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.
# 59 Uncle Patso said, “it’s only about 50 minutes flying time after the plane leaves Brazil Air Traffic Control before it flies into Senegal ATC. Of course, it’s late and I could be mistaken.”
That doesn’t have direct relation to actual physical distance from the conts…
# 55 Tomas said, “#51. Um GPS? Satellite tracking.”
Umm, that isn’t what is used in cell phones to track. Cell towers are needed. You DO know how your cell phone sends and receives calls/data?
Brazilian ATC is notoriously bad – FWIW.
All large aircraft are not fly-by-wire. The older A300 and A310 did not have it. All Airbuses since the A320 have it. Only the Boeing 777 has fly-by-wire. All other Boeings have a physical connection from the pilot’s controls back to the flight control surfaces called fly-by-cable. They allow the pilot to still control the aircraft in the event of a total power failure. Say that last sentence three times. There are many people that have disagreed with the implimentation of a 100% fly-by-wire system for passenger carrying aircraft. Saying “there has never been a loss of an aircraft due to the failure of a fly-by-wire system yet” is the same thing as saying “It hasn’t happened yet”. With all our collective engineering ability I’m still dumbfounded as to why a hybrid system was not implimented. Probably because of cost. Just too expensive to maintain and to add because of weight. It’s all about the money now a days. Forget building the safest plane possible. We build to a price point and fly-by-cable took one for the team. Think that’s wrong? Airbus A380 facts- Only two thrust reversers instead of 4. Two much weight. Vertical stabilizer too small for the aircraft’s size. A computer HAS to control the aircraft because if pilots were actually connected to the vertical stabilizer via fly-by-cable it would have to be larger, which would have cost more money in fuel burn. Wing root fairings/belly skins are welded, not riveted. Save money up front, but wow, how do you maintain something like that? I don’t ever want to fly on an Airbus A380, thank you very much. I’ll take anything with fly-by-cable though.
# 66 m25 said, “Vertical stabilizer too small for the aircraft’s size.”
Umm, no. The 20 has enlarged over the 300 model because it is shorter than the 300. Where are you getting your info?
Wasn’t the Buffalo crash caused by the pilot overriding
the de Havilland’s autopilot?
I have a couple of suggestions that are unlikely, but it seems we are in the business of putting forward unlikely suggestions.
The crash happened on the same day that Emirates Air made its inaugural A380 flight from Dubai to Toronto (fill in your own scenario).
Atmospheric conditions may have exceeded (even just briefly) the A330’s design capacity. In which case “Global Climate Change” may be a cause of the crash. Look, JCD’s turning blue!
Thanks to all the posters in this thread, educated and ignorant, smart and stupid. I think I learned a lot!
some yahoos in the navy were probably tweaking the steering and power levels of the HAARP arrays and needed a test subject.
and/or we need to examine the passenger list for potential “lose ends”
militaries around the world have been playing with this technology since the 60’s -most likely an art unto itself by now.
-s
They found debris, about where they thought it would be.
This plane was recalled by god. There is no other explination for its sudden loss. I have prayed for the victims
I think Shane is wrong, I doubt god would want to do this, seems more like an accident to me. Why would god want to destroy this plane?
I agree with Shane and belive this was planned by a higher power. I have been an atheist all my life until this happened. Its almost impossible for this to have happened.
Im not a fan of random speculation and I don’t belive in a greater power but im quickly changing my mind to meet the general concensus on this one. A330’s don’t just fall out of the sky and even Boeing say this accident is impossible. So it must have been god. Allahu Akbar
Have been talking about this to some airframe engineers at Stansted:
“if it wasn’t a bomb, Airbus could be in deep trouble”
“planes get struck by lightning all the time – it often does no damage at all – to take a plane out completely, without the time to send a Mayday – nothing close to that has ever happened before”
“if the composites have failed – jeez – it’s not like you can change a part or bolt a bit on – it would be like the Comet – you’d have to take the planes out of service”
“hope to god they find out before we lose another one”
#75
In my calculations “it must have been god” accompanied by “Allahu Akbar” equals terrorists.
So it was a mujahedin’s holy bomb after all?
Ha, who would knew 😉
If you search the news, the wreckage has been located…NOW to find it on the bottom..
“floating debris is spread out in two areas about 35 miles apart,”
As I correctly guessed above. Mid air explosion or break up at high altitude.
777Driver should know that the 777 flaperons and stabilizer pitch trim are both operated by good old fashioned mechanical cables strung up to the flight deck, in the event the fly-by-wire is completely overwhelmed by, say, a powerful ground radar transmitter. And those cables mechanically operate valves to control hydraulic pressure to the flight surface actuator. The 737 was the last plane where the flight surfaces could be directly operated by control cables, minus hydraulics and minus fly-by-wire.
I would not be surprised if severe lightning fried the A330 fly-by-wire, but that may not explain the sudden depressurization.