Air crash in the Alps
All 144 passengers and six crew were today presumed dead after the Airbus A320 crashed in a remote region of the French Alps en route from Spain to Germany.
One of the plane’s black box recorders has been found and will be examined immediately, France’s interior minister said.
The images emerged as confusion reigned over the final minutes of the doomed Airbus A320 after air traffic controllers claimed they received no SOS despite the jet nosediving 32,000ft in just eight minutes.
Don’t there seem to have been a higher percentage of recent crashes where the controllers precipitously lost contact with a plane that was still intact? Apparently this jet descended for eight full horrific minutes, and yet there was no communication at all. I know pilots’ first duty is to fly the aircraft, but I still wonder why there might be no word from the pilots during such a lengthy interval. Was there depressurization and unconsciousness?
At least in this case the plane’s location is known, the black box has been found, and answers will probably be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future.
[NOTE: I noticed that this was the same type of plane involved in the amazing Hudson River landing by “Sully” Sullenberger.]
I wonder if it is like the Air France crash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447.
“nosediving 32,000ft in just eight minutes.”
thats not a nosedive… nor is that that fast.
4000 ft a minute
if you drive, your moving 88 feet a second at 60mph
they were falling at 66 feet a second..
this means that their nose was not even pointing down
A Stuka dive would be at 300 miles per hour – 440 feet per second
they were falling slower than a roller coaster!!!!
the Griffon roller coaster does 71 mph
the point being that they were not in a nosedive.
any pilot here can calculate the landing descent speed.
basically they landed into the side of a mountain
Someone elsewhere mentioned that there have been some recent issues with Airbus autopilots, and speculated whether that might be the issue in this case.
Hopefully, the black box will still be intact, and reveal what happened.
Wild speculation here but I gather the plane had just reached the cruising altitude when it began the crash. That suggest at least the possibility of a pressure activated bomb.
The claim, if true, that there was no communication during the descent is puzzling unless, as you suspect, there was a sudden depressurization. In addition, the passengers have cell phones. I have not yet heard any reports from relatives who received phone calls either. I think your suspicion is correct.
Neo Says: I know pilots’ first duty is to fly the aircraft, but I still wonder why there might be no word from the pilots during such a lengthy interval. Was there depressurization and unconsciousness?
no depressurization in this case… how do i know?
when that happens the plane does not descend that way, it either veers off and drops, or it flies straight ahead till it hits something… (autopilot off, autopilot on)
in some other cases where the pilots were not heard from, or the authorities did not report that they did, was when they were yelling allah…. and flying into things… [AirAisa flight, Egypt Air Flight 990, there are more, but unless over open radio, they are generally supressed… ]
France has had a lot of problems with ideological players… very active… to the point jews are leaving in droves… (england too).
the pilots can turn their radio off, but the black box still records whether or not they have it on or not.
this is the info that you dont have that is interesting:
From reports we have, #Germanwings #4U9525 The plane is completely disintegrated. Debris spread over more than 2 kilometers.
thats a bit over a mile..
however, the feet descent looks like it didnt descend!!
ie. is the distance from sea level or from ground level?
if its from sea level, it descended..
if its from ground level, it flew straight and the ground got higher and higher. see this image which confuses…
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r7AlXXfzdC8/VRFgLIuxXMI/AAAAAAAAA4k/lsm0Cid9GLU/s1600/Capture%2Bd%E2%80%99e%CC%81cran%2B2015-03-24%2Ba%CC%80%2B14.00.19.png
and this which shows they descended…
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7VcovtoVbEw/VRFIzEV3KTI/AAAAAAAAA3s/ZTwUos2qsOo/s1600/Capture%2Bd%E2%80%99e%CC%81cran%2B2015-03-24%2Ba%CC%80%2B12.21.19.png
they have not released the pilots names… unusual by now
also, other news reports rather than nosedive, it stalled.
but a stall falls a lot faster than what it did..
the plane is a very reliable plane whith this being the first crash in a long long time for this subsidiary of lufthansa…
Let’s see.
If I were a paranoid person I’d start wondering… humm…. fly by wire…. computers having veto over pilots…. internet connectivity…. wifi…. hackers…. hacking the computers that control the plane and govern communications….
But I am not a paranoid person so…. never mind.
After all, the US government says that terrorism wasn’t involved. And if the US government doesn’t think it was it certainly isn’t.
Right?
Right.
Yancey Ward:
This would be an area and altitude where cell phones probably would not be able to make calls, so lack of phone calls would almost certainly mean nothing.
