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just brew it!
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France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 12:37 pm

Anyone else wondering if the autopilot somehow got disengaged (or they forgot to engage it) without this being noticed? Available evidence so far seems consistent with a normally functioning aircraft simply descending gradually into the side of a mountain.

I guess we'll know more once they read out the cockpit voice recordings and find the flight data recorder. Based on the aerial pictures of the crash site, it should not take them long to locate the FDR.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 12:45 pm

According to The Daily Mail they've yet to get anything from the CVR and the FDR is damaged with the memory card dislodged, so whether any data can be extracted is an open question.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 12:54 pm

Ahh, didn't realize they'd found the FDR. From the pictures I saw it didn't appear that there had been a massive fireball on impact though; given this there ought to be recoverable data on the chips even if the memory card is damaged.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 12:56 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Ahh, didn't realize they'd found the FDR.

Well, that's now being walked back. Probably should stick with the 48-hour rule.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 2:06 pm

Latest news is they extracted some audio from the cockpit voice recorder but found only the external frame of the flight data recorder. But a simple autopilot failure seems unlikely, the pilots would have received plenty of warning that their altitude was out of cruising range.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 2:09 pm

The airplane was reported as descending 3x more rapidly than a normal descent for the last 8 minutes of flight, so the crew should have noticed an autopilot malfunction immediately and had time to switch it off.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 3:18 pm

In any case these crashes are becoming way too frequent.

And they still haven't found that Malaysia flight.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 3:50 pm

I don't get what all the talk is about with crashing planes.

I'm just fine here in my seat and the view is great, plane is about to la
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 3:53 pm

French plane runs away into a mountain? Were Germans seen nearby, perhaps?
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 3:55 pm

In all seriousness now, it's amazing how much bad luck can come in one go. First the whole plane crash, and now the problems with the CVR and FDR. It's Murphy's law, applied to plane crashes :(
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:12 pm

I was hearing some talk, or speculation that the pilots were tunnel visioning on a potential issue and may have overlooked an even more serious situation that was occurring.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:27 pm

credible wrote:
I was hearing some talk, or speculation that the pilots were tunnel visioning on a potential issue and may have overlooked an even more serious situation that was occurring.


Sounds like the human condition, but yes... I agree... always see the bigger picture, that is my motto.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:32 pm

morphine wrote:
In all seriousness now, it's amazing how much bad luck can come in one go. First the whole plane crash, and now the problems with the CVR and FDR. It's Murphy's law, applied to plane crashes :(

Well, 400 knots into a granite wall tends to mess things up pretty seriously.

As for the FDR, the "found the frame but not the guts" was French President Hollande's statement and, at least when I left work, was still incorrect based on a quote from the lead investigator who let us know of the retrieved CVR data.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:28 pm

There are 2 black boxes, the CVR and the FDR. They have the CVR, the frame was bent and battered but the memory module was intact and they have read it out, now starting work on transcribing. They found the FDR frame but the memory module was missing from it.

The descent was rapid but controlled in that the speed remained within the plane's limits and the heading didn't change. It was about right for a rapid descent with the throttles closed and the speedbrakes deployed. N.B. This is different from an engine failure scenario, there you will push the other engine up and slowly drift down to the mid-20k ft flight levels depending on the plane's exact weight.

There are 2 current theories amongst the pilot community:
1) Explosive decompression, initiated rapid descent but lost conciousness from hypoxia and so didn't get to stop the descent. At 38000 ft you have seconds to get your mask on and breathing - probably 15 seconds to unconciosness. First step in decompression is for the pilots to fit their masks, and Lufthansa pilots (Germanwings is part of Luifthansa so the flight crew are Lufthansa trained) are some of the best trained so they likely should have done this first. Unfortunately hypoxia messes up your thinking, so maybe they didn't do the drill right? Or maybe there was a problem with the emergency oxygen supply?

2) Icing of the angle of attack sensors making the plane think it was in a stall attitude so it pushed the nose down. This happened to a Lufthansa A321 at the end of last year, they went down at the same rate but recovered it but shutting off those computers. This is less likely because a) this flight actually established itself level at 38000 ft for a minute before beginning the descent, b) the crew would have known about the earlier incident and how to recover from it, c) the angle of attack sensors on this plane had already been replaced with new ones that don't ice up in the same way.

Crew getting distracted isn't a good theory, there will be alarms going off for busting the flight level, shaking and noise from the speed brakes, ATC were calling them to find out why they were descending, procedure is to turn off the airway when descending with a problem to avoid hitting the planes beneath etc.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:33 pm

According to the latest findings, one of the pilots was locked out of the cockpit and trying to get in, while the other was in the cockpit.

So my guess it's probably a "simple" case of pilot suicide, or terrorism (doubtful).
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:39 pm

If you are a pilot, and you decide you want to check out in this way, please at least discuss it with the passengers first. Statistics say most are dbags, but not all are, and this is a particularly selfish and unfeeling thing, if suicide does turn out to be the cause. We now return you to your previous programming.
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Re: France plane crash

Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:53 pm

So there is evidence suggesting terrorism/suicide, and it wasn't the windscreen? I was hearing that windscreen broke/shattered, then the pilot in the cockpit passed out due to lack of oxygen, other pilot couldn't get back in. Result: tragedy.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 12:30 am

Forge wrote:
French plane runs away into a mountain? Were Germans seen nearby, perhaps?


lol It's actually a German plane that crashed into a French mountain.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:49 am

notfred wrote:
There are 2 black boxes, the CVR and the FDR. They have the CVR, the frame was bent and battered but the memory module was intact and they have read it out, now starting work on transcribing. They found the FDR frame but the memory module was missing from it.

