Air France plane missing?

[mfeldt]

Evan - may I ask you (and actually everbody following this thread) how many unscheduled refueling stops you already have experienced as a passenger in your passenger career?

As written a few pages back, I experienced one - and my flight career is probably shorter than that of most people here. At that time it was clearly weather related - the scheduled flight time was already exceeded by 1/2 hour and we had not covered even 2/3 of the distance to destination due to all the diversions.

e CVR of that A330 and it will prove the pilots saying "Geez, these thunderstorms look pretty mean but let's punch through because otherwise we won't make it to Paris", then I'll stop travelling on planes. But trust me - that won't be the case. I am 99.9999% sure of that.

Interesting argument - how many minutes of recording are actually found on these recorders? What if you hear the pilots say "Hey there's a thunderstorm ahead, we could go around but then we'd have to stick to flight plan one and have a stop-over in Bordeaux - guess the boss won't like that and the storm doesn't look so serious anyway."

And then half an hour later: "Jeeez, that storm is much worse than it looked at first glance - and now these damn pitots have gone awry..."

That's what I would guess Evan means with "contributing factor".

m.

EDIT: And I guess that should really such a recording turn up, or such circumstances been proven in any other way, Air France will be blown to pieces in all the court rooms of the world (maybe except the one in Paris...)!

[Peter Kesternich]

If they had stalled and were trying to restart if there was hail/heavy rain that would have significantly hampered their efforts, right? I'm assuming though that there have been changes to engine design since Southern 242.

This should maybe go on a different thread but there are a few things to consider and I'll answer them for you here, Myndee

1. When you say "stall", are you referring to the wings or the engines that stalled?

2. Although Southern 242 was a DC-9 equipped with Pratt&Whitney JT8D engines and the Air France A330s are quipped with General Electirc CF6-80 engines there haven't been real basic changes in engine design then. Southern 242 lost all power because of a compressor stall in both engines that damaged the engines so much that they couldn't be restarted. This is in all probability not what happened to AF447.

But like I said, what happened to Southern 242 is something for a different thread. If you write to me privately or open up a new thread I'd be happy to respond

[Peter Kesternich]

It's really pointless to try and have an intelligent exchange of opinions on this if my posts are skipped over and you keep hitting back with hyperbole. You are misrepresenting my point of view.

Here, I'll do the work for you:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evan
Understood, if it's clear that you absolutely need to divert around weather, I trust that pilots will not hesitate over fuel costs.

Good - then we are clear on that

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evan
I don't think the crew of AF447 deliberately flew into destructive weather, I think they believed they were still charting a reasonably safe course, but there was a safer option available and I fear these collateral pressures negated that option.

There is always a safer option and if you think it to the end the safest option sometimes is to cancel a flight before it even taxis away from the terminal. Oops - sorry, that was hyperbole again, Evan, but I couldn't rests. Please don't be mad at me.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evan
I'm not claiming that they did the wrong thing... I'm questioning why they took the risk...

Well - questioning why they took the risk to me implies somebody might be doing something wrong... not too far to go from there to a claim...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evan
BTW - I trust the majority of pilots to make the safer decision despite the consequences when the situation is clearly dangerous. It's this grey area that concerns me.

Like we have seen here - and if I recall correctly also on the thread about the Ethipian Airlines crash off the Lebanese coast a few weeks ago, there is really nothing anyone can do about that grey area. No rule or regulation can stop people from making a wrong decision or just plainly a mistake.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evan
The reason I see this as a safety issue is that it can influence pilots against taking a safer route. I'm not saying it will; I'm saying it can, and that is enough for me to call it a safety issue.

Well - we have tried to put your fears to rest regarding this particular safety issue, but obviously you are not yet convinced

[Peter Kesternich]

And I guess that should really such a recording turn up, or such circumstances been proven in any other way, Air France will be blown to pieces in all the court rooms of the world (maybe except the one in Paris...)!

