That's the Asiana 777 crash. He was asking about the A320 that went down the Java Sea in similar circumstances to the Air France 447 crash.
"Air Asia" More closely related to Asiana or Malayasia air? If you can figure that one out you're a good mind reader!
Well, the tailstrike was 14 years ago and thousands of hours ago. Depends on the severity of the damage and the quality of the repair... There are probably a number of previously repaired tailstrike planes flying around, so., who knows. I guess we will find out in due time. The tail of the plane was a ways from the remainder of the wreckage if I'm reading correct reports.
The tail strike and location of the tail wreckage has stuck in my mind. The wreckage of the wing is also interesting. It hit flat with the nose wreckage out ahead of it in the proper location. Without a tail it would tumble and possibly hit inverted. You can clearly see the planform of the wing. The tail section was 5 miles away that indicates to me that it separated first. It is clean and intact so it will be relatively easy to tell if it failed in flight from the repair of the tail strike. Sometimes it takes a while for a bad repair to show up depending on the number of cycles. It appears that it separated ahead of the rear entrance door. Just my thinking again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia_AirAsia_Flight_8501 I'm going with Bob's term, operator error. The circumstances are nothing like MH370. Mark
Human nature to paint a picture absolving yourself/company/government of responsibility so I am not terribly surprised. I am very pessimistic about ever getting the real story if the Ski's have the CVR and the FDR.
Just for reference, the JAL crash was 7 yrs after the faulty repair on the pressure bulkhead. For this type of repair yrs and hrs mean little. Primary variable is number of pressure cycles, which in the case of the JAL aircraft was probably quite a few given the airplane usage on short haul flights.
I think NASA or Boeing calculated the failure rate given the poor patch and rivet issues at 10,000 cycles to failure. The actual number was around 12,000+ as I recall when it did fail.
After the AA587 incident it was discovered that hydraulic fluid and Airbus composites don't mix well. The result being serious delamination of the skin from the honeycomb. Could be a contributing factor or the root or neither.
If this was ISIS, wouldnt we have a much better video by now? They usually produces hollywood quality footage.
Quote from news release: "The Egyptian government said the black boxes were being examined by Egyptian and Russian experts along with German and French specialists from Airbus and from Ireland where the aircraft was registered."
As they say, hindsight is 20-20 (or better). Damage tolerance analysis (prediction of where cracks start and how long it takes to grow to critical length) is a black art that involves various assumptions. Knowing the answer helps a lot.
Like Brian said, everything coming from the Russians sounds like obfuscation designed to shift blame from a Russian airline. Unless Airbus gets involved heavily, the real story is unlikely to surface. Sounds like shoddy maintenance/rebuild killed 224 Russians, but that might hurt tourism and the Russians do not want that. Their airlines are still 3rd world airlines, even when flying Western equipment.
Something ripped the tail off completely and suddenly. Structural fail? Possibly. Explosives? More likely.
If explosives then there is very ample evidence that will show up. From what i understand the way a structure fails pretty much tells you the story. The Jal plane flew on for a few hours with lots of communication. This is more like the comet crashes, one minute there the next not, or Lockerbie, or TWA take your pick as to the cause. But the pros will figure it out, cant be hidden.
With respect to the basic laminate constituents, the difference between 'Airbus composites' and 'Boeing composites' is practically zero, if that makes you feel any better.
I thought the A380 used a new form of composite called GLARE which mixed aluminum with glass fiber. Of course it was on this plane but it shows there are differences between the two makers.
I was in a meeting some years back and the JAL incident entered the discussion. There were several upper level attendees and one of them who had been involved in the investigation offered a description of being confronted by a Japanese executive who demanded that the names of Boeing employees involved in the repair be given to them. His answer , "You'll get the names when you give us the names of the Japanese mechanics who were also involved in the repair." So, that painted the picture a little bit better for me, anyway. Boeing originally determined that a new bulkhead should have been installed but JAL insisted that it be repaired in place with a new lower half. This made the repair extremely difficult and chancey. One would appreciate just how difficult if the one could see how tightly woven and sandwiched all the spherical gores, doublers, and triplers were in making the repair. I originally described what caused the failure but redacted it due to the possibility of saying too much.
There are various composite systems, e.g. carbon fiber/epoxy. What I'm saying is that Boeing and Airbus both buy those systems from the same companies, e.g. Hexcel and Cytec for example. Hexcel and Cytec develop these systems, so Boeing and Airbus both end up with basically the same product. GLARE is an Alcoa product, and I believe to date has been pretty much a dud. It is not being used on the A350.
Not much At least Boeing vertical stabilizers are engineered to not snap off when subjected to pilots' control inputs below any limiting V-speed. There is a petition by pilots asking the NTSB to reopen the AA587 investigation and focus on the carbon fibre delamination on the stab not pinning it on some dead pilot that over-exicdely used the rudder on a wake encounter. Marginal airmanship but it shouldn't even be close to enough to rip a critical flight control surface off the plane.
