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Author Topic: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit  (Read 9211 times)

U-33

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #25 on: September 21, 2012, 05:45:49 pm »

Hi Mick,

No, never been yet...my lady lives in Richmond, just outside Vancouver, and my sister lives on Vancouver Island, place called Sidney. I'm going next year when she retires, plan is to spend a couple of months sightseeing over there, then back here, then decide where to live from there. I want to go live in Eire, she wants to live in the Lake District...we'll have fun deciding that one.

Rich
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irishcarguy

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #26 on: September 21, 2012, 05:57:19 pm »

If you are here for a couple of months you should come & visit Banff & Jasper National parks & the Rockies, they are a days drive east from Richmond, it is a nice drive & will give you some idea how big Canada is. I could meet you there & give you the cooks tour, I know the places like the proverbial back of my hand, I live only an hours drive east of Banff. Mick B.
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CF-FZG

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #27 on: September 21, 2012, 06:21:44 pm »

It was interesting to see that the Airbus didn't stall in the normal sense - the computers prevented that - it just didn't have any forward airspeed and fell out of the sky in a level attitude.

That is a stall in the conventional sense ok2

btw, if you read the accident report you'll see how much the aircraft pitched up and down and when it finally gave up due to lack of airspeed how it rolled over.

What you have to remember, is that these programmes are produced for entertainment - so they tend to omit quite important information that would appear 'boring' and go for the 'dramatic' approach instead.


Mark.
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CF-FZG

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #28 on: September 21, 2012, 06:40:36 pm »

Allegedly the most dangerous airline is Chinese where some of the repair work done is almost on a blacksmith level.

They're bad, but not the worst ok2

I believe that British Airway always had in flight data sent to a central control and now others do it to a larger or lesser extent, this could lead to making the so called "Black boxes", which are orange, obsolete.  But with the necessity of keeping aircraft in the air who is going to test everything.

Many airlines have a system like that - it was an optional fit earlier, and for many years is a standard fit.
You can't replace the FDR because the remote systems only work with a 'radio' link, and you need the facility to record data until the aircraft comes to a stop.
I'm not sure what you're implying with the last statement, but I can assure you that everything get tested on a regular basis, even though the systems are self testing and will report any errors both to the cockpit and base


There was a case of a conscience pilot who part way through the take off checklist had a fault light and decided to go back to have it repaired.  The fault was isolated and I think it was decided it was not urgent and they taxied back and carried on the pre flight check list where they had left off and forgot that they had put the flaps back to off position for the taxi / repair and went down the runway without the flaps in operation.  It was an MD11 and needs all the lift it can get to take off, so it crashed.

The same would apply to just about any airliner - pilot error.

It is interesting to note that the VC10 was up against the Boeing 707 and lost out. Less than a thousand VC 10's sold.  The British airline said it wanted a short take off aircraft so the VC 10 was designed that way.  The 707 has to have flaps etc to do normal take off, if the 2 aircraft were side by side and took off together the VC 10 would be at 1000 feet before the 707 left the ground.
But it meant that the 707 was more economical to run so that is where the airlines went.

The 707 was up against the Comet not the VC10.
The VC10 is way over-powered and can maintain 'high mach cruise' on one engine - that's why it's short field performance is so good.
The VC10 also has flaps, much more efficient flaps, but that's because it was designed later than the 707
The flaps used during take off had nothing to do with economy, and it was only 14p per passenger mile difference.

btw, the only airliner faster than a VC10 to cross the Atlantic was Concorde - a record it still holds today


All the above says that the aircrash investigations are one of the best factual progs on the box!

As I said in another post, too many inaccuracies in these programmes

Mark.
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CF-FZG

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #29 on: September 21, 2012, 06:44:07 pm »

As far as I know, ..........
I doubt whether real-time telemetry will ever be used with commercial aircraft, because a) there would be just too much of it, and b) there are places (over the middle of the oceans for example) that radio contact is non-existent.

Real time reporting is used - the subject aircraft of this crash had it.

Radio contact is available all over the world, (most modern aircraft use satellite communications) - it's a legal requirement ok2


Mark.
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CF-FZG

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #30 on: September 21, 2012, 07:07:55 pm »

For U33, since an Air Transat (Canadian) flight ran out of fuel because of an error in refuelling & had to glide to a safe landing on the Canary Islands on its way from Canada to the U/K, I believe all flights to & from U/K must at all times not be more than 2 hours flying time from land, I may have this wrong & I am sure someone on here will correct me if I am. The last time I flew to and from the U/K we were flying over the tip of Greenland for quite awhile. Our present Government has changed the law on maintenance checks to a voluntary system & the opinion of the pilots is that this has created a situation of an accident waiting to happen. In investigations it is easy to blame the pilots when they are dead & cannot defend them selves. In the case of 737's they had lots of problems with the rudder for a long time and knew it but did not have a fix & had at least 3 major crashes where all aboard were killed & still they allowed them to carry on flying, a case of greed & profit over safety and governments not doing their job looking after their people. In the case of the Airbus I think you will find there is no direct link from the cockpit to the control surfaces, it is all done by computers but has as many as 5 separate systems on each control surface, if I am wrong please correct me but that is my understanding of it. Mick B.  

