The crash of Air France flight 447 from Rio to Paris last year is one of the most mysterious accidents in the history of aviation. After months of investigation, a clear picture has emerged of what went wrong. The reconstruction of the horrific final four minutes reveal continuing safety problems in civil aviation.
One tiny technical failure heralded the impending disaster. But the measurement error was so inconspicuous that the pilots in the cockpit of the Airbus A330 probably hardly noticed it.
Air France flight 447 had been in the air for three hours and 40 minutes since taking off from Rio de Janeiro on the evening of May 31, 2009. Strong turbulence had been shaking the plane for half an hour, and all but the hardiest frequent flyers were awake.
Suddenly the gauge indicating the external temperature rose by several degrees, even though the plane was flying at an altitude of 11 kilometers (36,000 feet) and it hadn’t got any warmer outside. The false reading was caused by thick ice crystals forming on the sensor on the outside of the plane. These crystals had the effect of insulating the detector. It now appears that this is when things started going disastrously wrong.
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The Americans build their aircraft with a pilot to take over when the technology fails. The Europeans build their aircraft with technology to take over when the pilot fails.
I am not the least bit happy with this situation. Knowing computers from long years working with them I know that “bad code” can cause bad things to happen. Airbus has adopted the idea that computers are better than humans and have programmed their aircraft that way WITH NO POSSIBILITY THAT A HUMAN CAN OVERRIDE THE CODE.
On the other hand Boeing has provided that option.
Would I get on an “airbus”?
Not one chance in a million. Especially not now after I read this article today.
I’d rather walk.
Years ago I had a little airplane that the designers thought would be a good idea to make its controls more car like so the average weekend flier wouldn’t be too stressed about flying it. The designer put in technology that made the aircraft something that you drove not flew. The problem was that an aircraft flies. The technology prevented me from doing certain things that were simple matter of fact things you do in the real world of flying. It was difficult to land in any cross wind greater than 5 degrees from runway heading. It didn’t have a nice clean break in a stall and it was possible to stall the thing all the way to the ground and not even realize the aircraft was no longer in controlled flight. Airplanes are airplanes and it is best to build them to fly and be flown. Like you Jack I too avoid Airbus. I want to know that when things get hairy in the cockpit the pilot isn’t fighting with the airplane for control.
It has been many years since I flew as a passenger in the cojo seat in a small aircraft, Beavers, Norseman, Otter, etc. The basic instruments were an artificial horizon, left, right bank, climb indicator, airspeed indicator and altimiter. These instruments were lifesavers if we ever ended up in whiteout or icing conditions. Do these high tech aircraft not have these last resort lifesaving instruments which are relatively cheap when you consider the consequences of flying blind? As an oldtimer who had to put my faith in that the pilot knew what he was doing I cannot fathom flying without these basic instruments.
Re: #4 — Good questions and I don’t know.
If your pitots are plugged with ice, insects or bird feathers or what ever it doesn’t matter what kind of instruments you have. The pitots are what feeds the information to the instruments. About the only instruments that would continue to work would be the engine instruments and the artificial horizon. In modern aircraft the flight instrument cluster resembles a video game and if the computer shuts itself off…. I don’t know enough about modern aircraft but in the older birds heated pitots were standard issue.