A distress call was made by the aircraft at 10.47am, while the plane was “in an abnormal situation”, the French transport ministry said. The crash happened shortly afterwards, it added.A chance for CNN and Fox to have people talk and scribble large digital maps a la John Madden.
The aircraft disappeared off the radar at around 11.20am, Le Figaro reported. The plane dropped from 11,500 metres to 2,100 metres (38,000ft to 7,000ft) in nine minutes between 10.31am and 10.40am, air radar services said.
The distress call to air traffic control in Marseilles was “mayday, mayday, mayday” and the pilot requested an emergency descent, meaning all airspace had to be cleared below the route of the aircraft.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
"German Airbus A320 plane crashes in French Alps"
A passenger plane flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf has crashed in a remote and mountainous area of southern France.
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I'm not sure of its ranking, but dying in a plane crash definitely makes my list of ways I don't want to die.
It is perhaps the most notorious way to die.
There would be some short lived terror once you realized which direction you were headed.
A more subdued and prolonged terror could probably be found in the airline's maintenance department about now.
The reports are confusing. AirLive.net is reporting that the SOS did not come form the plane, but that airline traffic control declared it after contact with the plane had been lost.
If that it true, it changes the scenario considerably.
If the plane decompressed at 38,000 feet, the occupants wouldn't have had time to think about their demise.
Look at this 3D image of the airplane's flight path.
It began to lose altitude as soon as it was over land, and headed to ground pretty much on a straight track.
Something about that seems suspicious, but I'm not sure what. Was it supposed to explode over the ocean, but didn't, and instead continued on until it crashed?
If it was under pilot control and could be steered, the pilots could have declared an emergency and landed nearby at the airport in Marseilles.
A mayday call means the plane most likely was still under the control of the captain and co-pilot. If the call came from anywhere else besides the plane, then that is a serious problem. So the only other options are engine failure or decompression possibly due to engine failure or it was deliberately put down.
Well, I just heard that a Mayday call never went out and the plane came apart in its descent. Not good.
Starting to sound like TWA Flight 800.
Personnel from my Army organization were first on that scene, at night, (we had vessels nearby) and found similar wreckage distribution but on water. Pulling the few "floaters" aboard made some of them sick to their stomach.
Aridog, that idea crossed my mind as well. The problem, with that comparison, though, is the relatively straight and consistent flight path the German plane took form the time it began to lose altitude until the moment of impact.
Right now I'm inclined to believe the cause was rapid decompression resulting from failure of the airframe, nearly instantly rendering the pilots unconscious.
The straight glide path probably rules out failure of the control surfaces. And an onboard fire would result in a nose-dive to earth, with the pilots communicating along the way as long as they were able.
We don't know why the airframe failed. Fatigue? Explosion?
Well, if airplane manufacturers had followed my designs for a modular flight cabin that sits onto an air frame and gets locked into place, you would have a revolution in airline travel, not only from the point of view of safety, but from speed because in my design, you can remove the entire cabin at the jetway with the people and cargo in it, and stage another group of people to get attached to the airframe as the other cabin gets attached. No more waiting for boarding and deboarding. It's all done and people are ready to go. The air frame would detach from the cabin/cargo module, that module gets moved to a deboarding area, and another cabin/cargo module gets docked to the airframe, locks in and is ready for take off. I'm a fucking genius. Thank you.
rapid decompression resulting from failure of the airframe, nearly instantly rendering the pilots unconscious.
Pilots should have been on backup oxygen. Failure of the airframe could still have been catastrophic (ala Aloha Airlines Flight 243), but at least one pilot should have retained some consciousness. Of course, it all depends on where the airframe failure occurred, and then there's the question of how it occurred.
Well, the pilots don't appear to have been doing anything, so they're unconscious why.
A 4000 fpm descent doesn't strike me as scary, but flightaware.com commenters seem to think it's extreme.
It's a let's get down fast descent but nothing that won't work.
Maybe they set that up and then passed out from whatever the problem was.
Some DC-9 over the everglades descended neatly but swiftly into the swamp after the crew passed out from noxious fumes from oxygen bottles burning.
Haz....I don't disagree about the relatively uniform glide path, however some of the reports I've read said the plane disintegrated while still in the air...e.g., we'll never know the truth of it all, just like TWA Flight 800.
