Very Sad. And it is not going to end well.
Pretty damn horrifying.
I had a nasty fear of flying which has thankfully evaporated. But I was flying into Delhi last week into an unpredicted thunderstorm, and hit the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced. The plane plummeted, making us all float up heavily up against our belts, then it bucked upwards, then sideways, then down again. I was shitting myself. People were screaming, crying, etc.
I was saying to my companion: “don’t worry, they’re designed for this sort of thing - turbulence is just speed bumps in the sky”, as she wept quietly.
Maybe I was a bit naive - are there other examples of airliners being downed by turbulence? (If, of course, that is what happened.)
This article says it does happen, but it’s very rare.
What’s more likely to happen is someone being injured by turbulence because they don’t have their seat belt on. They mean YOU when they say to go back to your seat and fasten your seat belt.
The example given in the cite is from 1966. I think a lot of the technology is better now to both identify and withstand these sorts of conditions. Coincidentally the worst turbulence I ever experienced was an Air France flight into Paris (CDG) and since then have, perhaps superstitiously, avoided flying into Paris or on Air France.
Don’t know if it’s related or not, but MSNBC had a breaking news item that states a bomb threat at the airport in Paris. I didn’t catch the whole thing. Did anyone else hear anything?
It may be very hard to figure out exactly what brought her down, if the remains of the fuselage lies in deep water (and assuming they find it in the first place).
A few months back, an Iberia flight landed in… Bogotá, I think it was, with turbulences and whatnot, and there were several wounded people. At first reporters tried to make a big fuss (they love picking on Iberia) but they stopped when they realized Every. Single. Wounded. Person. Did not have his belt on. Oops.
How awful. How awful for their families. Not to mention the horror of knowing that you are going down in the Atlantic. This is the stuff of my air travel nightmares. I hope that they find some kind of wreckage somewhere so there is a bit of closure. Otherwise, the families. Just breaks my heart.
It also, oddly, makes me think of LOST.
While there are some forms of turbulence that could, conceivably, cause a modern Airbus to go down equally modern forms of weather monitoring and forecasting make it relatively easy to avoid such conditions entirely, and indeed, diverting around such weather, even on a trans-oceanic flight, is routine these days.
There is unlikely to be just one cause of this accident.
Yes, weather, turbulence, lightning, and various other things may have well contributed to the airplane going down, but most airliner accidents these days involve multiple things going wrong.
The airplane in question, which is equipment to send automatic status reports, did report a multi-system failure just before dropping off radar. Among the indicated faults were at least one short circuit and depressurization. That indicates something very unusual happened.
Unfortunately, unless the wreckage and/or black boxes can be found we are unlikely to ever really know what happened. It is fortunate, in a sense, that we have as much information as we do but in fact even that is scanty and incomplete. While a part of me holds out hold for finding survivors the odds of making it through an ocean ditching in a storm are dreadfully low.
How sad. 
The thing is, planes rarely go down based on turbulence alone. I’ve flown through some pretty strong turbulence before, including when the remnants of Noel that hit Atlantic Canada a couple of years ago (my flight was one of the last to leave as the storm blew in)… sure, it was a rough ride and we all jolted along with white knuckles while we passed over the edge of the storm, but we all got through unharmed. Since the reports are indicating now that several systems failed shortly before they lost contact with the plane, I’d say something (or a handful of somethings) all happened to go wrong at the same time, and the turbulence may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
What’s really unfortunate is that given the plane’s last known location, I think the best anyone could hope for at this point is a crash site… any survivors would be a miracle, to say the least. I just hope they can find something to provide closure for all those families. It’s just terrible.
(in a weird coincidence, I just visited the Swissair 111 memorial in Peggys Cove last week… that flight also crashed into the Atlantic following a fire caused by equipment failure, killing all of the 200-something passengers and crew aboard)
This is sad and puzzling. Do planes get out of radio contact with the ground when over open ocean? If not, then why no distress call from the aircraft? Has turbulence ever downed a plane from cruising altitude? I don’t buy the lightning theory, planes get hit by lightning all the time. Not sure about the turbulence theory since you’d think they’d get off a distress call. Also, wouldn’t it have shown up on radar at least once with a far lower altitude if it was coming down intact? I don’t have any more knowledge than the next guy on this, but a bomb scenario makes the most sense to me.
