Air France plane missing?

[Jpmkam]

The delay in recovering the data recorder is time during which other crashes could well occur due to the lack of knowledge of the cause of this plane's failure. I've heard of black boxes found years later. But will people just have to avoid this plane model till whenever that is?

Doubtful, unless they are avid followers of this forum they wouldn't even know what possible causes are being discussed or care for that matter.

[Evan]

New York Times article today:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- On at least a dozen recent flights by U.S. jetliners, malfunctioning equipment made it impossible for pilots to know how fast they were flying, federal investigators have discovered.

The equipment failures, all involved Northwest Airlines Airbus A330s. According to an NTSB report, speed data began to fluctuate. The plane alerted pilots it was going too fast. Autopilot and other systems began shutting down, putting nearly all the plane's control in the hands of the pilot, something that usually happens only in emergencies.

In May, a plane belonging to Brazilian company TAM Airlines lost airspeed and altitude data while flying from Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Autopilot and automatic power also shut down and the pilot took over, according to an NTSB report. The computer systems came back about five minutes later.

All of the incidents took place in the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

Delta/Northwest and US Airways recently completed replacing older Thales tubes with new Thales tubes. The companies say they are now replacing them with Goodrich tubes.

[P3_Super_Bee]

All of the incidents took place in the Intertropical Convergence Zone.
.

No they didn't..

[EconomyClass]

I guess ignorance is bliss........at least until you realize your plane is going down, and not in a good way. Then for a few terrifying moments, you know the truth, but its too late.

This report says there are even more of these incidents. What I wondered as I read the article is "what do safety agencies do with information of this kind?" Since the planes land, I'm guessing they do nothing, which is certainly not what customers of the airline business should want. These planes have data recorders that should be routinely analyzed. Put in a new recorder and send the old one to NTSB (or other national safety agency). Not because of the pitot tubes which are being replaced. To find out if the tubes are being scapegoated. What if they are merely in a chain of events so that a systemic problem is being addressed as something isolated?

AP story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...oP8lgD99UCGLO0

[P3_Super_Bee]

What I wondered as I read the article is "what do safety agencies do with information of this kind?" Since the planes land, I'm guessing they do nothing, which is certainly not what customers of the airline business should want.

You guess wrong.... Aircraft are updated all the time... An aircraft is designed test and flys. It passes all tests. But sooner or later things will start to break. (Guaranteed, its mechanical and mechanical things do that. Only way to stop it is quit using it.) Trend Analysis is done. When I worked in Quality Assurance(USN) One of my jobs was to screen ALL sign-offs for trends. When a trend is discovered, engineers go play on there computers and come up with upgrades. Sometimes, a part is made, and as technology advances part a might be come obsolete because they have found a way for part b to do the do cheaper, more reliable. So then it will end up being incorporated into the aircraft.

The P-3 is a plane that was designed in the 1950's. They are still issuing Technical Directives(AD's) For Airframes Changes its up in the 700's (700 airframe mods have been made. Avionics are up into the 1200's. They are up a little more because obviously technolgy advances a tad faster in that area. To put prospective on those numbers, there were about 650 P-3 frames built and only around 30 have been lost in mishaps. So not a whole lot of those changes came from the result of a mishap. The Technical Directives will stop when the aircraft quits flying. I'm sure civialian airlines work in a similar way. You just dont see all the AD's because a vast majority of them come about without an aircraft mishap.

EDIT: Gabriel's mention of the QAR below, reminded me, we also have something similar, SDRS, Structural Data Recording System. It is programed in preflight for the mission the plane will be flying. Big difference in readings if planes going bouncing(touch-n-go's), or hunting subs, or whatever the mission profile is. Then it is downloaded and sent to a database that is monitored. This is how the Navy figured out, along with Fatigue testing that there is a problem with wing cracks. Now it is used to monitor the aircraft for structural stresses. Also when the plane goes through overhaul and something structurally major is found, they can go back to the SDRS database and look at weather or not, more stringent flight restrictions/limits need to be set... And wow all of that on a plane designed in the 50's... oh wait, I do believe there was an Airframes Change that install this into the aircraft... And we've gone full circle back to a Technical Directive(AD) that's happened without an aircraft mishap, but because of advances in technology, and trend analysis.

[Gabriel]

I guess ignorance is bliss........at least until you realize your plane is going down, and not in a good way. Then for a few terrifying moments, you know the truth, but its too late.

This report says there are even more of these incidents. What I wondered as I read the article is "what do safety agencies do with information of this kind?" Since the planes land, I'm guessing they do nothing, which is certainly not what customers of the airline business should want. These planes have data recorders that should be routinely analyzed. Put in a new recorder and send the old one to NTSB (or other national safety agency). Not because of the pitot tubes which are being replaced. To find out if the tubes are being scapegoated. What if they are merely in a chain of events so that a systemic problem is being addressed as something isolated?

1) National agencies DO study serious incidents, even if no body is hurt and nothing is broken. These investigations typically include replacing the flight recorder to gather data from the ones involved in the incident.

