Air France Crash Demonstrates Limits Of Technology

[...] The Air France crash demonstrates the limits of technology. [...]

They should just create a satellite phone that is in a waterproof storage… Is it that hard?

I think you’re missing a key piece of information here. That is, the vast expanse that is the Atlantic ocean. Try to imagine looking down from space at the entire Atlantic ocean. Now picture an Airbus 330-200 placed on top. It’s size is minuscule compared to the Atlantic.

They found the wreckage of the plane yesterday, but finding the black boxes will be very difficult. We’re dealing with waters that are miles deep where the wreckage was found. We may never know what happened to this aircraft.

What has caught my attention is the lack of human communication coming from the plane. The automatic message sent out by the aircraft indicated electrical failure and loss of cabin pressure. But the pilots never mentioned having any trouble. I would think if the plane was experiencing severe turbulence that there would be some sort of communication by the pilots. But there was nothing.

Why the need for black boxes at all – surely by now all conversations in the cockpit could be sent via satellite and stored on a server anywhere in the world???

Well I feel that no matter what the cause of the disaster, the governments will lie about it because they can’t afford for the public to be afraid of flying in these bad economic times.

There is a major difference in the sinking of an ocean-going vessel and the downing of a jet aircraft in the ocean. A boat does not travel several hundred miles an hour, and generally they don’t sink within minutes of having trouble. Normally, they have quite a bit of time to establish communications and give the exact position of the ship and the conditions. Then they can launch the lifeboats with GPS locators and even have floating radio locating devices.

A plane has no such luxuries. Something can happen and the plane go down in minutes, with no time for the pilots to even take their hands from the controls to grab a mike. The plane hits the water, breaks apart, and sinks, leaving a little debris on the surface, but taking most everything down with it to the ocean floor.

Add to this the fact that the plane, flying at 35,000 feet, can veer off course in any direction for an indeterminable amount of time and distance, and even if the pilots had time to give their position at the time they first experienced trouble, and you would still have a huge amount of “real estate” to search to find any signs of where it might have gone down.

On a lighter note:

As a long time Ham Radio operator, I found the following statement amusing:

“The ship was located at a time when the only means of communication was the Macaroni wireless system and navigational plotting.”

I assume you meant “Marconi wireless system,” more properly called shortwave radio using spark gap transmitters.

Why are people not asking: why was the plane allowed to fly into a storm area??? I know that technocentric society will always dismiss any threat from nature as surmountable.
But it flies in the face of common sense to allow a planeload of people to deal with 100 mph updrafts, no matter how well designed the plane is. If information was not complete I can understand, but it it is humans challenging nature then it is not only stupid, but irresponsible and downright arrogant!

The Bible clearly tells us what will happen in the end times. In so doing, the Bible clearly tells us what will happen in your future. How can I be so sure? Because Jesus Christ tells us the generation which witnesses the re-establishment of Israel as an independent nation will not pass away until “all these things are fulfilled” (a reference to the “end of days” and the Second Coming). The exact dates on which they will be fulfilled are not yet known, but given the Bible’s track record, it’s reasonable to assume each and every prophecy will be fulfilled to the letter. This is a good thing, because when Christ returns, all the evils of this world will melt away in his presence. So if you see the aforementioned events taking place, remember this invitation from Jesus, the invitation he extends to all, when he says, “stand straight and look up, for your salvation is near!” Luke 21:28

Thanks for all of the comments everyone,

Glenn – LOL!
I made the noted correction.

David – good point.

[...] Air France crash demonstrates the limits of [...]

This means how superior we are against mother nature. What a supremacy? I mean what a weakness?

The South Atlantic is probably one of the most hostile places on the planet to seach in, so the chances of finding the flight data recorders are, unfortunately, not high. However, there are ocean research and recovery vessels that may be able to assist in the search, and I hope that they are pressed into service.

David wrote:

But it flies in the face of common sense to allow a planeload of people to deal with 100 mph updrafts, no matter how well designed the plane is. If information was not complete I can understand, but it it is humans challenging nature then it is not only stupid, but irresponsible and downright arrogant!

