Air France plane lost: Gordon Brown fears Britons were on board – Telegraph Two-engines, fly-by-wire, short-circuit. This is a formula for disaster.
The Prime Minister said that he feared that there were Britons on board the Airbus A330 which dropped off the radar after hitting turbulence over the Atlantic.
Air France officials said privately that they had “no hope” for Flight 447 which lost contact with air traffic control part way into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
As the Brazilian air force mounted a search and rescue operation in the waters around the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, families of passengers gathered at a crisis centre in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport awaiting news.
The Foreign Office said it was “urgently” seeking news on whether there were any Britons on board.
Mr Brown said: “I do fear that there may be some British citizens on board.”
Although the airline said that it could not rule out terrorism, the indications pointed to a serious electrical short circuit which crippled the jet after it passed through storms near the equator.
related link:
Airbus Safety Record
Then there is this:
Probably the most memorable A320 crash to experts was the June 26th 1988 one when an Air France A320 crashed during an air show in France, killing 3 passengers. Officially the crash was blamed on pilot error, many questions remained unanswered including a bizarre development where Switzerland’s institute of forensic evidence and criminology determined that the plane’s flight data recorder had been substituted after the crash, placing doubt on the entire investigation.
And yes, this article is not about the 330. It’s about Airbus ethics.
Jumping to conclusions about things you know little about is a formula for a blog post.
All large aircraft are fly-by-wire.
Accidents happen. Flying is still the safest way to travel.
Massive electrical failure or explosion.
Very sad news. Hope the 228 souls find FL Infinity..
Read a suspected lightning strike…I would guess that these sorts of Big Electrical Zap events were taken into account by the Air Bus fly-by-wire engineers.
Isn’t this an “act of God”? Perhaps DHS should add God and anyone associated with him to the list over wanted terrorists?
I sincerely doubt this A330 accident has anything to do with the fly-by-wire control systems.
This flight was trying to fly through a strong line of thunderstorms and unless this is another case of a weird in-flight fire like the one that downed Swissair 111, I’m more inclined to think the aircraft had an in-flight structural failure caused by extreme turbulence during operation in an area of avoidable hazardous weather. Or, it’s another ADIRU incident.
[tinfoilhat] More importantly, who was on that plane? 🙂 [/tinfoilhat]
The US national past-time isn’t baseball.
It’s criticize things you don’t know about.
It’s all somewhat fly by wire on big aircraft.
Do you have enough strength in your legs to
deflect that massive rudder with toes? When
it’s being blaster by a 300 knot airstream?
NancyDisgrace
+1
#6 Just remember that god is dog spelled backwards, so maybe we should include dogs on that list.
I don’t understand. Don’t planes have backup transponders? Black boxes? Etc etc?
NancyDisgrace
+1 also.
And I hate Nancy too.
So, does anyone know: Does Boeing produce “fly-by-wire” craft? If they steered clear of that technology, it could ne a selling point.
So let’s start speculating about something you clearly know little about, on an incident in which hardly any facts are known.
Really disgusting reporting, I expect better.
@ #13
Mr. Dvorak cites an incident involving a failure of fly by wire flight control systems that occurred OVER TWENTY YEARS ago. The FACT is that fly-by-wire is demonstrably safe as well as redundant on multiple levels.
The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner is fly-by-wire. The Boeing 777, listed in the linked article as the safest airliner in the skies is…..FLY BY WIRE.
So let’s cut all this speculative crap and wait for the results of the investigation.
For the sake of the victims and their families.
just reading about this on the internet, brazil looking for downed aircraft that could be closer to africa? somebody asleep at the switch?
# 16 budcanman said, “just reading about this on the internet, brazil looking for downed aircraft that could be closer to africa?”
Based on the data to hand, how could it have been closer to Af than Brazil?
Paddy-O (#17),
First sentence – http://tinyurl.com/l9ggom
Also, French recon left from Africa – http://tinyurl.com/m84hpw
i just know that the brazilian air force had last contact according to the report i read. brazilian air force. hhmm. congures up some interesting mental pictures. little for you, alot for me. and a little more for you, lots more for me.
I would hazard the guess that every airliner produced today utilizes fly-by-wire, be it Airbus or Boeing. And a lightning strike by itself should not result in the loss of an aircraft, be it fly-by-wire or not. Strikes are common enough for the engineers to have anticipated the occurrence and tested for them.
I just hope that the voice and data recorders can be located and recovered so an adequate investigation can occur.
Pan Am Flight 214 in 1963 answers questions about lightning and aircraft – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_214
Even if all electrics are lost, the pilot can still use cable controlled pitch trim and hydraulic rudders for very limited control.
However we dont know what kind of weather this crew was encountering at the Intertropical Convergence Zone (birthplace of hurricanes).. and this water was heated through the day and night had set in, ripe for big cumulonimbus formations.
Things could have gotten out of hand quickly flying without electrics, without weather radar into a 60,000ft cumulonimbus formation, walled 500 miles wide – no way above, under or around it.
gee… If only Alfred1 were here to weigh in and set things straight…
#8 On aircraft utilizing non-fly by wire systems the inputs on the controls are still assisted by hydraulics. Five pounds of pressure on any control would result in 50/500/5000 lbs being applied to the flaps/rudder/etc.
Actually it was a collision with a UFO, now go ahead and prove it wasn’t!
Speculation about something like this is ridiculous until they find the wreckage and examen it.
Excellent point. Any investigation by, or sponsored by Airbus should heavily scrutinized.
It’s sad that the 1988 crash data recorder issue still hasn’t been investigated.
The speculation that the aircraft was in turbulent weather reminded me of this crash in 2001. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587
Airbus 300 instead of 330 but still was interesting to me.
# 24 Cap’nKangaroo said, “#8 On aircraft utilizing non-fly by wire systems the inputs on the controls are still assisted by hydraulics.”
Correct. B-52s come to mind. They are certainly “large” aircraft.
Folks, John is only being patriotic here… trying to make Airbus look bad, and Boeing look good.
Nothing to see here…hey look over there!
Also vulnerable in the event of electrical failure is the instrumentation. When glass cockpits go dark you’re left with nothing. Gone are the days when you could pull flashlights out of your bag and make due. (Unless your carrier was feeling generous and sprang for the optional backup mechanical instrumentation.) You can’t keep a Cessna 172 straight and level in the clouds with only the seat of you pants, much less an airliner.