My understanding is yes, that can happen. While modern communications are better than in the past, there are vast areas of the planet where coverage is spotty at best.
Could be any of several reasons, from radio/equipment failure to interference with transmission to the pilots being too busy trying to fly the plane to spare time for the radio.
Yes, but it’s been awhile and certainly has never been common. The clouds - and therefore the wind, precipitation, turbulence, etc. - from really big storms can rise higher than the standard airliner is capable of flying. Clouds rising into airline cruising altitudes are indicative of severe weather conditions.
While I doubt a lightning strike would be the sole cause of an airliner crash it certainly could be a contributing factor.
Depends on how sudden, how severe, and what else may be going on at the same time.
Well, first of all, there isn’t a hell of a lot of radar coverage over the open ocean. Second, once an airliner starts going down it happens real fast - in a nose-down dive such an airplane is capable of hitting speeds over Mach 1. Even if doesn’t hit those speeds it can still crash fast. Something like a transponder failure can make it drop off secondary radar more or less instantly, and that’s the mode in which ATC normally runs. In other words, no, it is quite likely it won’t show up “at least once” on the way down, as has been seen in other crashes in areas with much better radar coverage.
No, I think that’s you lack of knowledge of aviation accidents speaking - there’s no reason to think this is a bomb. Indeed, if it had been a bomb I question if the airplane would have been able to automatically report what limited information we do have of the last moments of the flight.
Now that is true. I had forgotten about that part of the report. So a bomb scenario is much less likely in my book. I stand very much corrected and thank you for fighting my ignorance. But damned if I can see a likely culprit. Presumably the black box is beeping away. What are the limits on how far it can be detected? If at the bottom of open ocean, would that be beyond detection? Is there a chance we’ll never find it?
The Cnn article lists the nationalities of the people on board:
How and why would they do that? Is it because they have not found the plane or any survivors yet? If so then I think they could have waited to release this information to everyone, no? I suppose I just see the list as a bit barbaric, but then it is CNN afterall.
Planes do sort of have radio contact with the ground over the ocean. This is done through HF radio, instead of the VHF radio normally used over land. HF radio can sometimes be very flaky, however, and is a PITA in general. Some planes also have datalinks and sometimes voice capabilities over satellites. The news reports are saying that the computer on this plane did automatically start sending home diagnostic data indicating that things have gone very wrong onboard. Perhaps we can get more insights into what happened once the experts have got a chance to analyze the data.
Unfortunately, there is no radar coverage over the ocean, however. This is what makes any search and rescue extremely difficult. No one knows exactly where did this happen.
The “expert” (whoever he was) on ABC News said it’s about 50/50 whether it was turbulence or an explosion. I wonder if someone could’ve shoe bombed it or something?
There may be a few floaters found, over the next month or two.
Ugly, but true.
Variable. I don’t have the specs handy but working black boxes have been retrieved from ocean crashes, sometimes by divers and sometime by remotely operated vehicles. The big problem is locating the things. Deep enough water can block signals. There have been instances of crashes so severe that black boxes are destroyed, but that’s rare.
No. As I said, the problem is locating it. Once we know where it is we should be able to send something down to retrieve it.
Very much so.
When was the last time a transport-category aircraft broke up in flight, excluding an explosion? That is, a catastrophic structural failure due to fatigue, weather, etc. and not to malice?
What is the survivability of a transport aircraft that flies into a T-storm cell? (Note: I’m talking about the enormous up-and-down-drafts, and not lightning strikes.)
I suppose it can help to allay uncertainty for those who are unsure of their family and friends’ travel plans. It’s - naturally - being reported here with the tag that “no Australians were known to be on board”.
It presuambly also alerts consular staff of the various countries of the need to swing into action.