2) Most planes currently have other data recorders, called QAR (quick access recorder) that are not designed to survive crash but to have the information easily accessible for airlines to download. They record many more parameters than the FDR. Most airlines have a program in place, called FOQA (or something like that, Flight Operations Quality Assurance). The information of every single flight is downloaded into computers. and there are also algorithms to decide if there was an abnormal situation (for example, that the stick shaker activated, that the landing was harder than a given threshold, etc...), in which case a human analyzes the information. Also there is a trends analysis with the information of all flights.

Do you really think that commercial flight became the safest mode of transportation by flagrantly disregarding safety in all the forms you suggest in all your posts in all the threads?

This was my last response to you. Welcome to my ignore list.

[Evan]

No they didn't..

Can you expand on that?

[P3_Super_Bee]

Can you expand on that?

Do you have a list saying they are??? The article you cut up, doesn't have that quote...

The most recent Northwest incident, the Hong Kong to Japan flight wasn't in the SPCZ Pacific version of the ITCZ). Hence the leters SP = South Pacific, below the equator. Not to mention with most of the note worthy weather happening east of the dateline.

[Evan]

Do you have a list saying they are??? The article you cut up, doesn't have that quote...

The most recent Northwest incident, the Hong Kong to Japan flight wasn't in the SPCZ Pacific version of the ITCZ). Hence the leters SP = South Pacific, below the equator. Not to mention with most of the note worthy weather happening east of the dateline.

Associated Press reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- On at least a dozen recent flights by U.S. jetliners, malfunctioning equipment made it impossible for pilots to know how fast they were flying, federal investigators have discovered. A similar breakdown is believed to have played a role in the Air France crash into the Atlantic that killed all 228 people aboard in June.

The equipment failures, all involving Northwest Airlines Airbus A330s, were brief and were noticed only after safety officials began investigating the Air France crash -- on a Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight -- and two other recent in-flight malfunctions. The failures were described by people familiar with the investigation who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The Northwest incidents were discovered when Delta Air Lines, which merged with Northwest last year, reviewed archived flight data for its fleet of 32 Airbus A330s, the people close to the inquiry said. All of the incidents took place in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which extends from 5 degrees north of the equator to 5 degrees south, and all the planes involved landed safely, they said.

I haven't seen a position on the most recent NWA incident. I'm assuming the 'people close to the inquiry' have.

[P3_Super_Bee]

Associated Press reports:



I haven't seen a position on the most recent NWA incident. I'm assuming the 'people close to the inquiry' have.

Its only been posted in this thread a couple of times....

Aviation Week dot com ARTICLE

The NTSB says it is looking at a May 21 TAM Airlines flight (JJ8091) and a Northwest Airlines June 23 incident. The TAM A330 was flying between Miami and Sao Paulo, while the Northwest flight was between Hong Kong and Tokyo.

[EconomyClass]

Another example of safety trends already in airline records without appropriate preventive action? Guess Gabriel's faith in the airlines' self-policing is a little excessive. I wonder if Wings has anything to do with this. They're the people who used NWA's cash treasure to finance their takeover of the company. Al Checchi and Gary Wilson probably didn't read from the same page as Gabriel on these matters.

[Evan]

Do you have a list saying they are??? The article you cut up, doesn't have that quote...

The most recent Northwest incident, the Hong Kong to Japan flight wasn't in the SPCZ Pacific version of the ITCZ). Hence the leters SP = South Pacific, below the equator. Not to mention with most of the note worthy weather happening east of the dateline.

Are you sure about that? Have a look at this:

Figure F1. Locations of Site 1256 and other ODP/DSDP sites with major world surface currents. Dashed arrows = Equatorial Undercurrent in the Pacific Ocean, solid line = annual shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone in July, dashed line = annual shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone in January, gray arrow = Equatorial Countercurrent.

[Highkeas]

Are you sure about that? Have a look at this:

Figure F1. Locations of Site 1256 and other ODP/DSDP sites with major world surface currents. Dashed arrows = Equatorial Undercurrent in the Pacific Ocean, solid line = annual shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone in July, dashed line = annual shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone in January, gray arrow = Equatorial Countercurrent.

Do you have a better link to the thumbnail you posted? - I can't read the text but the chart looks more like an ocean current chart than a wind chart.
Thanks.

[Evan]

Do you have a better link to the thumbnail you posted? - I can't read the text but the chart looks more like an ocean current chart than a wind chart.
Thanks.

It's from a Texas A&M website:

http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/206_SR/013/013_f1.htm

[EconomyClass]

AeroMechanical Services Ltd. ("AMA" or the "Corporation") is pleased to announce that pre-deployment testing has been completed on new communication technology that has the ability to stream data from aircraft to ground anywhere, anytime, in real-time. AMA and an unnamed customer will perform an aircraft-in-service evaluation of the Automated Flight Information Reporting System (afirs(TM)) Emergency Mode data streaming within the next few weeks.

Probably been developing this for years. What airlines maybe need is something to cool down competition and restore some profitability so that adding innovations doesn't lead them to bankruptcy court. Fewer people flying, sure, but fewer mass funerals, too.