Air France jet vanishes

The 777 has steel control cables to the outboard spoilers and horizontal tail trim.
Switches

 

The 777 is Fly-By-Wire but also has cable operated horizontal and vertical trim.

 

So, when push comes to shove, do I want to be on a Boeing or Airbus product? I have my belief, but what say the experts?

CW

 

You jogged my recall. The 707's fuel tank vents are on the underside of each wing tip terminating in a NASA vent/scoop. A lightning strike at the tip is a sure fire way to start a sure fire and explosion. If an airplane happens to intercept the stepped leader at the time it grounds itself with terror firmer and the charge from the ground runs back to the cloud, that airplane's going to buzz, to say the least. It will sustain some damage, possibly fatal. I was going to mention several of the other strikes that Gatoratti mentioned but he beat me to it. The carbon fiber tail is another scenario that is a strong posibillity if they were in heavy turbulence since it has a history of failures.
Anyway, it's a terrible incident and I feel bad for all involved.
SWitches

 

BOEING, of course!
Switches

 

That confirms my belief, sir. Thank you.

While I think Airbus serves a purpose, in the end, it's really only about keeping Boeing honest.

CW

 

That is why I fly Delta. No Airbus aircraft.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Like the sticker I got in Seattle says:

If it's not Boeing, I'm not going!

 

Not quite true anymore, since they did inherit some Airbuses from the Northwest fleet, some of which have already been repainted in Delta colors. (And Delta's ex-Northwest 747s have become a common site at the Atlanta airport international concourse.) But Delta's plan is to phase out the Airbuses after they get rid of the older DC-9s.

 

Jim- Good point. Have not been forced to fly on one yet. My platinum days were all Boeing/Micky-D. Just a gold now.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Some twenty five years back I flew from Atlanta to Sarasota, Fla. on a Delta DC-8. I was the only one aboard. I had a bunch of foot long stickers that said that. I put them all over the inside of the passenger cabin and stuck them in the seat pockets and on the outside of the aircraft. Actually the DC-8 was a 60 series with CMF80 engines and it was a marvelous ride. I did the same thing to a Russian IL 62 and the ANT225 when they visited Everett in 1990. I have pictures of the entry door of the IL 62 with the sticker above it. I'm no lover of Airbus airplanes for the way they are designed and the way that the consortium does its business.
Switches

 

One does not need Airbus to keep Boeing " honest". I worked there for 48 years and I know the tenor of those who design the Boeing airplanes and they transcend the attitude of the management in many cases. I went to too many " what if " meetings in my career to toss the company off as casual about the safety of the airplanes. The structures are over designed, systems have redundancy built in, and safety is always paramount. Boeing designs good airplanes that fit the missions first and then enters the sales fray. Airbus was conformed to do one thing, " Beat Boeing at All Costs" and they did everything they could to give their airplanes away or undercut Boeing without any thought of making a profit. They had the budgets of five countries behind them and they had no stockholders or anyone else to answer to and they built a throw away airplane. Once the elex are done the airplane is moved off to a third world country. AND how many accidents have been caused by the computer controlled flight that can't recognize an emergency when the pilot does?
Switches

 

That's why we fly NWA, KLM & LUFTHANSA from here to Europe - Airbus - have been on too many Boeings that needed to be mothballed. Flew a 757 from BHX to EWR one time, the Cessna (Cutlass RG) we used to own was more comfortable and had more room.

Sounds like they've got the area somewhat narrowed down - a robotic deep sea submersible might be helpful as there was mention of the depth being about 15K feet. In an update, a TAM pilot reported orange points on the ocean while flying over the region where the AF flight disappeared (probably nothing left).

Carol

 

In all statistical reality, you all of course must realize that to have a 'plane preference' for safety reasons
is like saying "I never play the Oregon lottery because it's FAR more likely to be a loser over
the Washington lottery".

At this moment (or any moment) 5,000 commercial aircraft are in
the air. Each day there are 49,315 flights carrying an average of 150 persons per flight,
for a total of some 7.5 million people a day in the world. (Source: flightaware.com)
According to stats at that site, for the year 2000 it worked out to 1.09 BILLION
persons flew on EIGHTEEN MILLION flights. How many BILLIONS and BILLIONS and
BILLIONS of people fly before 221 are sadly called back in a crash?

Statistics like this crack me up!! It's like the guy in the lottery line (1 in 7 million chance
to win) who also buys a pack of smokes (1 in 6 chance he will die as a result) - ONE statistic will
NEVER happen to me, but I'm paying MONEY that ANOTHER statistic WILL happen to me!

No one on F-chat, statistically speaking, will EVER die in a commercial airplane crash (God
forbid of course, and I don't mean that lightly).

I fly a LOT (Platinum on NWA and family). But I never worry about what brand of plane,
type of plane, or brand of airline. The statistics are so overwhelming against my death by
flying, just as they are so overwhelmingly against my winning a lottery.

