Another plane gone AWOL

[OwlHoot]

Or maybe it's something to do with all the thunderstorms in its immediate vicinity at the time it disappeared?

That seems to be what most of the pilots believe in the PPRuNe thread on this new disappearance.

[BrilloPad]

Or maybe it's something to do with all the thunderstorms in its immediate vicinity at the time it disappeared?

So next time there is a sign of a cloud in the sky all planes will be grounded just in case?

[vwdan]

So next time there is a sign of a cloud in the sky all planes will be grounded just in case?

Uh, no - but planes crashing in bad weather is not exactly a new thing. Once you lose your visual reference points it's INCREDIBLY* easy to become disorientated and either lose control of the plane or simply fly into the ground/sea/mountains or whatever. Pilots are, of course, trained to fly through this on instruments but people **** up as a fact of life. If this happens to be coupled with a previous mistake or even a sensor/gauge malfunction things get bad very quickly.

The recent Air France crash was on similar lines:

Air France Flight 447 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There's also the sadly common thing (Especially in less Western countries) of co-pilots not feeling they can take command when the Pilot is mixed up - quite literally handing their lives to him. I can't think of the name of the other example I'm thinking of right now, but I'll look and add later

*Seriously, if you've never piloted a plane then you should know that you may aswell be sat in front of a flight simulator for all the good your body and brain will do you once you lose visual. A classic "proving the point" in good weather is to get a student to close their eyes while the instructor flies. It's very rare the student can then correctly state whether the craft climbing/descending/turning etc.

[centurian]

There's also the sadly common thing (Especially in less Western countries) of co-pilots not feeling they can take command when the Pilot is mixed up - quite literally handing their lives to him. I can't think of the name of the other example I'm thinking of right now, but I'll look and add later

A good example was the world's worst air disaster - two 747s colliding on the runway in Tenerife in thick fog.

The flight engineer (the most junior person on the flight deck) thought something was up - believing the runway might still be occupied - and tried to raise to the captain - one of the most senior captains in the airline, who emphatically slapped him down and proceeded with the take-off.

[BrilloPad]

A good example was the world's worst air disaster - two 747s colliding on the runway in Tenerife in thick fog.

The flight engineer (the most junior person on the flight deck) thought something was up - believing the runway might still be occupied - and tried to raise to the captain - one of the most senior captains in the airline, who emphatically slapped him down and proceeded with the take-off.

In mid 80s I worked at RAE Farnborough. I was told that modern aircraft usually took often with something wrong - it just depended how serious it was thought to be.

I hope that situation has changed now.

[vwdan]

Sure, but these guys were both instrument rated ATPL's, not likely to get mixed up.

As for thunder storms, definitely best avoided and they were going up to 50,000ft, they were asking to climb - Maybe they thought they could get above it. A strong thunderstorm can rip the wings off an airliner. They were trying to route round, maybe they should have turned back?

As for a student, its pretty much everyone who can't tell what's going on when you have no visible reference. They teach you to believe the instruments and how to deal multiple types of instrument failures.

*Yes I've piloted a plane on my own.

Not disputing their training - just highlighting that it wouldn't be the first flight to go down in such conditions and why it's so easy, especially if your instruments are wrong. And pilots DO make mistakes and get mixed up, after all - I'm sure both of us could compile a list.

And you're right yes, of course nobody has an inbuilt ADI - the instructor/student example was just the obvious example.

Some of the pilots on PPRuNe are questioning the decision to climb saying it brings it close to the operating envelope but that's well out of my realm of knowledge to comment on. As with all these incidents, I'm sure the report (if there is one) will be able to tell us why.

[vwdan]

A good example was the world's worst air disaster - two 747s colliding on the runway in Tenerife in thick fog.

The flight engineer (the most junior person on the flight deck) thought something was up - believing the runway might still be occupied - and tried to raise to the captain - one of the most senior captains in the airline, who emphatically slapped him down and proceeded with the take-off.

Yup, nasty. This was the one I was thinking of (Was bugging me for ages, but thought it was a passenger flight):

Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not only an example of terrible cockpit resource management, but also a direct example of how a bad piece of equipment (Even with two redundancies!) can cause a crash.

Obviously I don't know any more than anyone else about this current situation, but I do tire of reading the conspiracy theories when there's pages and pages of precedent that could easily explain it.

[OwlHoot]

Issue with service ceiling is the rate of climb also I can't imagine it would be too clever to exceed your max altitude with a pressurised cabin.

Hopefully they will find the black box soon.

There was another incident where the pilot over compensated with rudder on an Airbus in turbulence, eventually it ripped the tail off.

I think one of the pilots in that PPRuNe discussion mentioned that when close to its maximum altitude the Airbus has an alarming tendency to stall when banking, or perhaps not stall but do something catastrophic with the engines (turn them off?!) when the plane's speed exceeds some threshold reached maybe by falling too fast in the thinner air.

So perhaps the pilots climbed as high as they could to fly over a storm, but then hit turbulence or tried to steer away from it ..

[suityou01]

I think one of the pilots in that PPRuNe discussion mentioned that when close to its maximum altitude the Airbus has an alarming tendency to stall when banking, or perhaps not stall but do something catastrophic with the engines (turn them off?!) when the plane's speed exceeds some threshold reached maybe by falling too fast in the thinner air.

So perhaps the pilots climbed as high as they could to fly over a storm, but then hit turbulence or tried to steer away from it ..

Sounds plausible enough from my armchair. What I want to know is how it is possible to completely lose another whopping great plane over water? Surely lessons were learnt over MH370?

[vwdan]

One hopes.

From what I've read, the 39,000 ft limit is due to the ability to pressurise the cabin to 8000 ft.

This is interesting:

http://www.flywestwind.com/hangar/ai...ms/A320FOM.pdf

Particularly the Ctrl-Shift-F1.

That's for a flight sim