Honestly? I think they will be blown to pieces in French courts as well. I definitely trust the French on that

[Evan]

Fly to Bordeaux as if that was the intended destination (including all the weather detours that the pilot judges necesary for the sake of safety or even passenger comfort). If when you are to start the descent to Bordeaux, just by chance there is enoug fuel to make it to Paris with all the due reserves needed at that point, then do it. The trick is that this "chance" is a very high probability indeed, but from a safety point of view whether there is a good or bad chance is irrelevant. If the best happens, you go to Paris, if the worse happens, you land at Boredeaux, add fuel, and go to Paris.

The strategy itself adds zero pressure to piltos to do anything they wouldn't do without the strategy. And it removes nothing in term of fuel margins. It's as safe as any flight. Not better and not worse.

Here's the flaw in your logic: Bordeaux was never the intended destination of AF447, not even as a stop-over, not unless they wanted to operate the flight at a significant loss, upend their scheduling and alienate customers. A flight plan was filed giving the legal destination as Bordeaux in order to allow then to take on less fuel. It's a loophole in the system that, naturally, has become SOP. But lets be clear here, they never intended to land there, and would only do so in a worst-case scenario.

Therefore, to make a significant diversion around weather results in the worst-case scenario. I call that a dangerous element of pressure introduced into the decision process.

Again, do watch the moovie Wiskey Romeo Zulu.

I'm very interested in this. I'm a bit slammed right now, but when I get a minute I will look for it.

Now, you say "AF should have removed non-passenger-realted cargo". Why? Did they sell the cargo service as "second priority to be carried if enough space available after passengers and their related cargo"?

Yes, absolutely, without question. Ask any passenger this question and they will agree. Passenger airlines must give priority to passenger service because they position themselves to consumers as passenger airlines and create their brand value in this way.

If you booked a 7-day vacation cruise from Portland to Juneau and it laid up in an industrial port in Seattle for a day to take on drilling equipment, wouldn't you feel a bit gipped? Now, in the same scenario, if you booked yourself a tourist compartment on a freighter, you wouldn't feel gipped at all. If airlines want to give pax and freight equal priority, they need to advertise the service as such.

Now, from a shipper point of view, if I was shipping cargo and needed it to be there on time, I would send it with an air-freight oriented service like FedEx, DHL or, better yet, one of the many cargo operators. (I expect that some of these courier services are contracting with passenger flights to augment their capacity, but they must do this at their own risk, as passenger service must take priority).

Now the real world: I'm sure you are right and priority is actually assessed by amount of revenue involved, but this is why we need consumer protection regulations to prevent this practice from jeopardizing the service commitment to passengers.

But let's go a step further. Have you ever heard that a flight was overbooked? That they sold more tickets than seats available on the plane? That is done on a regular basis, and the reason is than statistically there will be at least x% of the passengers tha will not show. Most of the time it works, and every passenger that goes to the airport ends in a seat in the plane. Now, statistics also say that from time to time less than x% will not show, and this day you have more passengers for check-in that seats on the plane. I wonder what you have to say about that.

It stinks. It represents one of the most egregious examples of consumer transaction abuse, and it should be prohibited under consumer protection laws. Until you actually pay for a ticket, your reservation carries no guarantees on fare or availability. That's shady, but I can understand why they have to state this. But once you pay for the service, they should have to provide it for you on the flight listed on the invoice. And if the customer doesn't show up? Every other business has to take on a factor of risk, but in this case it is not even risk: the customer has already paid for the ticket (and if he/she has an option for change or cancellation at the last minute, that potential has also been priced into the fare). A no-show means only less MTOW and therefore less expense and more profit for the operator. In a best case scenario, no one would show up and they could fly cheap ferry flights with all that customer revenue. This is one of the most obvious places in which we need industry regulations.

The last time you put money in the bank (maybe the icon of free market) in your account, did the bank told you that they were lending it to the NINJAs (No Income, No Jobs or Assets), and that this policy could jeopardize the ability of the bank to return you the money when you claimed for it?

Again, not that I like it, but that's the way it is.

I think you're Argentine. I have Argentine friends who lost their savings in 2002, so I guess that's they way it is (or was) in Argentina. In the US, you are protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation up to $100,000. You see, federal consumer protections are a really good idea. Also, banks pay interest in return, and depositors are made perfectly aware that the bank is using their money to take on risk. Unfair analogy.

