Air France jet vanishes

I just read this as well - prayers for all of the folks on board and their families.
This is terrible.

 

Not looking good. Pilot reported an electrical "short" after flying through a storm and turbulence.

With all of the redundancies, doesn't seem like that would be enough to bring down a jumbo like the A330. Even if it was struck by lightning.

 

It was reported as an automated response per Air France:
It said "an automatic message was received at 0214 GMT (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday) signaling electrical circuit malfunction."

Which could perhaps mean the malfunction was automatically sent via satellite (possibly on the same premise that on-star or similar system is automatically alerted when an air bag deploys).

******JUST UPDATED: The Airbus A330-200 sent automatic messages signaling equipment failure as it hit turbulence early in its 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told a news conference.********


Carol

 

I was once on a United flight hit by lightning several times on approach to Washington Dulles. The load bang, flickering lights and passenger gasps and shouts prompted the pilot to tell us the plane was designed to take such strikes. Which begs the question, why fly into a thunderstorm? I suspect this is a question with a good answer, but as a layman that answer escapes me.

OT: this struck me as pretty good flying? http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/273443

 

I have had one very impressive example of a lightning strike on an aircraft. We had a B-17 struck over the Chesapeake Bay when I was at Langley Field. This was a "Mickey' ship and had a radar sweep and lots of big wire bundles. They were struck in the number one engine and the resulting damage throughout was disasterous. The crew said that the interior was one huge ball of fire as almost all the wiring was burned out. The pilot miraculously landed at Langley in the heavy thunder storm without basic instruments. The capricious and erratic action of lightning is well documented and so is the tremendous destruction of the electrical flow in a lightning bolt. No amount of lightning arresters or grounding strips will control a big strike and if the A330 was indeed a victim of a strong strike , it could have disabled all of the electronics that run an Airbus. I recently saw photos of an A320 that had a 6 inch dia. hole burned in the fuselage from a lightning strike just aft of the pilot's head.
The navigator and bombardier baled out of the B-17 in a panic and landed in the Chesapeake. We found them a week later in the water near Yorktown, Va.
Switches

 

Very sad story so far, BBC reports 8 children including 1 infant were aboard also.

 

I've flown that route, on that airline, and perhaps, even on that actual plane. Don't know the fin #, so I cannot say for sure. Luckily for us my wife and I have not yet heard about anyone we know being on that flight. It's a sad day regardless.........

Why would anyone piloting a commerical jet fly into a thunderstorm with active lightening is beyond me. In a military aircraft in combat I can understand if you have no other choice. They are supposed to fly around storms, and have defined mileage limitations as to how close to the core of a storm they can go IIRC......and I am not suggesting this was negligence on the pilot's part, or what actually what happened either. Maybe the aircraft simply suffered an anomoly and had a catastrophic electrical malfunction.

 

This is why Boeing aircraft are superior to Airbus, Boeing has mechanical backup flight controlls, Airbus is all fly by wire. Modern Boeing aircraft still use a mechanical backup system very similar to the B17

 

Is this Airbus a composite airplane?

 

In addition to the signal indicating electrical malfunction, it has now been reported that the signal also indicated a loss of cabin pressure.....hopefully the black boxes can be recovered and analysed, but it is a big ocean. It would seem to me that this is going to re-open the questions about the Carbon vert tail structure that was questioned in the New York crash. Seperation of the tail at high speed after turbulance would lead to electrical malfunction in the FBW system and could lead to cabin pressure loss. This is purely speculation on my part, but certainly an avenue to explore if anything can be recovered. No matter what happened, this is not good news for Airbus.

 

Vertical tail fin is entirely carbon and failed after extreme input from the crew after passing through wake turbulance out of JFK. The fuse is still aluminum.

 

American Airlines Flight 587, in November 2001. Crashed after take off. Airbus 300-600R

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587

 

Yes, this was the crash I was thinking about. I was pretty dissapointed with the total failure of the vertical tail, and remembered that they said it was composite.

Wonder if extreme turbulence could have had the same effect here?

