Not again: missing aircraft

simon ess said:
Now safely on the ground.

No other details.

Good news.
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Indeed.
I'm led to believe incidents such as this are not entirely uncommon.
Of course we hear of them more and more in this time of social media etc.
Very pleased to hear the Virgin incident ended smoothly.
Keeping passengers cool must be ahell of a job for the cabin crew sometimes. It's not a job I'd hurry to do.
 
A full emergency? Twice a week at Heathrow.
From the photos on BBC news, gear was dowe fine. But the gear doors were open, so probably hydraulics failure of some sort. Lots of fuss, no big issue.

Depending on the airline, they often don't tell the pax anything more than 'slight technical issue'.
 
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From Sky news: "Everyone gave a big round of applause to the flight team when we landed, you can imagine the relief.

Clapping on landing appears to be the norm these days on most domestic flights that's I've flown on recently !
 
Blank_Canvas said:
Clapping on landing appears to be the norm these days on most domestic flights that's I've flown on recently !
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I've found it to be more of a 'holiday flight' phenomenon. I don't think I've ever heard clapping on any flight with a mainline carrier be it domestic, international or intercontinental, pretty much the only times I've known clapping have been on the very few holiday-type flights I've done!
 
I hope all the Virgin passengers were wearing brown corduroy trousers.

Now, back in the east it has just been reported on LBC that over 40 bodies have been recovered.
 
RacingSnake said:
Haven't actually confirmed the aircraft, only that the debris found is from the aircraft - only a matter of time though.
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...and they are broadcasting grainy images of bodies floating under recovery helicopters on Indonisian TV apparently. Like you say, only a matter of time for exact location but looks pretty conclusive. :(
 
Yv said:
...and they are broadcasting grainy images of bodies floating under recovery helicopters on Indonisian TV apparently. Like you say, only a matter of time for exact location but looks pretty conclusive. :(
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The wind and tidal currents also plays a part though, bodies and debris could drift 40 - 50 nautical miles in 24 hours. No doubt the recovery team will take all that into consideration. With the depth being less than 50m there is s very good chance of finding the wreckage. Let's hope they can recover the black box.
 
They've confirmed it now.
 
"The mystery of AirAsia flight QZ8501 has been solved with the news from Indonesian authorities that the wreckage of the plane has been found in shallow water, and all 162 passengers are presumed dead.
Six bodies have so far been recovered from the wreckage, said a spokesman for the Indonesian search and rescue agency Basarnas. A navy spokesman said its earlier report of 40 bodies being recovered was a miscommunication by staff."
 
Is there a difference in how families are compensated if the cause of the accident is human/pilot error or if it is a mechanical fault?
 
The amount of compensation is regulated under the Montreal Convention which caps the amount of liability that the airline can be held responsible for.

Assuming Indonesia has signed it, then the airline is obviously responsible for a pilots ommision or error.

A mechanical defect is slightly different. If for example the airline hadn't serviced a part correctly and it failed, it could still be down to the airline, and the compensation would again be capped.

If though, it was a fault in something properly serviced and which shouldn't have failed then the manufacturer would have liability and thats not capped so theoretical they could get more.
 
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Also, although victims' families will in all likelyhood receive interim payments, full compensation won't be settled for years...longer for unrecovered victims.
 
RacingSnake said:
"The mystery of AirAsia flight QZ8501 has been solved with the news from Indonesian authorities that the wreckage of the plane has been found in shallow water, and all 162 passengers are presumed dead.
Six bodies have so far been recovered from the wreckage, said a spokesman for the Indonesian search and rescue agency Basarnas. A navy spokesman said its earlier report of 40 bodies being recovered was a miscommunication by staff."
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Looks like there has not actually been much found "Debris found so far includes an exit door, an emergency slide, several suitcases and part of an AirAsia trolley."

Full report timed 0527 2 Jan. here:-
https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/25875755/airasia-flight-qz8501-ill-fated-planes-bizarre-descent/
 
Some expert on BBC news this morning was suggesting that the aircraft might well have sucessfully "soft" sea landing, but then sank quickly. This may possibly explain the lack of wreckage and bodies (most of whom would still be strapped in their seats....grisly)
All supposition of course at this point.
 
viv1969 said:
Some expert on BBC news this morning was suggesting that the aircraft might well have sucessfully "soft" sea landing, but then sank quickly. This may possibly explain the lack of wreckage and bodies (most of whom would still be strapped in their seats....grisly)
All supposition of course at this point.
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Possibly, although the yahoo link cites a rapid climb then a stall. Impact into the water would kill the occupants such would be the force of impact.

I do hope they didn't know what was coming.
 
ST4 said:
Possibly, although the yahoo link cites a rapid climb then a stall. Impact into the water would kill the occupants such would be the force of impact.

