Well, I did say the Bermuda Triangle has been relocated. 
Hey, we don’t know what brought them down. Could even be a Singapore Sling… 
:smack:
There is speculation that the aircraft was ditched.
When I was in the CAP, I heard plenty of wry comments that ELTs only work when they’re not supposed to. I’m not sure I buy the ‘successful ditching’ hypothesis. Not impossible, though.
Well, they don’t work under water for starters, so I think you’re right to be sceptical of the idea.
If it was a controlled ditching, why wouldn’t the pilots have transmitted a distress call? It would seem to be of the utmost importance, if one is going to set a plane down in the middle of the sea and hope to have anyone survive or be rescued, to communicate to someone that you’re having an emergency and are planning to ditch so they can come look for you. The fact that they simply disappeared in silence suggests against a controlled anything to me.
I was going to say the same thing, but I’ve been out and chizzuk beat me to it.
tv news says the airline didn’t have permission to use that route on the day that it did.
If you are unfamiliar with Indonesian bureaucracy, I recommend hesitating before reading too much into this. It’s classic Indonesia; the government makes requirements and decrees that are so Byzantine that no one can follow them. They might say something like “applications must be filed no earlier than noon January 15, but no later than 5 pm on January 14.” This leaves everyone scratching their heads and hoping for the best as they navigate impossible rules.
The government may very well take this opportunity to blame the airline, but ask yourself: if the regulators, airport officials (Indonesian airports are operated by State-Owned Enterprises), air traffic controllers, and everyone else involved in the operation of this flight allowed it to occur, how likely is it that no one in authority knew the paperwork wasn’t perfectly in order? The answer is, it’s not likely at all. A far more plausible scenario is that the regulations were met as best as they could be, and everyone involved looked the other way at any lack of permissions, because chances are that the rules were so ridiculous that no one could play by them anyway.
Of course, the government may act all shocked and point fingers of blame. It wouldn’t be the first time. In fact, there is a case going on in Jakarta right now, regarding school licensing, that bears some resemblance to this situation. My Indonesian message board buddies are all drawing comparisons - it came to everyone’s mind immediately.
It’s a bit of a red herring anyway, the airline was permitted to fly the route in general and there was no safety consequence of flying it on a day they were technically not permitted to fly on. The only thing you could possibly read into it is that maybe the airline was a bit lax with the technicalities and perhaps this was indicative of a deep cultural problem (company culture I mean), but that’s a bit of a stretch, I’d be very surprised if the permission to fly has anything at all to do with the accident.
some online comment about the weather.
that airline has the flight crew get the weather info and decide on whether to fly or not.
comment was made that in places like USA the flight crew get a briefing from meteorologists about the full duration and route weather. the flight could be altered due to that information.
It seems at least one of the Indonesian officials is out of their depth. He expects the crew to have received a face to face weather briefing and seems to not know that there are plenty of other ways of obtaining a briefing. He is also failing to acknowledge that the physical met office wasn’t open at the time the crew were preparing for flight. Just because you don’t get a face to face briefing it doesn’t mean you haven’t received a weather briefing at all.
Heh. CNN pretty much peaked back in 1991 during the First Gulf War, and has been deteriorating ever since. These days, I don’t know why anyone bothers with them, aside from the (unintended) comedy value.
And as it turns out, the wife and I were on this flight last week. Thai AirAsia flight FD3254 from Bangkok to Khon Kaen in northeastern Thailand. A 45-minute flight. It actually left five minutes late at 11:15am, not 11:10 as scheduled and like the story says. Ten minutes into it, an announcement was made that we were returning to Bangkok due to a “technical problem.” A little unnerving coming just two days after the Indonesia AirAsia crash, and I guarantee every person aboard was thinking about that accident. Seems the crew had heard a “noise.” We all stayed on the plane while it was checked out. Nothing was found, so we tried it again. No one was offered the option of leaving the plane, but I’m sure if anyone had raised a stink, he would have been let off, although that would have caused further delays while luggage was removed. We took back off, made it safely to Khon Kaen on that same plane, and the rest of our trip was uneventful. I put the entire incident down to the pilots exercising an abundance of caution in the wake of the Indonesian disaster. That was the first time for either of us, the wife and I, to be on a flight that had to turn back.
By comparison, a Thai Airways flight bound for London later that same day had to return to Bangkok due to a problem with the hydraulic system. Those passengers were all transferred to another plane, so we had the better of it.
As for the question of that Indonesian flight not having permission to fly that route on that day, it’s true that may not have been a safety issue, but it does raise some questions. If they broke that rule, then what other rules were so cavalierly broken? They were flying without permission in an already-crowded sky judging from the fact they were denied to fly higher due to too many planes already higher up, so are the skies simply getting too crowded now? And it’s set only to grow worse. BBC TV reported Indonesia AirAsia had plans to purchase 500 more aircraft, which (they said) would necessitate another 5000 pilots being trained. What is the quality of this training?
But the biggest issue with that flight operating when it was not supposed to will be insurance. BBC also reported the insurance companies were already saying they weren’t going to pay out if the flight really wasn’t supposed to have occurred.
They’ve found the tail but no black boxes. The black boxes should be somewhere close by, they figure. But I’m wondering if the reason they didn’t emit any pings was because they weren’t there to begin with. Would there be any reason for the airline to remove those? Can they even be removed?
They’ve detected pings that could be from the recorders, they’re slightly removed from where they found the tail and probably buried in mud, so don’t write the recorders off yet.
To answer your question though, the FDR or CVR may be removed if they have failed depending on the rules the airline follows. In our case the defective item must be repaired within 21 days, must be repaired earlier if there are staff and equipment to do it, only the FDR or the CVR can be unserviceable (not both), and we are not permitted to do test flights or training flights with either item unserviceable.
Thanks! Good to know.
Here it’s being reported that the status of the flight makes no difference to any payout.
Interestingly also, Indonesia says it was unathorised, Singapore says it was allowed…
Two authorisations, one to operate out of Indonesia, the other to fly in to Singapore. The Singapore part was approved.
I really think it’s Indonesia thumping their chest though. AirAsia were allowed to fly four days per week, they were in fact flying four days a week, just not the right days (Sunday instead of Saturday.) Since the accident Indonesia has suspended 61 flights from 5 other airlines including its own flag carrier Garuda because they were also operating on certain days without permission. I think if there are so many “unauthorised” flights from so many airlines then something is wrong with the approval process.