thing, yes they are both lights, but that is where the similarity ends. The FADEC has a completely isolated power supply and if that power supply is lost or interrupted then the engines take over. Each engine has an dedicated and completely independent AC generator running off said engines own accessory gearbox that when power is lost will supply power directly to the FADEC and no other system. This generator can power the FADEC for an entire flight without problem. Rather ironic, that as this Air Bus broke up in the sky, the engine control would have been 100% functional right up until the fuel supply was lost and the engine wound down due to said destruction.

Matt