A sudden decompression inside the entire cabin is plausible, and at 38K altitude would render everyone unconscious. Given the fly by wire feature on the A320, the next activity is likely, but still questionable....e.g., why did not the Auto-Pilot not keep flying at 38K? What or who caused the descent?
Our people who saw that in-air explosion (TWA # 800) didn't notice anything prior, but they were busy tying up their vessels at a dock on Long Island. The blast flash they noticed and immediately set out for the obvious crash site. They found a water borne version of the crash in France.
I doubt we'll get a clue unless the French release what they discover on the black box(es) they've recovered.
I'd guess that they're limited in how fast they can descend by going suupersonic, which at high altitude is very close to stall speed.
The speed brakes can't deploy all the way at high speed, so you'd set up a rate of descent that maximizes the speed brake deployment, to get down as fast as possible.
The speed brakes in effect support a lot of the weight of the aircraft.
From the UK Mail:
"The doomed Germanwings plane may have crashed because the windscreen cracked, causing a sudden drop in oxygen levels that rendered the pilots unconscious, it was claimed today.
Reports circulating on professional pilot forums suggested the black box on the Airbus A320 had been analysed and revealed that a 'structural failure' was responsible for the disaster.
Flight 4U 9525 dropped out of the sky and ploughed into a mountainside in the French Alps at more than 400mph yesterday, killing all 150 people board.
In the latest theory to emerge, it is thought the windscreen gave way, incapacitating the pilots and leaving them unable to send out a distress call.
That may explain what happened in what top French official Segolene Royal has described as the crucial minute between 10.30am and 10.31am when contact was lost with the crew.
Flight radar data revealed the pilots stopped responding after 10.31am, at which point the plane started its nosedive from an altitude of 38,000 feet.
However, experts are also discussing a variety of other theories including faulty speed sensors and technical problems related to the age of the aircraft.
France's transport minister says work had begun on retrieving vital data from the cockpit voice recorder, although first pictures showed it had been badly damaged and it was not clear how much, if any, information could be analysed.
Alain Vidalies told Europe 1 radio that the initial focus for the black box investigators will be 'on the human voices, the conversations,' followed by the cockpit sounds."
If windshield, I think blunt force trauma or cut causing loss of consciousness. At least one pilot would be on an oxygen mask. I'm curious what would lead someone to think window crack? That would be very odd.
Windshield failure sounds very unlikely, as the force on it is not large at high altitude.
The New York Times @nytimes
Breaking News: One Pilot Was Locked Out of Cockpit Before Crash in France.
Just a guess, but I'd bet the guy flying the plane wasn't named Lars or Juan or Pierre or Ted.
The crash was obviously incited by an incendiary YouTube video.
Lifted from comments at insty.
Great idea to put locks on the cockpit doors to keep the (co-)pilot protected from people who might want to hurt them.
Here I thought the lesson learned from Flight 93 was given the knowledge of the consequences, an informed group of passengers would make every attempt to protect themselves and should be given the means to do so. What seemed to be learned was to put up barriers to self-defense.
From a relative who flies Airbus passenger planes:
"There is a switch in the cockpit that controls the door. The switch has three positions - open (or unlocked), code (requires a code to enter), or locked (cannot be opened from the passenger area).
The only time the locked position is selected is in the event of a threat to the pilots from a passenger or passengers, because it cannot be overridden from the outside using the numerical keypad."
I'd be interested in Chuck Stanley's view point on this. My "untutored" view is that there should always be no less than two pilots in the cockpit.
Many years ago the airlines argued that flight engineers (usually with some pilot qualifications) were unnecessary due to the automation available then and more so today. Wrong answer, guys. Either have 3 in the cockpit or provide the 2 with pee containers for emergency urges...and not allow them to leave the cockpit. I admit my view is untutored...I am not a pilot.
Otherwise....Go back to the 3 man cockpit crew and allow only one at a time to leave the cockpit for any reason.
Another idea might be to have ATC's dedicated to watching flight paths between airports that could take over control ala' drone technology if some thing aberrant occurred and take over was necessary....especially if no verbal response or communication came from the plane itself. A problem with that might be controlling who had the keys to do so, requiring at least two to do the job for any given flight, and whether they could be hacked.
Footnote: Chuck Stanley is a highly qualified pilot and shrink who comments on Turley's blog as well as Flowers for Socrates...e.g., I doubt he will see my comment here.
Footnote 2: Chuck Stanley's website.
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