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BREAKING: EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar

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  • #76
    Originally posted by brianw999 View Post
    I'm going to be very simplistic here.
    "There's no smoke without fire". An old but very true saying. There does not necessarily need to be flames present for there to be a fire. Wires and instruments can be damaged by heat to an extent where they no longer operate as required.
    I don't know if the avionics bay of an Airbus is pressurised or not but if it is not then there are there are three things needed for fire to exist. HEAT, FUEL (the wires etc) and OXYGEN. At 37,000 feet there is not a lot of oxygen around. Descend to 12,000 feet and you introduce the final requirement for fire, and by that I mean big, in your face flames to be present. Now, what was previously a smouldering component at 37,000 feet becomes a rapidly spreading fire accelerant.

    The result is sadly currently sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
    The Electronics bay is pressurized. So in normal cruise conditions, it would have air with an O2 partial pressure as if you were at 8000ft. You would need to depressurize the plane to "climb" the cabin altitude to 37000 ft, and then you would need to provide O2 to the pax. The amount of O2 flowing through the masks is small, and it will dilute in the general cabin air to levels well below those available at "breathable" altitudes (otherwise instead of masks you would just release the O2 in the cabin). And further, depending the airflow inside the cabin, the slightly "enriched" air may never reach the place where the combustion is occurring. SO I guess that from a "fire" point of view. depressurizing and releasing the masks would be better than descending. But that buys you only so many minutes, because the O2 in the masks last only 15 minutes, so you will NEED to start an emergency descent anyway until 10 minutes or so, or you will kill your pax due to O2 deprivation.

    All that said... Evan has a very good point about smoke.

    --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
    --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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    • #77
      Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
      ....................SO I guess that from a "fire" point of view. depressurizing and releasing the masks would be better than descending. But that buys you only so many minutes, because the O2 in the masks last only 15 minutes, so you will NEED to start an emergency descent anyway until 10 minutes or so, or you will kill your pax due to O2 deprivation......
      Hence my "Catch 22" comment. My heart goes out to the flight crew. It must be totally soul destroying to work your butt off trying to fix the situation with the gnawing knowledge that you are most likely still going to die along with your passengers whatever you do.
      If it 'ain't broken........ Don't try to mend it !

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      • #78
        Originally posted by brianw999 View Post
        Hence my "Catch 22" comment. My heart goes out to the flight crew. It must be totally soul destroying to work your butt off trying to fix the situation with the gnawing knowledge that you are most likely still going to die along with your passengers whatever you do.
        I share your sentiments but...
        This isn't necessarily the case here.
        There may be things that the crew may have done wrong and against the established procedures, and that had they done it correctly the outcome may have been much more benign.
        Yes, a lot of "may" there. But... I don't recall a case with smoke, but there were several cases with loss of cabin pressure where the crew, even aware of the situation, didn't don the masks as the first step and started troubleshooting instead. In particular, I very well remember one case where the senior Captain, senior Flight Engineer (it was a 727), and senior Purser were all piled up unconscious in the cockpit, while the junior FO, just out of the flight school, was the only one who followed the procedures, donned his mask immediately, remained conscious, descended the plane, and saved the lives of everybody aboard, including these three senior crew members who quickly regained consciousness after the plane descended low enough.

        As you know, toxic fumes can leave you impaired in seconds (and shortly thereafter, unconscious and then dead).

        --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
        --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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        • #79
          Originally posted by James Bond View Post
          Depends on the batteries. Could be as little as 20 days if they haven't been replaced recently.

          I'm hoping Airbus/Boeing will go with this option. Looks good on paper.

          I worked on deployable FDRs in the 70s (for both aircraft and submarines). One minor problem with deployable recorders is that they can float away from an ocean crash site.

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          • #80
            Originally posted by EconomyClass View Post
            BBC report says there is a very deep trench in the Mediterranean where the plane went down. Makes me wonder: How long will the locator beacons sound off this time? They stopped way too early with AF447. Still 30 days?
            I have sailed round the Med 1nm out of port and the depth sounder just shows E.
            Between Crete and Egypt it is particularly deep 3000m+. Not just a trench.

            Attached Files

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            • #81
              Egypt saying the aircraft did not turn
              EgyptAir: Crashed flight MS804 'did not swerve'
              An EgyptAir flight that crashed in the Mediterranean was not seen to swerve and change direction, an Egyptian official says, contradicting a Greek version.


              Very odd. I know Greek military has very good primary radar cover because of all the incursions.


              Someone has misinterpreted their data.