 

American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into a queens NY neighborhood, killing all 260 on board. This was an Airbus A300, not an A320. Happened November 2001 just after WTC 9/11. It was later determined that the composit vertical tail parted company with the aircraft after passing through wake turbulence of a Japan Air 747. I believe that the A320, while configured differently, uses a similar design combination of Aluminum skin and composite tail. Airbus later issued a directive to inspect all composite tails and the servos that operate the rudder.

To be clear, I have no idea what happened to this particular Air France jet. In flight failures while rare, can happen to all manufacturers, or can be caused by human error (not locking a cargo door for example).

Here is info on the JFK AA 587 crash
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/11/16/ny.crash/index.html

Edit:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/2001-12-13-united.htm
A320 does indeed have a similar tail design as the A300 and there are occurances of tails separating from the A320. An Armenian A320 tail was found in the Black Sea after the plane crashed May 3, 2006 although it was deemed "controlled flight into terrain". There has been speculation by some that the tail may have departed this aircraft prior to the crash.

 

Is it just me, or have there not been just a few too many Airbus accidents for comfort here recently?

 

The A330 is the aircraft, suitably modified, that won the contested and now suspended US tanker competition as the KC-30. We have no way of knowing what happened yet, but I am not a fan of Airbus aircraft after several accidents where nothing the crew could do prevented a major accident after computer software or structural failure shot the crew in the foot.

I have been through three major lightning strikes, the first in a DC-3, which cut a 12" gash in the aft fuselage, but obviously had no affect on the flight controls. The other two were in F-111s, which were hardened for EMP from nuclear weapons. In both F-111 cases, the INS and digital computer complex dumped, but the flight controls and analog instruments were unaffected, not even the dampers. The INS and DCC systems were quickly brought back on line, but we aborted both missions for obvious reasons. We were well clear of thunderstorms (as per AF regs at the time) when both strikes occurred. If the strikes had taken out our flight control computers and dampers, no big deal, just like on a Boeing airliner, because the F-111 and Boeing airliners fly fine, if a bit sloppily, with the flight control dampers turned off.

The A330 has an excellent radar system and should have been able to circum-navigate any thunderstorm in its path. Especially since it had long since reached cruise altitude and would have been above all but the heaviest of thunderstorms. We shall see. It is surprising no radio calls at all were received, since the A330 has a full complement of VHF and HF radio sets. Sounds like something catastrophic happened.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

That 707 number is certainly high. I wonder if the bulk of those occurred early in its service life.

 

An A320 and A330 Airbus DOES have mechanical back up to fly the airplane if all flight control computers go down. The back up is to the Trimable Horizontal Stabilizer. Boeing 777 do not have cables controling the flight controls, it is fly by wire also. The A330 has a tremendous safety record. The only other fatal crash killing all seven aboard was caused by pilot error while flight testing the aircraft simulating a loss of an engine at low altitude.

 

Wow, that's a horrible story.

 

Don't forget that lightning can happen well outside the obvious core of a thunderstorm. A number of years ago, I was in a 767 holding outside of Atlanta waiting for storms to clear the airport area. We were in a clear area, probably a mile away from the nearest cloud, when a bright flash was seen off the wingtip, followed by thunder that was audible in the cabin. I couldn't tell whether the bolt actually hit the airplane or not (it didn't look like it did) but it got everyone's attention!

The Pan Am 707-120 that had a fatal inflight explosion over Elkton, MD in 1963 was also reportedly outside the cloudy area when hit by lightning; a National DC-8 flying above and behind saw the 707 get hit and the subsequent results. In this case, the problem was exacerbated by the use of a mixture of gasoline and kerosene (commonly used in Puerto Rico, where the flight originated) which was reputedly more volatile than either by itself, and the buildup of fumes in the outer wing tanks, also more explosive than the fuel itself. Also, the aircraft had not yet been fitted with anti-static wicks on the control surfaces, which might have helped disperse the electrical charge. The explosion tore off a wing outboard of the outboard engine and the aircraft spun into the ground.

As a result of the Elkton crash, the FAA immediately banned the use of the gasoline/kerosene mix in commercial airliners, and also ordered stepped-up installation of anti-static wicks. The fuel-tank fume situation had obviously not been solved by the time of TWA 800 (provided that you discount the conspiracy theories surrounding that one!).