Mick,

The Air Transat incident was caused by a fuel leak due to maintenance error on another system.  I think the 'out of fuel' incident you're thinking of was an Air Canada aircraft that ran out of fuel at an altitude of 41,000 feet (12,500 m) ASL, about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton via Ottawa. The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to an emergency landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former Royal Canadian Air Force base in Gimli, Manitoba.[.

It's called ETOPS, (short for Extended OPerationS), and applies to all aircraft of all nations with 2 engines. They are basically the amount of time an aircraft can be from an airport, (depending on rating), which means a twin engined aircraft with an ETOPS 120 rating can fly any route as long as it's no more than 120 minutes from an airfield.  Certain engines have a higher rating - e.g. a RR RB211 might have a ETOPS 180 rating.

With reference to the 737 rudder, most airliners have multiple restrictions within the flight envelope that are known about - these are covered in the operating manual as a restriction to certain maneuvers - e.g. the A300 had a restriction on operating the rudder to full deflection above a certain speed, i.e. don't do it or you'll rip the vertical tail off, it didn't stop a American pilot who decided he knew better - end result, a big smoking hole in New York with several hundred fatalities :((

All Airbus except the early A300s and the A380 have a fly by wire control system with triple hydraulic actuators on each surface, (the aircraft have 3 hydraulic systems - usually 2 engine driven and 1 emergency system usually battery powered or driven by the RAT), the A380 is different in that it only has 2 hydraulic systems and twin actuators on each surface, which have their own 'backup system' and each surface is split into at least 2 sections giving much higher redundancy :-))

Mark.
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irishcarguy

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #31 on: September 21, 2012, 07:40:58 pm »

Hi Mark, it was the wrong pump that was fitted in the case of Air Transat, I think you will find that they were transferring fuel from one tank to another & they were actually pumping it into thin air. The Gimbli landing was caused by a mix up in imperial to metric calculations. At the time it was the longest glide ever by a passenger plane, it may still be.The pilot was fired at first but after much protest he was reinstated & considered a hero. That happened just a short distance from where I lived at the time. We used to race on the track there. Thanks for the Airbus information, I did know that there was no manual connection from the cockpit to the surface controls. Mick B.
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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #32 on: September 21, 2012, 08:18:17 pm »


Do any big planes have any form of direct manual linkage these days?
Surely the control surfaces would be just too big....
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irishcarguy

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #33 on: September 21, 2012, 08:24:14 pm »

Yes they do Martin, I can't name which ones but Boeing continued with manual linkages long after Airbus  went to fly by wire. The manual systems are aided by hydraulic or electrical assistance, just like power steering in a car. Mick B.
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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #34 on: September 21, 2012, 08:32:02 pm »

 
                 :o
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CF-FZG

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #35 on: September 21, 2012, 09:27:46 pm »


Do any big planes have any form of direct manual linkage these days?
Surely the control surfaces would be just too big....


If you mean, (and I'm using B737 and A320 as the smallest ones and their respective 'bigger brothers' to answer your question), do any modern airliners have a direct mechanical link between the stick/pedals and the control surfaces, then the answer is no.  Where Boeing have a mechanical linkage, it's only to the actuator not the control surface.  To use Mick's analogy of the power steering on a car, then it's powered steering not power assisted steering - if the power steering pump fails, then you can't turn the steering wheel.

As you surmised, the surface are too big to allow manual control.

On the B777 and, IIRC 737NG and 747-8, they use fbw to link the stick/pedals to the actuators, (the same as Airbus).  However, while Airbus allows the flight control system to fly the plane within 'hard limits', Boeing only has these as 'soft limits' the pilots can over-ride them in an emergency.


Mark.
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NFMike

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2012, 10:03:05 pm »

Real time reporting is used - the subject aircraft of this crash had it.

Radio contact is available all over the world, (most modern aircraft use satellite communications) - it's a legal requirement ok2

Ah, I thought so. I recalled that not long after 447 disappearing they 'knew' something about it's path and conditions from satellite data. Just not enough to pin everything down.

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #37 on: September 21, 2012, 10:08:03 pm »

I did a bit of research (mainly Wikipedia) about ETOPS after a recent trip to the US. Fascinating.

Jet engine turbines are now so reliable that twin engine aircraft trying to get a higher ETOPS time/range now have two sets of auxiliaries on the engine (oil pumps and the like) as they are more likely to fail than the actual engine. So different versions of the same engine may exist - for ETOPS or not.

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Re: Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit
« Reply #38 on: September 21, 2012, 10:18:21 pm »

What you have to remember, is that these programmes are produced for entertainment - so they tend to omit quite important information that would appear 'boring' and go for the 'dramatic' approach instead.

This was what I wondered about with this programme. They certainly painted a picture of aircrew error, but at the end seemed to say that the official inquiry had more or less exonerated them, which was a bit odd.
But the captain's comment about "We won't let a bit of cumulus worry us" (apparently referring to cumulonimbus ahead) had me covering my eyes and weeping - the aero equivalent of the Titianic. Or was that a misrepresentation of what was really said? (It was being translated from French.)
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