I do hope they didn't know what was coming.
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There is no way, at this point in time, that anyone can know what the aircraft did. Information on that should be in the Flight Data Recorder.
 
arclight said:
There is no way, at this point in time, that anyone can know what the aircraft did. Information on that should be in the Flight Data Recorder.
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What is certain is that the aircraft left its flight path and hit the water. No flight recorder information required to know that. How or why this happened is yet to be established if or when the the FDR is recovered.
 
arclight said:
There is no way, at this point in time, that anyone can know what the aircraft did. Information on that should be in the Flight Data Recorder.
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Blank_Canvas said:
What is certain is that the aircraft left its flight path and hit the water. No flight recorder information required to know that. How or why this happened is yet to be established if or when the the FDR is recovered.
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That's what supposition means :p
 
Some investigators are reported to believe that the plane may have gone into an aerodynamic stall as the pilot climbed steeply to avoid a storm.

Officials have said the plane was travelling at 32,000ft when it requested to climb to 38,000ft to avoid bad weather.

When air traffic controllers consented to allow it to climb to 34,000ft a few minutes later, they got no reply.

A source quoted by Reuters said that radar data appeared to show that the aircraft's "unbelievably" steep climb may have been beyond the Airbus A320's limits.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30658877

It looks at this first glance a little like the Air France crash
 
And certainly some questions need urgently answered if this statement on the BBC Link is accurate

In another development, it has emerged that AirAsia did not have official permission to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Sunday - the day of the crash - but was licensed on four other days of the week.

The Indonesian authorities are suspending the company's flights on this route with immediate effect pending an investigation, a transport ministry statement said.
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More conspiracy theories than the X-Files.
Another stated early on that ATC denied the request to climb above a storm as another aircraft was already at the requested altitude.
 
The leaked photo from a radar screen showed the aircraft climbing with a low ground speed. (This is not from FR24 or any other public 'radar' application).

While that supports the idea that the aircraft stalled, it may also be because if climbing steeply, the ground speed will drop, even though airspeed remains the same.

And certainly some questions need urgently answered if this statement on the BBC Link is accurate
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Not really anything that needs answering urgently, it's a purely administrative issue, and has no baring on flight safety.
 
So let's say it stalled at well over 10km height. Isn't that enough space to recover the plane? And isn't all the electronics going to make sure the plane is not doing anything silly enough to stall?
 
daugirdas said:
So let's say it stalled at well over 10km height. Isn't that enough space to recover the plane?
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It really depends on what's going on at the time and whether the crew were actually aware of what was happening. Without knowing exactly what was happening on the flight deck and what was happening to the aircraft it's impossible to say whether they could have recovered.

daugirdas said:
And isn't all the electronics going to make sure the plane is not doing anything silly enough to stall?
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All Airbus aircraft since the A320 appeared around 1988 have what's called flight envelope protection, it's basically a system that will 'give a helping hand' if you try flying the aircraft beyond it's limits. If, for example, you pull back hard on the stick to try avoid something and your airspeed starts to drop enough that you're getting near stalling the system will automatically increase engine thrust and limit how much you can pitch the nose up by to avoid the stall. Sometimes when you see Airbus aircraft demonstrating at airshows and they perform a very rapid climb and turn off the runway all the pilot's doing is pulling the stick back and to the side as far as possible at rotation speed and letting the plane do the rest. Try doing that in a 737 and it probably won't be pretty but an A320 (or any Airbus aircraft since) should be fine.

Flight envelope protection is a very smart system but it won't prevent certain circumstances leading to loss of the aircraft, as we saw with AF447. In this case it really is too early to speculate why it went down and whether it could have been avoided.
 
PMN said:
If that were the case the big question is why the flight envelope protection (which can't be bypassed on the A320) didn't prevent it from happening.
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One sensor failure or a series of failures could maybe, and I am not an expert, knock that system out and the pilot stalled. The steep climb, fall in speed and sudden dive do look like a stall. But its all just been reported on the news and could well be wrong or misinformation.
 
The Envelope protection relies on the computers 'knowing' what the aircraft is doing, pitch, speed etc. If a pitot probe is blocked then it doesn't know or worse thinks the plane is doing something it's not. At which point, it's reliant on the crew recognizing the problem and acting to mitigating it.
In the AF case they didn't correctly diagnose the problem, and acted in a way that made it worse, not better resulting in the crash.
It is too early though to say this is what happened, certainly the crew should have been aware of the AF accident and how to avoid those circumstances.

Saw that. Cue big lawsuit coming
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For what? Did that license actually alter the safe operation of the aircraft? No, of course not! It's pretty much irrelevant to the cause of the accident.

In any case, big law suits are the preserve of the US Civil law system, Indonesia isn't like that, and the only other place they could sue is France. The French see Airbus as theirs and you will get next to no where being critical of them.
 
Flight data recorder has been recovered. Cockpit Voice Recorder has been found 20 metres from the FDR, but there is a wing on top of it. Aim is to lift the wing tomorrow and retrieve the CVR.
 
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