Now, of course you can imagine an airline that doesn't take cargo on passenger flights, and that never overbooks.

As I just replied to Peter, this kind of hyperbole is meaningless. I am not imagining extremes. I am saying: give priority to passenger service, provide adequate fuel to reach the destination in unfavorable conditions, then take on all the cargo you can. And that a seat purchased is a seat now owned on that flight by the passenger.

Just tell me which are those two airines so I'm sure I don't buy shares.

I wouldn't advise you to buy shares in the airlines as they are.

[Evan]

Thank you, Evan. I didn't know if it was possible for hail to form at that altitude in one of those massive storms.
Do you think it is possible that they may have encountered hail/heavy rain if they were decending? If they had stalled and were trying to restart if there was hail/heavy rain that would have significantly hampered their efforts, right? I'm assuming though that there have been changes to engine design since Southern 242.

It's certainly likely that they might have encountered severe weather in an emergency descent or a stall recovery effort, including hail and heavy precipitation, and even engine failure due to heavy water ingestion (especially at high power settings). It's not a primary factor of the crash, but it could be an ultimate factor. The thing we need to identify is the primary factor though.

One thing to consider is that, as much as I understand the weather descriptions in the BEA report, they were not flying above the weather (which was not possible), but in direct proximity to it, so if they had to descend and could maintain course, they would not necessarily be descending into weather. If they lost navigation and strayed into the CB's, that's a different story.

[Peter Kesternich]

I am saying: give priority to passenger service, provide adequate fuel to reach the destination in unfavorable conditions, then take on all the cargo you can. And that a seat purchased is a seat now owned on that flight by the passenger.

I hope you're still talking to me, Evan

Anyway - what you are saying here might be how the system could work in a perfect world. But then I honestly don't find so much wrong with how things are today. Nobody is making a secret out of practices like overbooking, putting cargo on passenger flights (and no airline ever claimed they would fly passengers only or advertised anything like that), or trying to save fuel. So I for my part do not feel deceived by anybody and I am quite happy to accept the system as it is. Because in the end all these practices benefit the passengers to some extent: they keep ticket prices down (and, as has already been covered here at quite some length, they are not unsafe).

I know you said that people will always pay the lowest price on offer and if the price goes up 15% they will pay 15% more. This is just not true. In many many cases, there's only so much money the average would-be passenger has to spend and for many of us, the alternative is just not to travel. It's a question of simple economics: If I have a fixed amount of money to spend for flights in a year and the prices go up, I will travel less - and we both lose, the airline (no booking - no revenue) and me (no flight - no vacation).

[Evan]

I hope you're still talking to me, Evan

Anyway - what you are saying here might be how the system could work in a perfect world. But then I honestly don't find so much wrong with how things are today. Nobody is making a secret out of practices like overbooking, putting cargo on passenger flights (and no airline ever claimed they would fly passengers only or advertised anything like that), or trying to save fuel. So I for my part do not feel deceived by anybody and I am quite happy to accept the system as it is. Because in the end all these practices benefit the passengers to some extent: they keep ticket prices down.

I know you said that people will always pay the lowest price on offer and if the price goes up 15% they will pay 15% more. This is just not true. In many many cases, there's only so much money the average would-be passenger has to spend and for many of us, the alternative is just not to travel. It's a question of simple economics: If I have a fixed amount of money to spend for flights in a year and the prices go up, I will travel less - and we both lose, the airline (no booking - no revenue) and me (no flight - no vacation).

[Off-Topic]

I don't mind a good debate. I just need my point of view to be free of distortion, which happens so often here.

Don't kid yourself, Peter, policies like overbooking and flight plan roulette are there to benefit only the company at the expense of customer service commitment. And customers do not set pricing, industrial pricing competition sets pricing. And, with a few exceptions, yours noted, most people will pay the extra 10%-20% if it is still the lowest published fare, because they depend on air travel for business and their vacations are worth the extra expense.

[/Off-Topic]

[Peter Kesternich]

[Off-Topic]

I don't mind a good debate. I just need my point of view to be free of distortion, which happens so often here.