***

Flight crews are trained to avoid areas of weather, and advanced weather radars aboard the aircraft are designed to aid in that effort. However, nature is unpredictable, and some hazards can’t been seen on radar. As a case in point, an airliner was torn apart near Mt. Fuji in Japan on a wonderfully clear day in the fierce turbulence generated by the winds around the peak. Any form of transport has its risks, and there is only so much that can be done to reduce them.

Air traffic control depends on line-of-sight radar. After you get off the coast of a country and out of range, you disappear off the radar.

The only land based communications that work are HF radio, (common VHF aircraft COMs are line of sight as is cell service) the usable frequency band depends on the MUF (time of day, season dependent).

GPS is a receive only process, your NAV equipment has to retransmit your location somehow for it to be usable by third parties to find you, and they need to be listening and have recorded the last known transmission. Upon system failure, you may still travel quite some distance before hitting the water.

The aircraft has on-board weather radar that helps avoid flying into active thunder storm cells. The area they were flying through (equatorial zone) can have such density of storm activity that you essentially can fly into a box canyon of storm cell activity.

Some indications show that the current Pitot/Static systems on this aircraft have icing problems. Your flight data systems depend on the pitot pressure to determine airspeed. Your controls are “fly by wire” and if anything disrupts the multiple-redundant system that flies the plane including getting bad flight data from instruments while under manual control, you are in it deep. See the Guam B-2 accident video to see what happens when water flows to a low point in the pitot/static system and freezes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hb-OutGAY

The flight data recorders may be as much as 3 miles down under water.

Yes, you can get lost without trace in the middle of the ocean, despite all the modern tech equipment and the best way of finding you will be last known transmissions if it can be triangulated, or if it had location data and then correlating that to known ocean currents, and then start looking for debris.

To find the aircraft, current direction, speed and time elapsed need to be taken into consideration to back track to where the plane possibly entered the water.

It all resolves to a rather large area of real estate.

Weather, flight envelope and airplane capabilities…

http://trueslant.com/milesobrien/2009/06/08/the-coffin-corner-and-a-mesoscale-maw/

Hard to believe in this day and age, but when you are flying over the pond, you are pretty much on your own. You are not talking to air traffic controllers or being painted by their radar – and of course there are no weather reporting stations beneath you. By definition, thunderstorms are unstable, dynamic and fast-moving. So by the time they reached the storms – more than four hours into the flight – what they learned in the pre-flight briefing was yesterday’s news.
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Weather Radar – from NASA

As a result, flight crews rely heavily on the weather radar bolted onto the nose of the airplane. It is a very useful safety device but interpreting its display is a bit of a black art. A lot of pilots, frankly, do not fully understand the intricacies of its capabilities and limitations. It is akin to a blind man with a cane; he can tell something is in his way, but he doesn’t see it.

For instance, the radar mostly detects rain and hail – and if that first layer of storm cells was particularly heavy, it might have acted like a curtain – hiding the reinforcements from radar beams. With the benefit of hindsight (and satellite imagery captured at the time of the crash), we know now there were at four more layers of strong storms behind the first line of cells. And radar cannot detect the strong updrafts of warm air that feed a thunderstorm…

And the weather maze they were flying into. Pretty intense. With last ACARS transmission position..

http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

Rezemos a Deus a possibilidade de haver pelo menos um sobrevivente.

I have seen no one remark on the fact that the A 330 was only 500 miles into its flight after more than three hours of flying time. This aircraft cruises at 541 mph. That should have put it more than 1500 miles into its flight. What’s going on here?

Kent Shifferd.
No one remarked on that statement bcause its wrong. Do your homework before posting rubbish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

It is very scared for such an advanced plane with such experienced crews to just vanish like that.Lets wait for the investigator report and see what was wrong.Wish them the best.

Apologies. I saw an eroneous map on the web. Further check, the plane was at an expected distance for its speed. Again, sorry for misinformation.

Hi kent Shifferd,
No problem.