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              • #82
                IF this turns out to be an in-flight fire ignited by an arcing circuit, the question will become: why did the CB's not prevent this? The same question arose after SwissAir 111. There are arcing events that current CB's can miss:

                Two of the PSU cables (exhibits 1-3790 and 1-3791) had arcing events that did not trip the associated CB. It is most likely that the CBs did not trip because the electrical characteristics of the arcs were outside the defined Time versus Current curve. Conventional aircraft CB technology can provide protection against hard short-circuit faults, but is limited in that it does not adequately protect against the full range of arc faults.
                Another factor is that, as CB's age, long periods of inactivity can cause the CB’s trip characteristics to change with time. They might no longer trip as efficiently.

                According to both the FAA and the Society of Automotive Engineers, this CB aging phenomenon can be prevented by the periodic cycling of the CB mechanism. Despite such recommendations, aircraft maintenance programs do not typically include a requirement to “exercise” CBs on a periodic basis.
                There is a new type of CB, the Arc Fault Circuit Breaker (AFCB), being introduced to deal with this problem. But there is still the problem of weak certification standards:

                Significant research and development has been done in recent years to quantify and address the inherent limitations of existing aircraft CB design. This work has resulted in a new type of CB known as the AFCB, capable of reacting to a wider range of arc fault situations. The AFCB will prevent an arc fault from developing into a more serious situation that could damage other nearby wires and will limit the energy available to ignite flammable materials. While the AFCB trip characteristics will provide major improvements over the traditional aircraft CB design, these devices will not be certified to a standard that will require that the AFCB trips prior to the ignition of nearby flammable material. The Board is concerned that unless this aspect of the design specifications is addressed, AFCBs certified for use on aircraft will be capable of remaining energized long enough to ignite nearby flammable material.
                Since an inaccessible in-flight fire is one of the worst scenarios any pilot will ever encounter, a harder line on certification standards for fire prevention seems completely reasonable.

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                • #83
                  Does anyone know if the made any manouveres like course or altitude adjustment just before the hard turn reported by the greeks ?

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                  • #84
                    The aliens did it, ask the Turks!

                    Was it aliens or an insider job? Conspiracists are already on the case as to why the plane crashed
                    Last edited by vaztr; 2016-05-24, 11:05. Reason: Added the Turks

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                    • #85
                      EgyptAir crash: official says human remains suggest blast on plane: not wreckage of the plane, but body parts!
                      Egyptian investigator says ‘logical explanation is that it was an explosion’ after examining remains at Cairo morgue, but forensics head issues denial

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                      • #86
                        Appears to be nonsense. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36366600

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                        • #87
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                          Originally posted by Thom View Post
                          Does anyone know if the made any manouveres like course or altitude adjustment just before the hard turn reported by the greeks ?
                          The official, Ehab Azmy, who is head of Egypt's state-run provider of air navigation services, told the Associated Press that the plane had been flying at its normal height of 37,000ft (11,280m) before dropping off the radar.
                          Vs
                          Greece's defence minister Panos Kammenos had said the radar showed the Airbus A320 making two sharp turns and dropping more than 25,000ft (7,620m) before plunging into the Mediterranean Sea.

                          Seems to me that one radar captured more data. It is unlikely that the Greek radar would give such a specific misread.

                          Edit: is it possible the Egyptian authorities are looking at SSR data?

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                          • #88
                            OMG the Egyptian authorities are acting as bad as the Indonesians...

                            Greeks say plane made course adjustments - Egyptians deny this (Greeks, to their credit, don't say another word)
                            Egyptian official says 'explosion likely' - another says too early to tell
                            Now reports that the crew were in radio contact about smoke/fire on board from French news source (no data to back this up yet) - Egyptians denying this also

                            All this too'ing and fro'ing shows a complete lack of professionalism from the Egyptian authorities - They would do as well if they followed all the speculation on this site - in fact I believe that some comments on this site are worth more than lots we have heard from the Egyptian authorities so far

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                            • #89
                              Originally posted by vaztr View Post
                              All this too'ing and fro'ing shows a complete lack of professionalism from the Egyptian authorities - They would do as well if they followed all the speculation on this site - in fact I believe that some comments on this site are worth more than lots we have heard from the Egyptian authorities so far
                              They're still saying EgyptAir 990 was a mechanical failure in 2016.

                              At this stage if it doesn't come from BEA/NTSB then I would automatically question it.
                              AirDisaster.com Forum Member 2004-2008

                              Originally posted by orangehuggy
                              the most dangerous part of a flight is not the take off or landing anymore, its when a flight crew member goes to the toilet

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                              • #90
                                Originally posted by Quench View Post
                                [ATTACH=CONFIG]6387[/ATTACH]
                                If your diagram and comments are accurate, I'd comment that making an 'exact' 90 degree turn and an 'exact' 360 seems pretty un-coincidental. No clue what their intent might be, but not too hard to come up with speculation that they may have been 'in control' and maneuvering for some sort of 'preferred' landing spot.
                                Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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