Fricking crashing airplanes

[bl5150]

I didn't think this was quite right for the funny thread (more stupid) .............perhaps not the smartest tweet from a company that tends to lose track of planes

Want to go somewhere, but don't know where? Our Year-End Specials might just help! #keepflying https://t.co/aHt4yRykzd pic.twitter.com/k6hEOZb42s
— Malaysia Airlines (@MAS) November 27, 2014

[rumborak]

I'm just absolutely amazed that in this day and age, where I had T-Mobile reception on a glacier in Alaska, we can lose one plane after the other with absolutely no clue where they are.

[El Barto]

I'm just absolutely amazed that in this day and age, where I had T-Mobile reception on a glacier in Alaska, we can lose one plane after the other with absolutely no clue where they are.

I'm just amazed that you can get T-Mobile reception on a glacier in Alaska and I can't get 2 bars in my own God damned Dallas apartment.

Also, the ocean's really big and planes are really fast.

[MetalMike06]

In regards to the very recent Air Asia crash, they've at least started finding minor debris as well as bodies. Didn't exactly just disappear like MH370.

https://avherald.com/h?article=47f6abc7&opt=0

Just my amateur opinion here...I'm thinking that the thunderstorms in the area had to do with this crash. During the last radio transmissions with the aircraft, the pilots were asking for permission to deviate around a thunderstorm cell, as well as for a higher cruising altitude. It took ATC a couple minutes to coordinate this due to other air traffic in the area, but when they relayed back the permission, they didn't get a call back from the aircraft. I'm guessing the aircraft may have entered the cell, and the resulting turbulence may have caused an unrecoverable situation.

[rumborak]

Also, the ocean's really big and planes are really fast.

It is indeed, but it's not exactly rocket science in the year 2015 to send a positional message every second to a satellite. MH370's position had to be pieced together from Doppler analysis, because Air Malaysia had not subscribed to the service that connects to the satellite.

[El Barto]

In regards to the very recent Air Asia crash, they've at least started finding minor debris as well as bodies. Didn't exactly just disappear like MH370.

https://avherald.com/h?article=47f6abc7&opt=0

Just my amateur opinion here...I'm thinking that the thunderstorms in the area had to do with this crash. During the last radio transmissions with the aircraft, the pilots were asking for permission to deviate around a thunderstorm cell, as well as for a higher cruising altitude. It took ATC a couple minutes to coordinate this due to other air traffic in the area, but when they relayed back the permission, they didn't get a call back from the aircraft. I'm guessing the aircraft may have entered the cell, and the resulting turbulence may have caused an unrecoverable situation.

Storms may well be a contributing factor, but a storm by itself is highly unlikely to crash an airliner. Something else was involved. Also, if it's a storm nasty enough to be a major threat then the pilot's going to go around whether ATC signs off on it or not. Pilots have the same survival instinct that you and I do and they are the top dog insofar as safety goes with their aircraft.

Also, the ocean's really big and planes are really fast.

It is indeed, but it's not exactly rocket science in the year 2015 to send a positional message every second to a satellite. MH370's position had to be pieced together from Doppler analysis, because Air Malaysia had not subscribed to the service that connects to the satellite.

Oh, you're arguing for how things should be done, rather than what was done. I agree.

[rumborak]

I actually read up on it a bit more on it today, and the black box is no better really. It records 2 hours of audio, which it then overwrites. That's 1950s technology.

[King Postwhore]

I actually read up on it a bit more on it today, and the black box is no better really. It records 2 hours of audio, which it then overwrites. That's 1950s technology.

I never knew that.  Amazing. 

[El Barto]

I actually read up on it a bit more on it today, and the black box is no better really. It records 2 hours of audio, which it then overwrites. That's 1950s technology.

That's actually about 80 minutes longer than necessary. I can't think of many instances where relevant info was more than 30 minutes prior to the big kaboom. UA232 and JAL123 both flew around for 35 minutes after the initial failure. More often than not you're looking for something within 5-10 minutes. The technology is pretty much state of the art. The time limit is simply a matter of what's needed.

When looking up UA232 I noticed that Denny Fitch died. Went mostly unnoticed. He was a training pilot flying deadhead on that flight and stepped up to assist when things went to hell. His actions pretty much made him the original Sullenberger and a legend in the industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

[rumborak]

While catastrophic failures only need 10 minutes, kidnappings etc happen over a much longer time down.
And what about video? Even when the plane crashes, they have no video to speak of. No cockpit, main cabin, engines, nothing.

[Chino]

I feel like there should be three black boxes on a plane. Put one in the cabin, mic the cabin to one in the tail section, and then have one that ejects and parachutes down/floats in the water. It seems kind of stupid to have to dive underwater to retrieve a box. I get that I'm not an aeronautical engineer, but if we can eject a pilot out of a fighter jet at several hundred miles per hour, I would think ejecting a black box would be a relatively easy task.