Artfldgr:
The article I linked to in the post (this) has photos of the debris, plus if you scroll down far enough it has a timeline that shows the altitude of the plane’s descent at different times.
kaba:
Does the debris field indicate a breakup that high? It wouldn’t seem so. But then again, the Lockerbie plane fell with a fair amount of the body of the plane intact until impact. It did break apart in midair when the bomb went off, however, so that several separate tracks were quickly seen on radar. I would think the radar record for this plane would have shown something similar if there were a bomb; that has not been the way it’s described.
Neo… yeah… i looked at those… but my point had to do with the author of said pieces using bombastic and wrong terms… its a constant that drives me bonkers when i read it… ranging from nosediving when the nose is not even down… to vigilante when speaking about zimmerman… using Rep when a democrat does somethning bad… using the term ‘teens’ when you dont want to say “mob of black people” on rampage, assaulting, robbing stores, beating up people, knockout game, etc.
its hard enough for people to understand when using the right terms, its a mess when using the wrong terms.
after all, the US, before knowing anyting says no terrorism… why? they want to establish that in the minds of people by being the first thing said. who cares about truth, validity, etc… this is about screwing with the minds of people and using social science to know how to do it!!!!!!!!!
you know. things like hating christians for clinging to weapons, and a bible, but loving islam for clinging to soviet weapons and holding a koran.
the church is evil for an abusing priest, but gays are not evil despite the duke university guy adopting two black kids and renting them out for sex… (while advising other gay couples to do the same)
its a constant challenge to keep cleaning the urine from the well of the peoples minds… everyone is trying to out do everyone else on terms regardless of meaning.
in one discussion today some black feminist homosexual (her self designation to the world), claimed that we dont need another dark ages to fall upon the society because religious people want marraige to be man and woman and say use civil union for other types… meanwhile… everything she stands for she owes to the church that she hates!!!! ie. universities were created by the church, and that primitive peoples were taught to read by missionaires they sometimes ate… withotu the church, you would not have these places of learning which under the Constitutio Habita allowed people in… or that it was christian ideals that made slavery bad… (Despite slavery in the bible)… and even the lack of exterminating gays vs islams way of handling them
its inane… and i can go on and on with all manner of such crapola…
From the daily mail article I calculated a descent rate of 4000 fpm, which is high but does not indicate a complete “nosedive”. This one is almost as mysterious as Air Malaysia…a tleast they have the black box so we should get some indications soon. Better to wait than to speculate at this point.
Neo to Kaba: Does the debris field indicate a breakup that high? It wouldn’t seem so. But then again, the Lockerbie plane fell with a fair amount of the body of the plane intact until impact.
hard to tell… which is why i didnt discuss it. a mile is not a large area when your coming down… also, they are on a steep mountain, meaning things can slide down.. roll.. etc
then there is the point if the plane exceeded the speed limits of its structure… these planes do around 300-400 mph… and in thinner air… when they come down and if they are going fast, their structure cant take the forces, and so they start breaking up.
if the plane got anywhere near the sound barrier… which there is record of such planes doing… it would fall apart from that alone… (over 700 mph).
from 1992
Test pilots at an Israeli aircraft company successfully flew a 747 freighter at 98 percent of the speed of sound in a safety demonstration for the Federal Aviation Administration.
pilots flew a modified 747-100 at 646 miles per hour in performance tests over Israel. That`s more than 60 m.p.h. faster than the plane`s official top cruising speed
Sound travels about 660 m.p.h. at 30,000 feet.
The lowest speed an A320 can fly is approximately 207 km/h
cruising speed is Mach 0.78 (828 km/h/511 mph at 11,000 m/36,000 ft)
maximum speed is Mach 0.82 (871 km/h/537 mph at 11,000 m/36,000 ft)
they are not that far from the speed of sound…
and if they fell fast enough from thin air to thick air near that speed, it falls apart… [and yes, terrifies the passengers even more, if that could be imagined]
thanks for the confirmation physicsguy.. 🙂
Does the debris field indicate a breakup that high? It wouldn’t seem so.
——————–
What I’ve heard is that it slammed into a cliff at 400 mph.
Also…
32,000 feet over eight minutes comes out to just under 67 feet per second. Compare that with the 400mph speed (which comes out to just under 587 feet per second), and they weren’t in a particularly steep dive. My very rough estimate says maybe around 10 degrees?
It isn’t necessary to completely destroy an aircraft in mid-air as happened at Lockerbie. Disabling key flight control systems or sufficient damage to the cockpit will suffice and leave a rather compact debris field. Another possibility is causing some damage to the pressurization system.
I am troubled by the lack of communication from the aircrew. Doesn’t take long to flick a flight control mounted switch and say Mayday.
Like Art I am suspicious that terrorism was ruled out so quickly.
