Air France jet missing over Atlantic

[The Stig]

An Air France A330 carrying 228 people from Rio to Paris dropped off the radar this morning. Its scheduled arrival time in Paris has come and gone, so it has almost certainly crashed.

Authorities are speculating a lightning strike, since an unusual automatic message about a short circuit was sent from the plane as it disappeared.

I personally find that explanation very hard to accept. The Airbus A330 has been flying for almost two decades, and it has certainly encountered plenty of lightning in that time period. I don't think that lightning alone could bring down a plane like that.

That said, this could very well be like TWA 800, where we never know the true cause. The plane is likely at the bottom of the ocean, and unless the black boxes kept recording after the short circuit, there might not be many clues.

Either way, condolences to the family members of those lost

[Bando]

Oh man, that sucks. Aviation in general is a ridiculously safe way to travel, which makes the few crashes gain that much notoriety. My condolences as well.

[adlai]

First of all, condolences to the families. What a tragedy.

It's way too early to know what might have led to this tragedy, but I think you dismiss the possibility of a lightening strike much too easily for now. Conspiracy theories will always exist for this I'm sure, but it seems reasonable to me that something like lightning could be the culprit. Given the number of flights each day, strange things are bound to happen. The Hudson crash is a clear reminder: birds often hit engines without significant problems, although in the past sometimes one goes out. However, no one ever could have imagined two engines going out at the same time six months ago, but we have now come to accept that it's possible.

Most airline disasters are caused by a small flaw that no one ever could have imagined. Lightning does no damage in most cases as surely A330s (as all models) have been struck hundreds of times before. However, perhaps there was some other problem with the plane that was triggered by an electrical shock, perhaps it got hit two (or more) times in quick succession, or perhaps this was just the statistical outlier for a single lightning strike. Given the number of planes that fly everyday, eventually some tragic sequence of events or coincidences is bound to happen. All that to say, we certainly don't know it's lightning, but I wouldn't be so quick to write that off as a possible explanation.

If it does in fact turn out to be lightning, it will be interesting to see what the FAA does. There was talk some time back of lowering the requirements on an airliner's capacity to handle lightning (probably) in line with the design of the new Boeing 787. It's built mainly from mainly composites which have a higher electrical resistance than aluminum meaning lightning could pose a greater problem. The A350 also has a similar design. If this was lightning, I'm sure it might be harder for the FAA to alter this in the end, possibly leading to a significant challenge for both companies down the line.

[Nevada Hoya]

As a white knuckler, I always hate to hear news of this sort. Prayers and condolences for all involved.

[Bando]

That's the thing, adlai, I don't know if we'll ever know what the cause of this is. The plane is most likely at the bottom of the Atlantic right now.

[kchoya]

Jun 1, 2009 12:56:09 GMT -5 Bando said:

That's the thing, adlai, I don't know if we'll ever know what the cause of this is. The plane is most likely at the bottom of the Atlantic right now.

Not to minimize an obvious bad story, but aren't we all looking in the wrong direction? Where's Charles Widmore? Where's Eloise Hawking? Is the plane really "Lost" at sea?

[theexorcist]

Jun 1, 2009 14:38:03 GMT -5 kchoya said:

Jun 1, 2009 12:56:09 GMT -5 Bando said:

That's the thing, adlai, I don't know if we'll ever know what the cause of this is. The plane is most likely at the bottom of the Atlantic right now.

Not to minimize an obvious bad story, but aren't we all looking in the wrong direction? Where's Charles Widmore? Where's Eloise Hawking? Is the plane really "Lost" at sea?

It might be amusing if more than two hundred people weren't almost certainly dead.

[The Stig]

edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/01/air.france.brazil/index.html

Air France is saying that the plane sent a 4 minute stream of error messages, not just one message as was previously reported. One of the messages was a depressurization warning. That could mean a lot of things, although it's worth noting that some computers can still send automatic messages after a plane has broken up (the Challenger disaster was a notable example).

Anyways, given the total lack of warning, the deep ocean, the multinational nature of the disaster, the possible political pressures (in both France and Brazil), and the lack of previous A330 disasters, this could be one of the most difficult investigations in aviation history.

[theexorcist]

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/02/AR2009060200444.html

Post reports that some parts of the plane may have been found.

More significant than it may seem - it provides some degree of closure for friends and family, and it increases the chance that some bodies or at least some personal effects may be recovered and presented for burial/memorial.

[SSHoya]

The crash of TWA 800 was officially determined to be a central fuel tank explosion caused by an electrical short -- unless you are a conspircacy theorist.