[El Barto]

I think that the thought process is that you want the black boxes to remain with the bulk of the AC. You find one you find both. Ejecting them doesn't really make much sense, and while floating them does in some ways, drift would cause them to travel pretty far from the wreckage. Plus, they're going to be diving to bring up important bits of the AC and bodies anyway. That said, it does seem like a fuselage mounted marker body that detaches from the AC when submerged seems like a swell idea.

Oh, and the next step in the evolution of telemetry is going to be to have the AC burst transmit the FDR/CVR data to satellites. That will provide timelier info but will likely introduce other problems, as well.

[jasc15]

The ability to stream data in real time, providing air traffic controls with continuous information about an airplane’s heading, speed and other info, exists. It would, essentially, use the same technology airlines employ to ensure you can stream 1989 or Guardians of the Galaxy to seat 17D. Using next-generation satellite connectivity from a company like Inmarsat, a system could be designed to transmit all manner of data from a plane in real time. The problem is, all that data, from all those planes, would require far more bandwidth than even the most advanced satellite communications infrastructure can handle.

Even if this were to be implemented, it would do nothing to prevent these accidents.  The value is very small.

[cramx3]

The ability to stream data in real time, providing air traffic controls with continuous information about an airplane’s heading, speed and other info, exists. It would, essentially, use the same technology airlines employ to ensure you can stream 1989 or Guardians of the Galaxy to seat 17D. Using next-generation satellite connectivity from a company like Inmarsat, a system could be designed to transmit all manner of data from a plane in real time. The problem is, all that data, from all those planes, would require far more bandwidth than even the most advanced satellite communications infrastructure can handle.

Even if this were to be implemented, it would do nothing to prevent these accidents.  The value is very small.

It wouldnt prevent accidents, but would definitely prevent planes from going missing which is pretty valuable I think.  I cant see how adding streaming simple data would be that big of a bandwidth hog compared to movies.

[Chino]

Are the movies streamed? I figured they would be saved to a HD on the plane.

[rumborak]

The movies are definitely locally stored. But, more and more airlines offer internet on their flights. Essentially, you could write a smartphone app and make the airplane more secure by having the phone report its location every second

[El Barto]

The only thing you'd need is for the AC to ping a satellite every 5 minutes or so. You'd have a reasonable estimate of speed, location and alt. And even this should only be necessary for trans-con flights. All we're really looking to establish is where to send the corpse handling gloves, after all. If it happens on land you've either got witnesses above or below, and if it's in the woods you've got a flaming crater in the bush.

The flipside of this is that it might well be a good mandatory rule for GA pilots and those flying VFR. Some guy just putzing around in his 172 isn't likely to make a big enough dent to be easily noticeable, and they're likely to be off the beaten path and definitely far from traffic. That Fosset guy comes to mind. A ping within 5 minutes would have put him within a 30 mile radius or so.

[jasc15]

The flipside of this is that it might well be a good mandatory rule for GA pilots and those flying VFR. Some guy just putzing around in his 172 isn't likely to make a big enough dent to be easily noticeable, and they're likely to be off the beaten path and definitely far from traffic. That Fosset guy comes to mind. A ping within 5 minutes would have put him within a 30 mile radius or so.

For GA folks, they are rarely out of radar range (except Alaska I guess), and when they go down, thats what ELT's are for.  I don't know the details of Fosset's disappearance, though.

Edit: Actually, there are lots of places out of radar coverage in the lower 48, so I retract what I said.

[El Barto]

The flipside of this is that it might well be a good mandatory rule for GA pilots and those flying VFR. Some guy just putzing around in his 172 isn't likely to make a big enough dent to be easily noticeable, and they're likely to be off the beaten path and definitely far from traffic. That Fosset guy comes to mind. A ping within 5 minutes would have put him within a 30 mile radius or so.

For GA folks, they are rarely out of radar range (except Alaska I guess), and when they go down, thats what ELT's are for.  I don't know the details of Fosset's disappearance, though.

Edit: Actually, there are lots of places out of radar coverage in the lower 48, so I retract what I said.

And flight following is strictly at the discretion (convenience) of ATC. You ask and they tell you if they're willing. As for emergency locator xmitters, that's dependent on actually having one (not sure if they're mandatory or simply Darwin apportioned) and activation.

[rumborak]

The only thing you'd need is for the AC to ping a satellite every 5 minutes or so. You'd have a reasonable estimate of speed, location and alt. And even this should only be necessary for trans-con flights. All we're really looking to establish is where to send the corpse handling gloves, after all.

Why have a static interval? You look at the altitude, speed and angle of the plane, and you set the interval adaptively to half of the time it would take the plane to crash. That way, of you're doing a nosedive towards the ground, it will ping its position at increasingly shorter intervals.

