Wednesday, January 7, 2015

How AirAsia flight compares to Air France 447 crash

On Sunday, all contact with AirAsia Flight 8501 was lost over the Java ocean as a good space of thunderstorms lined the world. the invention of floating rubble on weekday concerning a hundred miles from its last glorious position, together with associate analysis of ocean currents, can offer investigators clues wherever to go looking for the rest of the craft.

From its cruise altitude, the airplane's flight distance would even be concerning a hundred miles, however take into account that for the rubble to drift that very same a hundred miles it'd solely take a drift rate of two knots, yielding a good vary of prospects on the character of the aircraft's descent to the water below.

Many parallels between AirAsia 8501 and Air France 447 in June 2009 square measure obvious. each craft were lost in violent storm areas of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). each crashed bewildered wherever floating rubble drifted for days from the purpose of contact with the ocean before being discovered, and each were subtle fly-by-wire airliner craft (though completely different models).

While flying into a violent storm is usually to be avoided, it had been not going the only real reason behind the accident. The reported  requests by the crew to deviate course and alter altitude seeking to avoided violent storm cells and turbulence square measure utterly traditional.
The weather within the ITCZ has some distinctive qualities compared to your average violent storm over land. The storms square measure driven by the convergence of flowing patterns between the northern and southern hemispheres of the planet, additionally to the same old factors of heat wet air and unstable region conditions.

The height of the layer --- that tends to place a cap on the peak of violent storm growth -- averages concerning thirty five,000 feet over the middle latitudes (such as that of terra firma USA), however reaches to fifty,000 feet or a lot of within the ITCZ, providing for the expansion of thunderstorms to nice heights and concomitant intensity.

These options will result in some uncommon conditions like icing or serious rain at intervals those storms wherever it's going to not unremarkably be expected, as was the case with AF 447 once its airspeed-sensing probes became clogged.

In the aftermath of the Air France crash, additionally to associate improved style of the probes, important stress has been placed on pilot coaching on the interference and recovery from similar eventualities -- like loss of speed indications and high altitude stall recovery. i might say all pilots, particularly of airliner craft, would bear in mind of AF447's lessons, together with QZ8501's captain, given his reported  expertise.

There is a recent development but that relates to airliner A320 series craft. A December ten, 2014, soundness Directive (AD 2014-25-51) describes however management of the craft may be lost on the wing as a consequence of icing of the associategle-of-attack probes and an interaction with the airplane's stall protection perform.
Those probes act like little weather vanes on the aspect of the craft and live the angle at that the heavier-than-air craft moves through the air -- the angle of attack. If the angle is just too high the air will now not flow swimmingly round the wings, leading to associate mechanics stall. the appropriate vary of angles of attack is fairly little, and gets significantly smaller at higher speeds, like cruise speed.

Simply put, looking on the position of the angle-of-attack probes once physical change happens and also the later speed of the craft, the system could also be fooled into thinking that the craft is approaching a stalled condition -- even once it's not. In response, the airplane's stall protections pitch the aircraft's nose all the way down to recover. This inaccurate pitch down can not be overridden by the pilots unless associate procedure within the soundness Directive is followed. All pilots flying this model heavier-than-air craft ought to bear in mind of this.

The procedure instructs the pilots to close up 2 of the 3 air information computers to render the same old stall protection down and permit recovery of the craft. Of course, there's no manner, at this stage of the investigation, to grasp if this contend a neighborhood, however investigators will definitely be longing for proof of this development.

Another obvious question is that the apparent lack of transmitted position and altitude information when its last glorious position in cruise. This information is transmitted throughout the flight by a system called ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast). this method transmits the airplane's position and different basic information to ground stations. although its position is GPS-satellite derived, it's not transmitted to satellites, solely to ground stations -- therefore the vary to the closest receiving ground station could be a think about the provision of that information.

The apparent fulminant loss of this information at cruise may be explained by failures on the wing like associate electrical failure, in-flight breakup of the craft, or the pilots change off needed information to control the system like that made public within the procedure higher than. However, it might even be that the craft merely flew out of vary of the bottom stations.

Flight trailing websites indicate that this habitually happens within the general space wherever QZ8501's last ADS-B transmission was created. i believe that's the foremost possible reason behind the tip of the information stream and isn't essentially a sign of ruinous failure on the wing.

In the case of Air France 447, the craft minified within the ocean wherever the ocean depth exceeded twelve,000 feet. whereas some floating part and variety of bodies were discovered at intervals a number of days on the surface, the intense depth and rough parcel on the bed delayed discovery of the rest of the craft and recovery of the flight recorders for 2 years.

Fortunately, the 100-foot depth of the Java ocean within the space wherever proof of QZ8501 was found can virtually actually end in the comparatively fast location of the craft and recovery of the 2 flight recorders.

Consideration of ocean currents throughout the 2 days between the craft's disappearance and also the discovery of floating rubble can facilitate lead investigators to search out the rest of the aircraft and its passengers. we should always not be subjected to long amount of uncertainty like with AF447 -- or the continued lack of data on MH370.

While any accident investigation can take months to complete, i might expect a lot of info to be offered because the search and recovery continues.

Clues from the manner during which heavier-than-air craft components were broken on impact and also the flight information and voice recorder contents can give answers. however like several craft accident, the cause is probably going to be the results of a series of events and conditions, the absence of anybody of which might have avoided this tragic accident. At now, {we can|we will|we square measure able to} solely guess what a number of those events and conditions are.

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