[The Stig]

True, but if I recall right the exact source of ignition for the explosion was never officially determined.

The TWA 800 investigation was hugely complex and incredibly expensive. If the black boxes yield no clues, a similarly difficult/expensive investigation will be required for this crash. Can the Brazilians and Europeans work together well enough to carry out such an investigation? Hard to say.

Multinational air disaster investigations are notoriously difficult and prone to nationalist influences. A good example is the Tenerife crash, where the cause was blatantly an error by the Dutch captain, but the Dutch investigators still released a dissenting report blaming everybody but the Dutch captain.

In this case, the Europeans will have a strong motivation to deflect blame away from the aircraft, given how important Airbus is to Europe. If they blame the Brazilian ATC controllers for not adequately warning the pilots of the storms, that will touch a nerve in Brazil. Brazilian ATC has been at the center of a lot of controversy in Brazil, centering around the 737/business jet collision a few years ago. The ATC got blamed, and a lot of Brazilians think they were scapegoated to protect the American business jet pilots.

Although I don't think lightning alone can bring down a modern jetliner, sudden and very strong wind gusts can take out a control surface, causing the plane to lose control and eventually break up in flight. That happened a couple of times in the 1960s. In 1991 aerodynamic forces caused a 767 to break up in flight, although that was caused by a thrust reverser deployment, not a storm (Lauda Air 004).

[SSHoya]

This as official as it going to get on TWA 800, but I don't disagree that a "probable cause" is not 100% certainty:

Abstract: On July 17, 1996, about 2031 eastern daylight time, Trans World Airlines, Inc. (TWA) flight 800, a Boeing 747-131, N93119, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York. TWA flight 800 was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 as a scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), New York, New York, to Charles DeGaulle International Airport, Paris, France. The flight departed JFK about 2019, with 2 pilots, 2 flight engineers, 14 flight attendants, and 212 passengers on board. All 230 people on board were killed, and the airplane was destroyed. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the flight, which operated on an instrument flight rules flight plan.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the TWA flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT), resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty, but, of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was a short circuit outside of the CWT that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system.

Contributing factors to the accident were the design and certification concept that fuel tank explosions could be prevented solely by precluding all ignition sources and the design and certification of the Boeing 747 with heat sources located beneath the CWT with no means to reduce the heat transferred into the CWT or to render the fuel vapor in the tank nonflammable.

The safety issues in this report focus on fuel tank flammability, fuel tank ignition sources, design and certification standards, and the maintenance and aging of aircraft systems. Safety recommendations concerning these issues are addressed to the Federal Aviation Administration.

I also remember chatting with an Air Force pilot who told me w/in 24 hours of the crash it was a fuel tank explosion. (I've litigated one major aircraft disaster). I thought he was quite prescient.

[The Stig]

"Probable cause" is the term that the NTSB uses in all their investigation reports.

Like I said earlier, we know that the central fuel tank explosion brought down TWA 800, but the NTSB never figured out for sure what triggered the explosion. They were able to rule a lot of stuff out (like the conspiracy theory stuff), and in the end the FQIS was basically the only thing they couldn't rule out.

The French are saying that the debris for the Air France crash was found in an area where the ocean depth is up to 9800 feet. By comparison, the depth of the TWA 800 wreckage was around 120 feet.

[Frank Black]

I hate flying. I didn't used to, but now I'm seriously terrified whenever the plane hits even a little turbulence. I play out the statistics in my head but it does nothing to calm my nerves. Can someone explain to me why planes are so safe and why turbulence is nothing to worry about? Seriously, help me out here.

[Boz]

Sun heats the earth's crust. Warm air rises. Cool air descends. Turbulence.

Nothin' to it, Frank. Even Jack Ryan got used to it after a while.

;D

I treat believing that multi-ton pieces of metal can stay aloft in the air for hours kind of like I treat believing in God. I have no idea why I believe those things, I just do. All about faith.

(not some humorless bastard is going to ignore the fact that I'm joking and explain to me why air travel and God have nothing to do with each other).

Of course, if someone could explain to me how things don't fall off of bridges constantly, or why they won't collapse whenever I am on them, that would be very helpful to me as well.

[The Stig]

Jun 2, 2009 21:25:40 GMT -5 Frank Black said:

I hate flying. I didn't used to, but now I'm seriously terrified whenever the plane hits even a little turbulence. I play out the statistics in my head but it does nothing to calm my nerves. Can someone explain to me why planes are so safe and why turbulence is nothing to worry about? Seriously, help me out here.