Don't kid yourself, Peter, policies like overbooking and flight plan roulette are there to benefit only the company at the expense of customer service commitment. And customers do not set pricing, industrial pricing competition sets pricing. And, with a few exceptions, yours noted, most people will pay the extra 10%-20% if it is still the lowest published fare, because they depend on air travel for business and their vacations are worth the extra expense.

[/Off-Topic]

Hmmmmmm - then I really wonder where the boom in low cost carriers stems from... And if customers do not set pricing, why do airlines try to offer the cheapest fares possible? I doubt it's to do us any favors.

[Evan]

Hmmmmmm - then I really wonder where the boom in low cost carriers stems from... And if customers do not set pricing, why do airlines try to offer the cheapest fares possible? I doubt it's to do us any favors.

[Slightly off topic]

You're right about that. Low cost carriers are in the low-margin/high volume business, which has proven to be the ideal model for a lot of industries in this age. But you make a good point for me. Check a flight on a lost cost carrier any given day and it might be 7€ or it might be 70€. No one understands how these prices are set, least of all consumers.

Low-cost airline pricing is set by volume and margin. Here's how I imagine it works: Airline A has a $350 flight from JFK to CDG. Airline B wants to steal that route rather than share it, so they drill it down to $325. Airline A reacts by going to $310, and so forth until either airlines determines that the increase in volume no longer offsets the loss in margin. Then the price is set. But it doesn't end there, because Airline B is still not filling capacity, so Airline B starts cutting overhead instead of pricing, or looks for schemes to lower operating expenses, like hauling less fuel reserve. They look for alternate forms of revenue, like freight consignment, or selling more seats than they have. With these overhead offsets they can now lower to $299. They take out a big advertisement: "$299, Paris Await You!" Airline A foresees the threat, and is forced to follow Airline B in cost reduction measures to compete on advertised price. Throughout this process no one has consulted the public about whether they would prefer safety over price. The airlines know the public would rather pay more to be safe, but they can't afford to give up their price position. Only federal regulators can prevent this process from going too far.

Eventually, variable expenses rise, and so must the price. Airline B is reluctant to give up its low price position, so they start charging for baggage, meals, seat assignments, anything they can get away with. Relieved, Airline A follows suit. When this alone can no longer meet shareholder revenue requirements both airlines raise fares. The price goes to $399, and miraculously, volume does not fall off significantly because, when amortized into the entire cost of an average trip, $100 is insignificant for most people to postpone it (except in hard economic times, which will hurt airlines at any price). Nor is $200 too much, or $300 on trans-oceanic flights. In any case, Airline B will always take the lowest possible price position to achieve the highest pax volume while maintaining a certain margin of P/E for their shareholders.

[/Slightly off topic]

[Peter Kesternich]

Well - it's not that hard to understand how LCC prices are made, even for customers, but a discussion about that would really lead away from the topic of this thread.

Throughout this process no one has consulted the public about whether they would prefer safety over price. The airlines know the public would rather pay more to be safe, but they can't afford to give up their price position. Only federal regulators can prevent this process from going to far.

Well - I'm not sure I can see it that way. First of all, regulators already make rules so that flying is safe. Regulators also know about the what you call loopholes in the rules of calculating fuel on board.

But let's look at the AF447 accident in the light what you said in your previous posts (at least how I understood you):

The guys in the cockpit of AF447 press on into bad weather to save their company the expense of a tech stop. The plane goes down and Air France is facing a public relations nightmare that makes the Concorde crash look insignificant. So where is the gain in that?

While the airlines have an interest in cutting cost as far as possible, everybody knows that a crash and the cost involved will make the savings you can make operationally by cutting corners look like peanuts. So do you seriously think an airline will pressure its pilots into a behavior that is so un-economical?

[Evan]

But let's look at the AF447 accident in the light what you said in your previous posts (at least how I understood you):

The guys in the cockpit of AF447 press on into bad weather to save their company the expense of a tech stop. The plane goes down and Air France is facing a public relations nightmare that makes the Concorde crash look insignificant. So where is the gain in that?

While the airlines have an interest in cutting cost as far as possible, everybody knows that a crash and the cost involved will make the savings you can make operationally by cutting corners look like peanuts. So do you seriously think an airline will pressure its pilots into a behavior that is so un-economical?

