I'm sorry to be naive here, but don't planes fly high above thunderstorms? I understand at take off and landing it's an issue but this was in between either and should have been at a way higher altitude. Or that is my understanding. Feel free to school me. tks
Hi Schmae!!
Our media are at it again! And yuk this means Richard West is coming oh no! Help.
Interestingly media is bringing in ML370. IMO.There are no comparisons to the two incidents whatsoever. Night and day. This is starting to look much like Air France.
The headlines coming out of that region of the world the last month have been monsoons! Rain – very very bad weather. Its going to be weather initiated event.. But there are some caveats here. Both today and Air France the aircraft involved (different models) were manufactured by Airbus.
Boeing is their biggest competitor. When Airbus designed this series, they went into this concept they call the “glass cockpit”. Did not like the idea of it when they first started. Basically, Airbus design strategy was that since the majority of aviation disasters have a human component mixed in they were going to use technology in an effort to address the human component.
Boeing refused to take the flight crew out of the cockpit in emergencies. Airbus designed to make the plane have the final authority when flight parameters go out of norm.. The debut flight of this technology, in front of the entire globe, crashed in front of spectators, with media aboard (survived amazingly) because the computers would not obey the pilot – based on design.
All airbus aircraft are flown with a little 8 inch joy stick like your kids use on XBOX or whatever! Pic
In Air France, basically they encountered turbulence, the computers responded erroneously because an instrument was blocked, think speedometer in your car, if your speedometer is “reading” your slowing down, when in reality you are speeding up you have some problems.
In additional, the driver in the car or in the plane has its own perceptions and sensations of what is happening. No matter what your speedometer is saying your “feel” like you are speeding up, but it is saying the opposite, your natural inclination mentally is to try and slow your car, no matter what instruments are saying.
But in Air France (Using Air France cause the similarities are striking) same thing. So the computer was doing the opposite of what the flight crew wanted the aircraft to do as it relates to climbing or descending. Then what the pilots were trying to do to correct did not make sense – the body sensations etc did not match what they were “doing” and how the aircraft was responding. The alarms going off, based on wrong info, confused the poor guys even more. They ran out of sky to figure out what the heck was going on, why what they were telling the airplane to do. It was pilot error BUT humans need time to “overcome” sensations IMO.
In essence if you feel like your speeding up when really slowing down and you put on the brakes instead of the gas your going to get the exact opposite of what you perceive you need to be doing to avoid crashing.
I think that is what happened here. They got into inclement weather, freezing likely, (icing messes up the airplanes version of a speedometer). When an aircraft losses a specific amount of speed/forward motion, the wings can no longer lift the plane or keep it airborne. It stalls. So speed is vital. I think they stalled the airplane while trying to deal with the horrible weather, start a climb, were hit with a downdraft and began a battle with the aircraft.
Unconfirmed reports indicate they had it on radar for a while after lost actual contact which would, at least for some period of time indicate an intact aircraft (not initially destroyed at onset of event).
CNN comparing to MAL is just silly. From the get go. I think we all would agree that a compact car accident is, in and itself different than an 18 wheeler truck crash. MAL 370 size wise, is an 18 wheeler heavy load. This aircraft is a cute little VW bug!
There was no weather issue MAL. compared to severe weather issues with today. Just IMO !
"Speedometer on planes. IF tip gets blocked wrong speed given to comptuers
Here is the joystick all Airbus aircraft are flown with
Images Goggle
AIrbus notions about the glass cockpit and its implications:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cockpit
Here is worlds first view of the glass cockpit!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cv2ud1339E
