Not again: missing aircraft

As Bernie says, they know exactly how much flying time the plane has with the amount of fuel it is carrying, and I think that time will be long gone by now. :(
 
Almost dark in the search area now.
 
More arguments for my favourite driving holidays.
 
Bernie174 said:
Darks not too much of a problem, in fact can make it easier, IR vision cameras from rescue aircraft can see that far better than in daylight.
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But once the wreckage/bodies have the same temperature as the sea will IR not become ineffective ?

These aircraft don't seem to have floating emergency locator beacons that transmit a GPS signal. These things are really relatively cheap.
 
In the latest issue of Inspire, the terror group’s online publication, it recommends such attacks as a means of securing media headlines and “crushing the enemy’s economy”.
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How helpful that they are given the opportunity to host such 'publications' :rolleyes:
 
ST4 said:
I suspect some sort of extremist hijack and the plane is concealed somewhere, stripped of it its beacons etc.
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Perhaps a tad early out of the starting blocks with that theory, Steve.

"From Indonesia National SAR official briefing:

(all times local)

05:36 QZ8501 departed Juanda airport, Surabaya

06:12 Contacts Jakarta center 125.70 at FL320, requests weather deviation left of M635 airway and climb to FL380

06:16 QZ8501 still observed on radar

06:17 Radar contact lost. Radio contact lost. Only ADS-B signal remained.

06:18 All contact lost. Only flight plan view on radar screen.

07:08 ATC declares INCERFA (aircraft position uncertain)

07:28 ATC declares ALERTFA (emergency alert)

07:55 ATC declares DETRESFA (emergency distress)"

The aircraft was in primary radar contact and had voice comms with ATC 1 minute before contact was lost. A 12 hour daylight search has not found anything.
 
With matching Italian ship. It's like last year all over again...:eek:
 
ST4 said:
I prefer not to fly. In saying that it seems to me trans Atlantic, long haul Asia pacific routes that come down. Domestic uk, European routes have an unsurpassed record of not having hijacking, missing aircraft or crashing.
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Possibly because intercontinental flights are more likely to carry passengers from a wider number of nations, and therefore the impact will be felt globally.
Far more attractive to these organisations maybe.
 
Search suspended until first light.
 
arclight said:
Perhaps a tad early out of the starting blocks with that theory, Steve.

"From Indonesia National SAR official briefing:

(all times local)

05:36 QZ8501 departed Juanda airport, Surabaya

06:12 Contacts Jakarta center 125.70 at FL320, requests weather deviation left of M635 airway and climb to FL380

06:16 QZ8501 still observed on radar

06:17 Radar contact lost. Radio contact lost. Only ADS-B signal remained.

06:18 All contact lost. Only flight plan view on radar screen.

07:08 ATC declares INCERFA (aircraft position uncertain)

07:28 ATC declares ALERTFA (emergency alert)

07:55 ATC declares DETRESFA (emergency distress)"

The aircraft was in primary radar contact and had voice comms with ATC 1 minute before contact was lost. A 12 hour daylight search has not found anything.
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Planes don't crash, people crash them/take them down...
 
5 most common causes of plane crashes:-
Pilot error about 50%
Mechanical fault about 22%
Weather about 12%
Sabotage about 9%
Other human error accounts for almost the rest.
 
ST4 said:
Human error being the most likely. These things simply won't fail, or it's statistically such a small chance it's nigh on impossible.
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Actually mechanical failure is still more probable.

Edit....arclight beat me to it :-)
 
ST4 said:
So 59% plus plane crashes are due to human factors. I'd have thought it was higher than that.
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Indeed; however, 34% not related to human involvement at the time of incident is far from being nigh on impossible ;)
 
But once the wreckage/bodies have the same temperature as the sea will IR not become ineffective ?

These aircraft don't seem to have floating emergency locator beacons that transmit a GPS signal. These things are really relatively cheap.
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Bodies and aircraft bits heat up and cool down at different rates than water, so there is often a contrast to the surface water.

ELT's are I believe a mandated item. But from 35-38000 feet down you can't guarantee that it will always deploy as advertised.

ST4
Aircraft accidents are more usually attributed to combinations of factors. The Air France accident in the Atlantic for example, was started as a mechanical problem, a pressure probe iced up, so giving incorrect readings to the crew. But the crew then took the wrong action. Obviously one issue caused a second issue, but either could have been prevented.
 
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Bernie174 said:
Bodies and aircraft bits heat up and cool down at different rates than water, so there is often a contrast to the surface water.

ELT's are I believe a mandated item. But from 35-38000 feet down you can't guarantee that it will always deploy as advertised.

ST4
Aircraft accidents are more usually attributed to combinations of factors. The Air France accident in the Atlantic for example, was started as a mechanical problem, a pressure probe iced up, so giving incorrect readings to the crew. But the crew then took the wrong action. Obviously one issue caused a second issue, but either could have been prevented.
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Yip - forgot about the heating/cooling differential. That's how the Iraqi dug in tanks became easy targets at night.
 