I fly in peace and I never buy lotto tickets either.

Just my 2 cents...

Jedi

 

Going to be a long time before that happens. A330s are still too new to dump, and the A320s are quite numerous in NWA fleet. The DC-9s need to go first, then again, they're paid for and why NWA kept them around for so long.

 

I guess you have a point about room on a 757. They ARE a narrow body but if you talk to an airline operator you will learn that they are the best money making airplane in the business and the pilots like them. They have the best wing in the business and they are highly efficient machines. They were just too narrow in the body and as far as seat pitch, you have to blame the airline for that, not Boeing. We configured airplanes for optimum comfort and when the airline customer got their hands on them they added 1500 to 2000 pounds of in-flight entertainment and jammed the seats together to gain revenue. What vintage Boeing did you fly on that should have been mothballed?
Switches

 

My comment wasn't meant to slander Boeing. It was merely to point out that legitimate competition is generally good. It forces companies to achieve better things than they might if they weren't being pressured by a competitor. Have Boeing's development periods been accelerated? Are they more efficient? Have they integrated new technologies? Are these planes less safe in any way? That's not to say that Boeing wouldn't operate exactly as they do, and did, if Airbus didn't exist, but market forces are powerful things. If Airbus didn't exist, if the only source for commercial aircraft were Boeing, in the age of shareholder returns, the search for profits and the keeping costs down, there are always temptations to cut corners. I am very glad that Boeing won't compromise safety in order to earn more profit. But, revenues are the lifeblood of a company, and profits make the shareholder invest in it.

And, you're correct that Airbus' consortium structure and goal of beating Boeing is, well, political to a large extent. When governments (and companies) essentially cheat to win, it puts the competitors that play fair at a disadvantage. Thus, it can ignite a race to the bottom, and for that, I'm upset at Airbus. They are heavily subsidized and that wears on Boeing. But, in the end, if the Boeing product is superior (and I believe it is), the company will prevail.

CW

 

could we all just spare a thought for those poor bastards....just so sad .

 

You can see the fortune the US army spends every year at boeing as a form of subsidy too...
I do prefer flying Boeings, they seem tougher, look like they can age better. I sat once in an AB300 in F (Thai), you really have the feeling the floor is paper thin (I could feel it bending under my feet and I'm rather slim), but then again, that's just perception...

 

The NYT's said that the Airbus has systems that automatically adjust the controls if they sense an unsafe condition such as stall. They said these systems can not be overridden by the Pilot. Could the lightening have caused the sensors to sense a stall that wasn't occurring and drop the nose coupled with a violent downdraft that could have lead to an uncontrollable spin?

 

Apparently a seat has been seen floating in the water and also some white debris a few hundred miles off the coast of the Brazilian islands

 

Anything is possible, at this point, I guess...I notice that several here who fly or follow aviation are pretty suspicious of that carbon fiber vertical stab - there were two previous losses due to it snapping off in turbulence. Many pilots I know are just about equally suspicious of the total fly-by-wire approach to the control surfaces. The NYC crash, for instance, was not totally a vertical stab failure just from the wake turbulence of the other plane - it appears that the copilot applied full rudder against the roll, and that is what overloaded the tail. I thought you were NOT supposed to be able to break something by full control deflections under maneuvering speed - but apparantly not on this plane.

Hate to say it, but an explosive device is also not yet completely ruled out. Whatever happened, it was too fast to allow a transmission from the crew.

375 miles out, and they say in pretty deep water. Probably not so deep that todays technology cannot get images of it and find the recorders.

When these things happen I guess the first response is saddness for the passengers and crew, and then the natural human need to know what really happened, and how we can fix it.

 

I would think that it's not going to be a problem getting the recorders.

They're saying that a lot of fuel has been found in the water too.

 

You are absolutely correct in your observations and I have no argument with what you said. Forgive me for allowing my Irish dander to rise. Airbus has built a pretty good airplane but their design philosophies and business underhandedness sticks in my craw. I can't substantiate it but we were told that the first few A380's were sold for less than the current 747's.
During the design of the 777 we discovered that someone was transmitting our info to " France" when an airline customer commented on an internal change decision that we discussed in a closed meeting two days before. So, I have no respect for these people.
Switches

 

Mark WR.......

John Craven is mentioned exclusively in a pretty neat book about his undersea recovery experiences. He was the guy who found K-129, the USS Scorpion, and the B-28 nukes that fell from the B-52G over Spain in 1966.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untold_Story_of_American_Submarine_Espionage

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

Lots of misc, bits as well as the boxes from the Air India flight that went down over the north atlantic were easily recovered.......a lost F-14 and it's missing Phoenix missile was also recovered from the same area at great depths. Finding the black boxes will be a race aginst time, nothing more......they have 30 days before the pinging stops.