Air France Crash (2009): Investigators homing in on black boxes

[Richard_Pearse]

True.

[Boyo_Jim]

@Richard_Pearse

The problem with long haul flying, or any flying really, is that you spend a lot of time at a low state of arousal. …

I’ve been saying for years that transoceanic flights need a fluffer assigned to them!

[user_hostile]

Or snakes on a plane…

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@Magiver

…The 3 most important things to be aware of in a cockpit is airspeed, airspeed and airspeed…

Realtors say something like that, but not quite.

I’m guessing altitude and fuel are in the top five at least, right?

[RandMcnally]

@Elendil_s_Heir

Realtors say something like that, but not quite.

I’m guessing altitude and fuel are in the top five at least, right?

Well, you can trade airspeed for altitude.

[Broomstick]

Or the reverse…

[ElvisL1ves]

@Magiver

I don’t think it mattered. They probably had every warning buzzer and light going off at once or in such a rapid succession that it closed that small time window needed to stabilize the air speed.

But they had plenty of altitude to fix that problem, if they’d been able to recognize stall warnings, or even a dangerous combination of attitude and power.

You’re right about the suddenness of the problem making it difficult to address the problem, but basic aviating instincts should have taken over, even if they had just been woken from a sound sleep.

The 3 most important things to be aware of in a cockpit is airspeed, airspeed and airspeed.

The joke is that “I ran out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas at the same time”.

[Musicat]

The three most important things about flying, in order of importance:[ol][]Aviate[]NavigateCommunicate[/ol]

[Zebra]

@Magiver

I’d hate to have to be the one to listen to the cockpit voice recorder. That would be like living through your worst nightmare.

There was a play in NYC a few years ago where the script were transcripts from black boxes. They did a few where the pilots did manage to correct and bring the plane in safely. One actor just did the alarm voices. “pull up, pull up, pull up”

[Elendil_s_Heir]

I once read that “Oh, shit” is the most common thing last heard on CVRs.

[JRDelirious]

@Elendil_s_Heir

I once read that “Oh, shit” is the most common thing last heard on CVRs.

I’ve often suspected that sometimes when transcripts read: “(garbled, unintelligible)” it means that.

[RandMcnally]

I’ve had to listen to the last minutes of flights before, as a type of “lessons learned” thing for the Air Force. Yeah, they’re horrid. I mean, they offer a lot of insight into what not to do, and they’re really captivating because you know that in ten seconds they’re hitting a mountain or whatever, but it still sucks.

[Boyo_Jim]

I just read a story on the last moments of the space shuttle Challenger where it was stated the last thing picked up by the cockpit recorder was, “Uh oh”. Some of the crew survived long enough to have said more while they were free falling through the ocean, but either the recorder failed or they’ve never released more.

[Broomstick]

@Elendil_s_Heir

I once read that “Oh, shit” is the most common thing last heard on CVRs.

@JRDelirious

I’ve often suspected that sometimes when transcripts read: “(garbled, unintelligible)” it means that.

Nope, where there is swearing they edit it as [expletive]. If the transcript says “unintelligible” that’s what it was.

I have had the distinct displeasure of hearing someone’s last radio call just moments before crashing, live and in real time. I could have done without that. At least I wasn’t the guy watching from above as he went in, who keyed his mike and said “Yes, he’s down and burning.”

[Northern_Piper]

@Boyo_Jim

I just read a story on the last moments of the space shuttle Challenger where it was stated the last thing picked up by the cockpit recorder was, “Uh oh”. Some of the crew survived long enough to have said more while they were free falling through the ocean, but either the recorder failed or they’ve never released more.

Quoth the Master:

Pilot Michael Smith said “uh-oh!” and a fraction of a second later the shuttle broke into several large pieces.
…
Some of the astronauts managed to get their emergency air packs switched on; of the four units later recovered, three had been manually activated. The fact that the fourth was not may indicate it was only a short time before everybody blacked out, but nobody knows for sure.

If the cabin depressurized immediately, the crew would have survived 6 to 15 seconds; if not, they might have lived two and a half minutes as their ruined vessel arced through the upper atmosphere, reaching a height of 65,000 feet before falling to earth. If the astronauts were still alive when they struck the water they weren’t afterward. The impact pulverized both cabin and crew…

[williambaskerville]

The BEA, the French accident investigation body, have released their interim findings on AF447, based on CVR and FDR analysis.

http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/vol.af.447/point.enquete.af447.27mai2011.en.pdf

[Kiber]

@williambaskerville

The BEA, the French accident investigation body, have released their interim findings on AF447, based on CVR and FDR analysis.

http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/vol.af.447/point.enquete.af447.27mai2011.en.pdf

Thanks for posting this. I look forward to some people helping to explain this. I think the key quote for me was this one:

@bea report

The last recorded values were a vertical speed of -10,912 ft/min, a ground speed of 107 kt, pitch attitude of 16.2 degrees nose-up, roll angle of 5.3 degrees left and a magnetic heading of 270 degrees.

[Musicat]

the descent lasted 3 min 30, during which the airplane remained stalled. The angle of attack increased and remained above 35 degrees

Doesn’t this mean it fell out of the sky after a stall that it never recovered from? Or at least that’s what the indicators said – and maybe that’s the problem. But shouldn’t the pilots have tried to drop the nose and pick up speed to recover from a stall? Or maybe they didn’t know (due to faulty indicators) that they were in a stall?

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Here’s CNN.com’s story on the latest findings: Air France crash pilots lost vital speed data, say investigators - CNN.com

[Boyo_Jim]

I must be missing something. It reads to me as if the copilot thought the plane was stalling, perhaps because of faulty instruments, and then pulled the nose back until it really stalled, and kept pulling the nose back until it crashed. Which seems exactly the wrong thing to do, which is why I’m thinking I am mis-reading it.