Chiefly because they are’nt stupid enough to needlessly antagonize the Russians.
The other bits about NTSB and Aribus being non-US got addressed. Somewhere in the conversation I saw that the engines are US made and the NTSB is prepared to be involved if the early investigation raises questions related to them.
hat’s a good stiffy going to do for the brain?
yeah really
Latest suggestion is that it was the tail broke off after the bad landing 14 years ago. I have no idea.
I like how it took 8 whole *minutes *to vindicate my comments that least some of the public will not believe whatever the investigation eventually reveals.
As to the theory du jour … The longer they poke at the wreckage without finding obvious bombing signs, the more prominent the previously-damaged tail theory will become. Which seems at first glance to be both obvious and correct thinking.
But there are lots of other *potential *reasons for inflight breakup. So an early rush to judgment there may well obscure the actual cause. The odds are low, but the goal is to get the real answer, not just an easy answer.
As well, while “badly repaired tail fell off” may be enough detail for CNN’s audience, it isn’t for the aviation industry. Detailed knowledge of what exactly happened years ago, how it was repaired, how that repair was inspected or maintained since, and how the failure sequence started and propagated are all vitally important tidbits. This detailed process will take a year or more even with full cooperation of all parties and full resourcing.
Airplanes get damaged in use. And get repaired using current understandings of how best to do so. The learnings available here may advance the state of the art on repairs, or maybe lower the threshold on declaring aircraft irreparable after damage.
We shall see in the fullness of time.
Badly-made repairs after a tail strike… Reminds me of JAL123, which crashed in 1985 (with more than 500 people killed) after exactly that scenario.
If I am not wrong, in the case of JAL123, the 747 involved had a tail strike in 1978 which damaged the rear pressure bulkhead. The bulkhead in question was improperly repaired, and 7 years later the accumulated stresses of thousands of pressurization cycles finally broke it.
The difference was that JAL123 “only” lost part of the vertical stabilizer (and all hydraulic pressure), and the pilots managed to keep it in the air an astonishing 32 minutes after the explosion.
What I mean is that it would not be the first time something like that happens.
I am confused. Would’nt such a major repair automatically affect and reduce both economic and safe life of the plane?
If the repair has been properly done, the plane can keep flying safely for the remainder of its service life. That is much better than scrapping the airplane and having to buy a new one.
However, there is a big “if” there: if the repair has been properly done.
In the case of JAL123, it was not, and maintenance services did not realize it at the time (as a result, btw, the maintenance manager for JAL in Haneda killed himself, and the president of JAL resigned his post). Boeing admitted responsibility for the faulty repair, but there are many rumours going around that say that Boeing admitted fault in order to cover up shortcomings in the airline’s inspection procedures and protect the reputation of a major customer.
Now – if a similar scenario happened to the Sinai airplane, given that the airline involved appears to be a “fly-by-night” company… I wouldn’t be very sure that they made proper repairs in case of a tail-strike :-/
Any damage history reduces residual value of an asset, be it a car or an aircraft.
The *intent *of repair procedures is to produce new structure with at least the same remaining safe service life as the rest of the aircraft. At some cost in extra weight which means increased fuel consumption on every flight and marginally decreased payload which is a problem only on very full or very long range flights. And sometimes at the cost of an intrusive periodic inspection regime in hopes of detecting any deterioration of the repaired area before it becomes critical.
Repairs like this are always one-offs. The exact parts changed, custom parts fabricated, and engineering and craftsmanship applied are different on each repair since the damage is different on each incident. As such there’s more reliance on over-engineering and less statistically verifiable reliability.
As JoseB says, the reality may not always conform to that ideal intent. It would not be a case of three shade-tree mechanics beating on it with hammers. But there is room for poor craftsmanship that goes unnoticed when the manufacturer & authorities inspect the work.
In the case of JAL, the repair began cracking and leaking not too long after it was done. But the problem area was well-hidden and couldn’t be effectively inspected. So nobody knew anything was amiss. Eventually it failed catastrophically. Ironically, then it was easy to see evidence of the slowly growing failure area once the whole component had been spontaneously disassembled inflight and the parts scattered across the ground.