[Chino]

The only thing you'd need is for the AC to ping a satellite every 5 minutes or so. You'd have a reasonable estimate of speed, location and alt. And even this should only be necessary for trans-con flights. All we're really looking to establish is where to send the corpse handling gloves, after all.

Why have a static interval? You look at the altitude, speed and angle of the plane, and you set the interval adaptively to half of the time it would take the plane to crash. That way, of you're doing a nosedive towards the ground, it will ping its position at increasingly shorter intervals.I might turn that quote into a motivational poster and put it in my next cubicle (and future offices).

That's pretty effing brilliant.

[El Barto]

The only thing you'd need is for the AC to ping a satellite every 5 minutes or so. You'd have a reasonable estimate of speed, location and alt. And even this should only be necessary for trans-con flights. All we're really looking to establish is where to send the corpse handling gloves, after all.

Why have a static interval? You look at the altitude, speed and angle of the plane, and you set the interval adaptively to half of the time it would take the plane to crash. That way, of you're doing a nosedive towards the ground, it will ping its position at increasingly shorter intervals.

Sure. Why not. I think it's all overkill anyway, but if that can be none with a minimum of fuss and complexity it sounds fine. It is, as Chino suggested, an elegant solution. What people need to keep in mind is that getting airlines and airframe manufactures to spend money and weight on something new is a real PITA. Replacing the black boxes in all 737s will be akin to getting a new OTC pain med on the market. If it represents a major improvement or critical necessity then it will eventually happen. In something like this which represents neither, it's best to let the market sort it out. Wouldn't surprise me if the 787 has some new and improved telemetry on board. Easier to do at the design stage. Also wouldn't surprise me if Boeing took a "if it ain't broke" approach and stuck with something tried and true (and more importantly, certified).

[MetalMike06]

Looks like they found the black boxes for Air Asia 8501.

[jonnybaxy]

And the cockpit voice recorder.

[El Barto]

I'm rather curious about this one. Weather alone doesn't crash planes (airliners, at least). If it was a severe enough storm that it might have then the pilots would go around, ATC be damned (easily within their prerogative). So the natural guess would be that the weather created a situation that the pilots couldn't cope with. Yet this looked like a damn good flight crew. These weren't guys they picked up off the street and taught to work the FD over 2 months in the sim. PIC had over 6k hours in the A320 and seemed like a solid sort of guy. The only thing that really sticks out to me is that the AC is still largely intact. Seems they didn't hit the water all that hard. Suggests the pilots had a pretty good idea of what the problem was and that disposition took a fair amount of time. CVR oughta be quite revealing here.

[rumborak]

I read somewhere that some of the passengers were wearing life vests. That would indicate a reasonable amount of time before they came down.

[El Barto]

The closest thing I have to a theory is that severe precip could have caused both engines to flameout and they ditched. They'd have time to don life vests and whatnot, and the pilots would have been too busy with the ditching and the attempts to relight the engines to communicate (aviate, navigate, communicate).

[Chino]

Jeez. I can't even think about that. I'd rather see a mountain coming at me at 500mph than have engines flame out over the ocean in a thunder storm.

[JayOctavarium]

Jeez. I can't even think about that. I'd rather see a mountain coming at me at 500mph than have engines flame out over the ocean in a thunder storm.

Fuuuuuuuuuuu

[El Barto]

So the AirAsia crash is starting to look an awful lot like AF447. FDR shows a very rapid ascent, likely fast enough to stall the AC. If so then they were unable to recover. My guess is that the flight controller in an A320 won't allow a climb rate even close to the 6000'/m they hit, which suggests one of two things that both point directly at bad air data.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30902237

[TAC]

That's freaking scary. What is the rate of ascent that is typical at takeoff?

[jasc15]

6000 fpm seems way too high, especially at altitude.  At sea level I'd be surprised if it was capable of much more than 3000 fpm.  It's service ceiling is only about 39000 feet, and that is defined as the altitude at which the maximum possible rate of climb is 100 fpm.

[El Barto]

Typical is 1-2k. Three might be doable but would never happen in a commercial airliner. Moreover, the Airbus flight director would prohibit that degree of pitch and/or AoA. That's why I have to figure that the flight director either commanded it (bad air data) or dropped from normal to alternate law (bad air data) and dumped the protections normal law provides. If it dropped to alternate law then the pilots would be able to attempt such a climb right up to the point of stalling the AC (which they'd never do).

This nice fellow provides a handy chart for the various FD control laws. https://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm

[MetalMike06]

So the AirAsia crash is starting to look an awful lot like AF447.

Exactly what I'm thinking.

There's a good book out there called Understanding Air France 447 if you're into this stuff.

[ReaperKK]

So the AirAsia crash is starting to look an awful lot like AF447.

Exactly what I'm thinking.

There's a good book out there called Understanding Air France 447 if you're into this stuff.

I think I saw that book mentioned someplace else, I should check it out.