The list of A320 crashes: in Fwench
11 in 27 years
My daughter’s father-in-law was an international pilot and also pilot instructor. One of the finest men I have ever known. We met up in France in 2011. He traveled domestically and internationally his entire adult life (died age 84). I remember him saying some time ago that he would not fly on an Airbus until they figured out why they kept falling out of the sky.
The pictures of the debris field are interesting. If the plane augered into the side of the mountain, there would be a smoking hole with debris thrown about, but the debris would not be as scattered as it is in this case. My guess is that the plane skipped off a ridge and disintegrated on the way into the steep valley.
I have no direct knowledge of the Airbus airplanes. I flew only Boeing or Douglas built aircraft. However, hangar flying talk I have heard from other pilots indicates that the Airbus airplanes are designed to be flown almost exclusively on autopilot. Although, according to Captain Dave, who blogged at “FL 390,” hand flying it was entirely possible. The problem is that more and more pilots today are divorced from the old days of stick and rudder, needle ball, fly by instinct. Loss of the auto features can be an issue as it was in the Air France Flight 447 crash in 2009.
The lack of communication from the pilots and the seemingly well controlled descent is a clue, but of what? The airspeed never became excessive and the descent rate was around 3500-400 feet per minute. The controlled descent would seem to indicate that the plane was either on autopilot or being controlled by a human.
What could disable the crew and allow the autopilot/pilot to make a well controlled descent? Decompression might be one possibility, but it would seem the autopilot would maintain altitude unless a pilot dialed in a descent before passing out completely. A terrorist incursion into the cockpit could be another. But there were no cell phone messages sent by passengers/flight attendants who should have been aware of a terrorist takeover. Electronic high-jacking? In this day and age, I suppose it can’t be ruled out.
There are presently more questions than answers. The black boxes will be found and our questions will be answered……eventually.
The Daily Mail article has this near the end:
“A safety warning was issued last year when a sister plane of that involved in today’s accident suddenly lost altitude.
The European Air Safety Agency (EASA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive after an Airbus A321 went into an uncontrollable dive north of Pamplona, Spain before recovering.
According to the safety warning, the Lufthansa jet, with 109 passengers and crew aboard, was at 31,000 feet when it started to descend without any input from the pilot, at a rate of 4,000 feet per minute, before the flight crew managed to regain control at 28,000 feet.
According to the EASA, a safety system designed to protect the jet reacted to incorrect data due to a faulty sensor.”
It kind of sounds like what happened here.
Edit to my comment: Controlled descent rate “around 3500-4000 feet per minute.” 🙂
Should a depressurization or a fire occur, the proper response is to dive. Just sayin’…
German pilots are refusing to fly, it is suggested because the repairs done to the plane are suspect. Are there a lot of muslims in the airline industry, being forced in through quotas or such, and then being sent away from the public… to areas like repair, maintenance, and packaging? Time will tell, maybe. Though they might bury any evidence of such, if they mean to maintain hiring quotas. Suspicious indeed. The repair wasn’t operational, at that. So… yeah… maybe.
I’ll echo JJ comments. The same thoughts occurred to me, but I figured he would be a better source as the largest plane I ever flew was an Aero Commander.
I just read this morning that the flight path was unaltered except for the descent, which suggest to me that the autopilot was still engaged for lateral navigation. Generally, airliners are flown on the AP from just a few minutes after takeoff until a few seconds before touchdown which does speak to the lack of stick and rudder skills. However, Les Abend who writes for Flying mag, says he prefers to hand fly anytime he’s below 10,000ft to keep his skills up, but he may be an exception.
My best guess: rapid decompression which would lead immediately for the crew to dial in an rapid descent into the AP, and then a loss of consciousness of the flight crew. At 38,000 ft they should have had enough time to get their O2 masks on, but then suppose a cockpit window which was cracked and leaking then blew out? At that altitude the temperature is around -58 F, they would then have froze quickly to incapacitation. The AP would have then just flown the plane into the terrain along its flight path.
I remember a New Yorker article from about ten, fifteen years ago which discussed the strange phenomenon of so many planes falling out of the sky.
If I remember correctly, despite lengthy and thorough investigations, including a meta-investigation, no conclusions could be reached as to why.
The memory card was missing from one of the black boxes (which are orange)…
Artfldgr:
Apparently that news about the memory card was reported in error. Now they’re saying this:
To me it’s crazy that planes do not have protocols in place to switch over to autopilot and autoland in case of emergencies. Allow pilots to hand over control in case of terrorism. Monitor pilots’ health when in the locked cockpit and if they are detected to be incapacitated take over control automatically. There should be no opting out of this type of automated flying.
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