In recent years a confluence of interest rates, fuel costs, new aircraft tech, etc. has come together to drastically shorten the economic life and residual value of undamaged aircraft. It may well be that one of the outcomes of this event is Airbus and / or Boeing deciding that the liability & reputational risk tail for repairs like this is untenable. If indeed they decide to not provide engineering support then severely tail-struck aircraft would be declared a total loss, parted out, & the hulk sold for scrap.
Massive inflight break-up after bad tailstrike repair would be reminiscent of China Airlines 611: China Airlines Flight 611 - Wikipedia
The IAE V2500 engines were made byInternational Aero Engines, a partnership of Rolls-Royce (UK), Pratt & Whitney (US), MTU (Germany), and Kawasaki, IHI, and Mitsubishi (Japan). Pratt recently bought out RR’s interest and now controls the program.
The commercial aerospace industry is highly international. It means even less to call an airliner American or European than it means to call a car that. The legally-designated authorities will take charge, but it doesn’t really matter where they’re from, since they have the same interests and virtually the same background and procedures and ways of thinking.
Although airline use is far safer than car use, this type of situation is far scarier. Gotta feel for the victims and their final moments alive.
I doubt the Russians will be nuking anyone. Targeted, (and not so targeted) extrajudicial killings are another matter. When they were the Soviet Union, and the FSB was the KGB, Hezbollah famously kidnapped four Soviet embassy personnel in Lebanon. One of the staffers was killed by Hezbollah with a promise that more would follow.
KGB identified a putative relative of a Hez leader, kidnapped them, and mailed the relative’s genitals to said leader’s group. Along with a promise that more relatives would follow. The remaining three staffers were released shortly thereafter. It’s related in this Philadelphia Inquirier article from January of 1986, citing a 1985 Jerusalem Post article by Benny Morris.
EDIT: FWIW, the wiki for Alpha Group, an elite Soviet/Russian counter-terrorist group that may have been involved in the operation, disputes the veracity of the account. Still, it’s a great story.
U.S. intelligence analysts, off the record, are now thinking a bomb caused the crash. They blame ISIS or an ISIS-affiliated group, which makes little sense to me, because AIUI the Russians haven’t been bombing ISIS much at all. Still, the Syrian Civil War is confusing enough to follow and the gist of the information is that the bomb is related to Russia’s ongoing military activities.
Damn that’s a hell of a story, I guess Hezbollah didn’t have a Walter Sobchak-type to doubt the KGB’s seriousness:
Well, if this was an ISIS plot (or even if it really wasn’t, but the Russians believe it was), that’s going to change. No one would ever accuse ISIS of being a rational, centralized actor, but Putin may be the wrong bear to poke.
Re the tail:
News article
Re the author of the article:
Currently Geoffrey works as senior editor of the world’s foremost airline management magazine Air Transport World based in Washington DC contributing cutting edge stories and opinion pieces related to many aspects of the aviation industry. He is editor of Eco-aviation online newsletter and convenor and commentator at the annual international Eco-aviation conference . He is part of the judging panel for ATW Airline of the Year Competition.
I don’t know whether he has any engineering qualifications.
I wish I could share your optimism about a neutral, competent investigation, but then I’m reminded of EgyptAir 990 and SilkAir 185, two airliner crashes where investigating authorities from different nations reached very different conclusions, most likely due to a marked divergence of said interests. Coincidentally, both those crashes were determined (by the NTSB) to be due to deliberate pilot input, i.e. mass murder/suicide.
Geoffrey Thomas is a laughing stock amongst professional pilots in Australia. He is happy to be used as “expert opinion” on matters he has no expertise in.
Only the authorities of the nations those airlines were based in formally disagreed, and for the transparent reasons you hint at. There was no evidence of a split in the investigating teams that was not imposed by those governments.
Well, if we consider geopolitical ulterior motives, the US and its allies do profit from the idea that Russia’s intervention is the root cause of a terrorist bombing. Another consequence of an unwise and unwelcome intrusion, if you ask them. (Like ISIS would prefer to be bombed by Turkey and the USAF.)
I wonder what happens if it turns out to be a bombing, but not by ISIS. Because Russia hasn’t attacked ISIS that much. Instead, the bombers turn out to be sponsored by Free Syrian Army or one of the US’s other proxies. Russia’s preferred target so far.
That would be some bitchin’ ugly blowback.