This is what CNN says. BBC, OTOH, quotes the lead French investigator as saying none of the FDR has been located.

BBC wrote:
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 5:06 am

The Malaysian authorities handling of that air crash was very bad, that the French are making all the same mistakes regarding information correctness and distribution is downright bad. Doesn't anyone of those people check their facts anymore, seriously.

I won't speculate much as I am waiting for the French to get the story and facts straight. But it would not be the first time a major airliner crew failed to notice something disengaged the autopilot during a routine descent. There can also be other causes that cause the autopilot to disengage. But the end result is the flight crew always fails to notice and react in time. Such as this one in 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Ai ... light_1951 Pilots failing to notice the automation failing (or switching off for legitimate reasons) has been an ever increasing problem in the airline industry.

TwoEars wrote:
In any case these crashes are becoming way too frequent.


There is nothing increasing about the frequency. In fact the inverse is true. We simply hear about it a lot more in the modern era... and we are never taught about how frequent such events used to be to form a proper basis for comparison. :wink:

Just because you never hear about commercial plane crashes doesn't mean it never happened... or happened frequently. http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm There is a reason Air Crash Investigation is starting on its 15th season, with almost 130 episodes so far. 11 more are expected for the upcoming season.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 6:15 am

It seems to me that 2 data recorders is an archaic system. In this day and age there should be multiple data recorders (3, 4, 6...) on a plane. And all located around various places not just in the tail.
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 6:20 am

Kougar wrote:
The Malaysian authorities handling of that air crash was very bad, that the French are making all the same mistakes regarding information correctness and distribution is downright bad. Doesn't anyone of those people check their facts anymore, seriously.

It is unclear whether the bad information is coming from the French authorities or if it is due to sloppy reporting by the news media.

tanker27 wrote:
It seems to me that 2 data recorders is an archaic system. In this day and age there should be multiple data recorders (3, 4, 6...) on a plane. And all located around various places not just in the tail.

The tail section is the most likely to remain intact in a crash. I agree redundancy would be nice, and with modern electronics you wouldn't need to wire every sensor to every recorder, you could just have a data bus that runs from a central collection point to every recorder. (Redundancy probably wasn't practical in the past due to all the wiring that would've been needed.)
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 7:16 am

Well this mornings news cycle is reporting that it may have been a deliberate act on part of the 28 yr old Co-Pilot. :-?
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 7:20 am

tanker27 wrote:
Well this mornings news cycle is reporting that it may have been a deliberate act on part of the 28 yr old Co-Pilot. :-?

Which only the FDR will be able to confirm, short of an "Allahu Akbar" on the CVR. The BBC article I linked states that the plane was descending at the rate normal for airport approach, which is confusing in light of a deliberate action theory.
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:02 am

just brew it! wrote:
tanker27 wrote:
It seems to me that 2 data recorders is an archaic system. In this day and age there should be multiple data recorders (3, 4, 6...) on a plane. And all located around various places not just in the tail.

The tail section is the most likely to remain intact in a crash. I agree redundancy would be nice, and with modern electronics you wouldn't need to wire every sensor to every recorder, you could just have a data bus that runs from a central collection point to every recorder. (Redundancy probably wasn't practical in the past due to all the wiring that would've been needed.)
There are others on a modern airliner, its just the CVR and FDR are the 2 mandatory ones. Being mandatory then there are various rules about touching them so the company leaves them alone. Instead there's usually a Quick Access Recorder used by the company to check the performance of the aircraft and of the pilots (e.g. did they stuff up the landing and the aircraft needs to be checked for bent bits) plus the engines will have their own event recorders. You don't want data recorders off a single protocol bus, if that bus goes down you have no data.

This may yet be shown to not have been a deliberate act, the pilot could have suffered some kind of medical thing (not suicidal thoughts which are their own class of medical issues).
 
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:11 am

notfred wrote:
This may yet be shown to not have been a deliberate act, the pilot could have suffered some kind of medical thing (not suicidal thoughts which are their own class of medical issues).


All evidence I hear report of points to it being deliberate....the co-pilot apparently locking out the pilot from the cockpit. Co-pilot purposefully activating a descent while alone in the cockpit. It doesn't sound good.

Perhaps these things are being misinterpreted somehow. Whenever the pilot leaves the cockpit, is the cockpit locked automatically per security measures? I guess I could see the case of a medical issue not allowing the co-pilot to reopen the cockpit in that type of scenario.

These things never sound good though.....always make one think the worst, unfortunately.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:15 am

Oh yes, I agree that suicide looks the most likely, just cautioning that it isn't a slam-dunk yet.
 
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:23 am

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32063587

It's pretty chilling. RIP to the passengers and crew.
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:04 am

Sometimes I just hate being right.
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Re: France plane crash

Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:41 am

morphine wrote:
Sometimes I just hate being right.


Some people will always do things that make zero sense. But apparently it makes sense to them.

If you're going to commit suicide, why include hundreds of innocent people in on your own personal failings? Mental illness I suppose. Or the whole 'statement' thing is possible, whether political or religious.

Completely heart-breaking, regardless. The only thing that can make it worse is for it to go totally unexplained.

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