Model Boat Mayhem
Mess Deck: General Section => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: slug on January 20, 2015, 02:59:24 pm
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latest info states that the plane climbed to fast at 6000 ft per minute...would the plane have enough power to climb at this rate?...or would it have to have a severe updraft like a tornado etc ??? regards tony
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No it doesn't, so it slowed down and stalled (this is the preliminary results that they are reporting at present).
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As a rough rule of thumb under normal conditions at 10,000ft an A320 can climb about 2,200 feet per minute, at 30,000ft that goes down to about 1,000 Feet per minute.
At the 38,000ft that the aircraft is reported to have been at I would have thought 8,000fpm would be at the top end of a reasonable estimate.
There's not much accurate information in the press about the speed of the aircraft or how long it maintained that rate of climb for , or it's actions before that so I think we need to wait for more details before things will become clearer.
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From these early reports there is a superficial similarity with the 2009 Flight 447 (South Atlantic) crash. Both aircraft went from steady, level flight into a climb resulting in a loss of airspeed until they stalled. (Simple conservation of energy - kinetic energy (speed) converted into potential energy (altitude) without a corresponding increase in engine power.) However, 447 was a prolonged, gradual process, whereas it sounds like this one (QZ8501) happened very quickly and probably for a different reason.
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An A320's, (or any aircraft for that matter) climb rate depends an many factors. Take off weight, airport altitude and temperature all have a bearing on the aircraft's performance, so until the data from the FDR and CVR is analysed, and a report released, we have no way of knowing what happened.
Peter.