The trouble is, the guys in the back office that are making these decisions don't recognize the danger they are creating (not even in hindsight), because to recognize this you have to see a much bigger picture and have a real grasp of both cause-and-effect and human factors. This is what the BEA and the NSTB are there for (and what the FAA used to be there for before they became a lapdog for the industry).

It is foolhardy. There's no gain in losing a flight, and there's probably no gain in having to make a technical stop either. Under the circumstances, the only possibility for gain might be in pressing on through the weather. Once again, I remind you that I don't think the pilots would do this unless the weather seemed within the aircraft's capabilities. But it is definitely safer to circumnavigate a system like this one if possible. If they had the necessary reserves, a little extra fuel burn is all they would have to lose, and they could still make Paris in the black.

[Jason]

So do you seriously think an airline will pressure its pilots into a behavior that is so un-economical?

put it this way: everything imaginable is possible.

[SYDCBRWOD]

The weather was dynamic, but not that dynamic, The cluster of CB's that AF447 flew directly into formed 1h 30 before they arrived, and there were clearly better places nearby to traverse the system (as others did).

You have proof of that do you?

I"m not claiming that they did the wrong thing by flying into it because I don't know how bad the weather was that they flew into and nothing concludes that weather alone brought the flight down. I'm questioning why they took the risk of flying directly into this cluster when they could have gone around it. Was it because they didn't see it as a threat, or was it because they lacked the fuel reserves to go around it without making a costly and disruptive technical stop in Bordeaux, or a little of both.

12 other flights shared more or less the same route that Flight 447 was using at the time of the accident.<sup>[41][42]

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

So all 12 of these crews were also playing some form of russian roulette with fuel? Could it be that you are reading too much into this? These poor buggers ran into an issue that bought down the plane. Maybe it was the probes, maybe ITS was right and the tail snapped off, maybe the pilots (being falible humans just screwed the pooch), maybe it was the weather that destroyed the plane - the point is nobody knows for sure. It is highly unlikely it was as a result of a gamble they were forced to make as a result of what you perceive to be a gamble on fuel.

I think we are back to the "Safety boats being provided so that no passenger dies withing 5Nm of any airport located next to the sea" debate. Even with the extra being paid be passengers for safety boats, extra being paid so that fuel is never a consideration in pilots decisions you are basically pricing air travel back to the 1950's and 60's. Numbers flying will drop, consequently costs will increase on top of what you believe is a reasonable increase, and before you know it we are looking at air tickets being 50% more than they are now. For what? We are already flying in the safest decade in air travel ever. It'd be nice to think we can achieve 0 fatalities (just like the authorities strive toward on Australian roads, yet realistically that will not be achieved without banning the car, truck, bicycle, etc.) There is a price to be paid for the convenience of travel. I don't see an alarming decrease in safety reflected in stats so this argument of yours is a non-event.</sup>

[SYDCBRWOD]

But it is definitely safer to circumnavigate a system like this one if possible. If they had the necessary reserves, a little extra fuel burn is all they would have to lose, and they could still make Paris in the black.

In flight planning before the flight, the crew would have seen this chain of pretty much unbroken weather right across their flightpath. How can you plan to circumnavigate a system like this without a detour via Africa? Particularly as the aircraft proably wouldn't even be able to manage the feat with ferry tanks and no pax or cargo? The weather is dynamic - they took off as did the other 12 flights on the same route knowing that the weather would get bumpy at some stage ahead. Probably relying on weather radar to assist picking the best route between the worst of the weather, and being able to get weather updates from other aircraft ahead enroute. I'm sure this wasn't the only time aircraft and aircrews faced this same type and extent of weather on this route. On this occasion something went wrong (we suspect the airplane encountered icing conditions in excess of the ability of the pitot heating systems/design of the probes that may have prevented them relaying correct flight data).

You are getting away from the real issue here which at this stage seems to be the Pitot/A330-200 combination - not any problems with flight planning. I'm sure other types (747's 777's L1011's etc) have flown that route through similar weather successfully and using similar fuel/payload tradeoffs.