Bernie174 said:
ST4
Aircraft accidents are more usually attributed to combinations of factors. The Air France accident in the Atlantic for example, was started as a mechanical problem, a pressure probe iced up, so giving incorrect readings to the crew. But the crew then took the wrong action. Obviously one issue caused a second issue, but either could have been prevented.
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This - It's nearly always a combination of factors. The modern aircraft computers produce a huge list of points to go through. They'd diverted for bad weather, if a lightning strike had caused an issue, say combined with heavy icing, the crew could have been overloaded with issues
 
It sounds very odd to me for it to be "at the bottom of the sea". Large commercial aircraft having safe water 'landings' in open ocean is almost unheard of and if an aircraft hits water at any kind of speed it may as well be hitting concrete, there's going to be a lot of easily identifiable debris floating.

The idea that it somehow ended up resting in the water complete and it just sank without trace really doesn't seem right.
 
PMN said:
It sounds very odd to me for it to be "at the bottom of the sea". Large commercial aircraft having safe water 'landings' in open ocean is almost unheard of and if an aircraft hits water at any kind of speed it may as well be hitting concrete, there's going to be a lot of easily identifiable debris floating.

The idea that it somehow ended up resting in the water complete and it just sank without trace really doesn't seem right.
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I don't think that what is being reported can be taken at face value. What is happening will be the usual journalistic sloppiness/ignorance/embellishment and maybe some translation difficulties. The SAR boss is being quoted as saying the plane is at the bottom of the sea. He did not say anything about it being in one piece. Journos like to grab sound bites. They don't like detail getting in the way of a headline.

Just had another example. There are reports of objects being spotted from an Aussie Orion aircraft. That has been on the news several times this morning. LBC have just called the objects "wreckage". Poor reporting.
 
Yeh, all that I took from that piece was that in all probability the plane has crashed into the sea.
 
It sounds very odd to me for it to be "at the bottom of the sea". Large commercial aircraft having safe water 'landings' in open ocean is almost unheard of and if an aircraft hits water at any kind of speed it may as well be hitting concrete
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While it's true that you do get a break up on impact, the majority of the aircraft will sink rapidly, even if hitting reasonably flat, presuming its an uncontrolled impact. But obviously no one knows how it hit, if it was a nose straight down, very little would remain on the surface, even the broken up bits will be dragged down by the majority heavy parts.

In the unlikely event of a controlled landing on water, you'd expect the majority of bits to float, at least for a while, as the very heavy bits, the engines would most lightly sheer off on impact. I say this is less likely because if thats what happened, the crew would be shouting and screaming for help. They weren't, so it tends to point towards something catastrophic at height.
 
On that route it'd be difficult for it not to be in the sea. The two airports are costal and the route between them entirely over water. Its one of those statements that doesn't say anything. Atleast the sea is not particularly deep there
 
boyfalldown said:
On that route it'd be difficult for it not to be in the sea. The two airports are costal and the route between them entirely over water. Its one of those statements that doesn't say anything. Atleast the sea is not particularly deep there
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At 50m or less that's certainly going to aid recovery. I'm confident they will be able to find a proportion of the wreckage and hopefully the black box.

My thoughts go out out to all the victims family. It's yet another sad tragedy.
 
Bernie174 said:
While it's true that you do get a break up on impact, the majority of the aircraft will sink rapidly, even if hitting reasonably flat, presuming its an uncontrolled impact. But obviously no one knows how it hit, if it was a nose straight down, very little would remain on the surface, even the broken up bits will be dragged down by the majority heavy parts.

In the unlikely event of a controlled landing on water, you'd expect the majority of bits to float, at least for a while, as the very heavy bits, the engines would most lightly sheer off on impact. I say this is less likely because if thats what happened, the crew would be shouting and screaming for help. They weren't, so it tends to point towards something catastrophic at height.
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Of course it will sink, it's the doing it intact bit I highly doubt. It's almost unheard of for a commercial airliner to make it down safely in open water and equally unheard of for one to hit at speed and remain intact. Water acts more like concrete when hit at speed.

I generally hate it when people sit on the Internet and formulate potential causes for aviation accidents when only limited information is known, but that particular scenario really doesn't seem plausible (if indeed that is what was reported - as mentioned it may not be and I could have that bit wrong).
 
I didn't say it would sink 'intact'. I said that it will break up, whether controlled landing or not. However, a nose down straight in impact, will drag the bits from a confined impact point down with the heavy bits. A moving forward impact, like the Ethiopian 'controlled' water landing would leave more debris of smaller broken off bits in a line as the plane slows down.
The 2 types of impact cause different amounts and trails of debris.
Given no mayday and a disappearance from radar, or more properly it's transponder stopped it's returns, it does seem to be a catastrophic incident, not a slow one, that leaves you with more chance of a nose in and very little debris. Given they haven't found anything yet, in a smallish search area, that lends more credence to that theory.
By catastrophic, I don't mean it broke up in the air, if you look at the Air India 747 that was blown up over the Atlantic, the debris field was found very quickly, in a much bigger search area.
 
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Currently there is Virgin Atlantic aircraft circling Gatwick with an "undercarriage failure".
 
chadders said:
Currently there is Virgin Atlantic aircraft circling Gatwick with an "undercarriage failure".
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"is preparing to implement a non-standard landing" at Gatwick airport because of "a technical issue with one of the landing gears"
 
Virgin aircraft down safely. Super crew performance.
 
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