Short answer: Lots of testing. For every new plane model, the manufacturer has to build two planes that are literally tested to destruction. Every part has to withstand at least 150% of the maximum load it will ever encounter in flight.

Here's a pretty cool video of the Boeing 777's wing being tested to destruction:

Another big factor in airliner safety is redundancy. Any system whose failure would doom the aircraft has at least two, and often more backups.

Also, the safety authorities take the mantra 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me' very seriously. If something causes an accident, the authorities act very quickly to ensure that the same failure can never happen again.

Finally, if something does go catastrophically wrong, you have a highly skilled pilot who has probably dealt with a similar problem before in a simulator at the helm. People raved about what Sully did on the Hudson, but any pilot allowed to fly a commercial airliner could probably make that landing. His cool demeanor certainly helped, but pilots are a famously calm bunch. A British Airways 747 once suffered a quadruple engine failure over the ocean, leaving the captain with the choice of trying to ditch on a stormy sea or trying to glide through a mountain range to an airport - at night. The captain described it as "a small problem," then went on to land the plane safely.

The end result is that single-cause accidents are nearly a thing of the past in the commercial aviation industry. In order for an accident to happen, a string of hugely unlikely events have to all happen at the same time.

[kchoya]

Jun 2, 2009 22:45:14 GMT -5 The Stig said:

Jun 2, 2009 21:25:40 GMT -5 Frank Black said:

I hate flying. I didn't used to, but now I'm seriously terrified whenever the plane hits even a little turbulence. I play out the statistics in my head but it does nothing to calm my nerves. Can someone explain to me why planes are so safe and why turbulence is nothing to worry about? Seriously, help me out here.

Short answer: Lots of testing. For every new plane model, the manufacturer has to build two planes that are literally tested to destruction. Every part has to withstand at least 150% of the maximum load it will ever encounter in flight.

Here's a pretty cool video of the Boeing 777's wing being tested to destruction:

Another big factor in airliner safety is redundancy. Any system whose failure would doom the aircraft has at least two, and often more backups.

Also, the safety authorities take the mantra 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me' very seriously. If something causes an accident, the authorities act very quickly to ensure that the same failure can never happen again.

Finally, if something does go catastrophically wrong, you have a highly skilled pilot who has probably dealt with a similar problem before in a simulator at the helm. People raved about what Sully did on the Hudson, but any pilot allowed to fly a commercial airliner could probably make that landing. His cool demeanor certainly helped, but pilots are a famously calm bunch. A British Airways 747 once suffered a quadruple engine failure over the ocean, leaving the captain with the choice of trying to ditch on a stormy sea or trying to glide through a mountain range to an airport - at night. The captain described it as "a small problem," then went on to land the plane safely.

The end result is that single-cause accidents are nearly a thing of the past in the commercial aviation industry. In order for an accident to happen, a string of hugely unlikely events have to all happen at the same time.

Additionally, the safety and inspection processes aircraft go through throughout their lifetime are staggering. Just think, on your most basic private aircraft, say a singe engine Cessna, you have to do a major overhaul of the engine (basically taking it apart and putting it back together new) every so many flight hours. Now think about a commercial aircraft and everything that's checked and inspected on there. These things are heavily regulated, and thankfully so.

[AustinHoya03]

Jun 2, 2009 22:45:14 GMT -5 The Stig said:

Here's a pretty cool video of the Boeing 777's wing being tested to destruction:

I think that clip is awesome, but somehow I'm not sure a video of airplane parts being 'tested to destruction' is going to calm Frank's nerves.

[The Stig]

Jun 3, 2009 20:48:51 GMT -5 AustinHoya03 said:

Jun 2, 2009 22:45:14 GMT -5 The Stig said:

Here's a pretty cool video of the Boeing 777's wing being tested to destruction:

I think that clip is awesome, but somehow I'm not sure a video of airplane parts being 'tested to destruction' is going to calm Frank's nerves.

Yeah, but seeing how much the wings can flex before breaking shows how strong the plane is. But you're right, the gratuitous shots of the wing breaking sort of defeat the purpose.

This incident is a good example of how tough a modern airliner is: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_845

The plane crashed into the landing light structures on takeoff, yet still managed to get airborne. Three of the hydraulic systems were destroyed, about half the landing gear was ripped off, the control surfaces were damaged, and big chunks of the landing light structures ended up inside the cabin. Fortunately, the plane had four hydraulic systems, so one was left intact. The plane flew around for almost two hours, then made a safe landing.