WASHINGTON — In the first hint that malfunctioning airspeed indicators played an important role in the crash of an Air France jet bound for Paris earlier this week, Airbus on Thursday issued a warning to all its customers to follow established procedures when pilots suspect the devices are not properly functioning.

full article at sig

You would think that with sophisticated GPS tracking systems available, every airline would know exactly where each of its planes is at all times.

Hell, walmart employs satellite tracking for its trucks for just this purpose.

So why not a $10mil airplane? Moreover, you would think that by now, airlines would have implemented some sort of live video/audio feed for the airplane cockpits, even if only to keep track of their employees. No airplane should be "lost" in 2009.

As to why the pilots barreled through the storm, maybe they were suffering from "get-there-itis", which is what happens when pilots try to rush to get to their destination.

Such was the case for AA Flight 1420 on June 1, 1999.

The pilots, facing a severe storm when landing at the airport , where in a rush to land and neglected to follow landing procedure. This resulted in them sliding off the runway. Ten of the 139 passengers died.

"Is this true? I've only flown small planes, which recover from stalls rather easily...."

Yes, it's true. Recovery from a full stall in a jetliner, at higher altitudes, is *very * different from how it would be in a small Cessna or Piper. Yes, you have more altitude to play with, but that altitude isn't very helpful when the air is so thin. And if the stall is fully developed, it can take many thousands of feet. Aerodynamics get weird on high-speed, swept-wing planes. On some, in certain circumstances, it can be impossible to recover at all.

Patrick Smith

"A stall at 35,000ft – the altitude at which Flight 447 was cruising – is hard to recover from in still air. In the heart of a furious tropical storm at night, it could be near impossible. High-altitude stalls claimed several aircraft in the early days of jet aircraft."

Is this true? I've only flown small planes, which recover from stalls rather easily -- unless the stall turns into a spin and even then, with some altitude, an adroit pilot can recover to straight-and-level. Obviously, flying a jumbo-jet is hairier than flying a Cessna, but 35,000 feet seems like a lot of room to maneuver. Patrick? Anyone?

My Question: given all the redundancies, if cockpit controls manage to be disabled by some massive event--how is it possible that the transmitters sending system status reports continue working?

I wonder about this too, and hope Patrick can explain.

Sabotage. How can a bomb be ruled out when the plane disintegrated so quickly? Just who was on that plane?

Also, the BBC article referred to Ram Air Turbines (RAT) as RAM. Was this a mistake?

In 1977 southern airways flight 242 crashed after going through a thunderstorm and experiencing severe hail and water ingestion to its engines. Both engines shut down and the jet lost all electrical power ( the engines are the generators when the APU isn't on). This scenario doesn't explain why there was a loss of pressurization on AF447 and it seems implausible that hail could have shattered/cracked an aircraft window leading to a depressurization.

Wikipedia article on flight 242: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_242

Most planes fly over land or shallow water. I always laughed when I got the drill about my seat cushion could be used as a flotation device when flying from Flint to Detroit. Like what? Are we going to crash into a swimming pool? The water isn't that deep if at all where we were flying...

I've thought about this now in the wake of the crash. Should the 'black boxes' have flotation devices? Ok. And how do you pull that off? Tonnes of twisted and sharp metal and somehow an inflatable is supposed to survive? And then what? At 3 miles down, that superman type inflatable is supposed to float the entire unknown section of the plane it's stuck in? And how do you get passengers in the plane with this indestructible and self-inflating device(s)? I also thought about making them able to be jettisoned like the Star Trek marker buoys and find that almost as hard to work.

Face it, shit happens. It doesn't happen all that often and hasn't happened nearly at all on American carriers but it does happen. You can plan for 'everything' and yet, rarely, it's not enough. I remember after one accident someone said that adding a parachute to the fuselage would be a great idea. The pilot, or a sensor would fire it off if something happened. Do you know how much a thing like that would weigh? How many seats would have to be removed? And what if it didn't work. Would people want a backup?

Life is precious and way to short for many people. All possible ways of an early demise can not be eliminated totally. You risk your life everything you get in a car, walk along a road, get in the bath tub, climb a ladder... There is only so much that can be planned into a plane and hard choices have to be made during the development of each plane. Sometimes things happen (shit) that you can't control or haven't thought of.

Regarding radar, there are weather phenomena that won't show up on radar or so I've been told. Even with the best radar, the units aren't able to see horizon to horizon. I'd imagine it possible that radar could have led them into a box where they couldn't get out.

Finding the 'black boxes' now seems anticlimactic. We know the plane broke up, we know it probably landed in pieces. The only thing we are missing is what was said in the cockpit before the plane was destroyed. Was the flight crew talking about random BS? Were they bitching about work? Were they aware of what was about to happen? It seems the only thing that is missing now is the 'OH SHIT!'...

This could have been pilot error but don't blame it on an 'unsophisticated' airplane. If anything, this could be an incident of a problem in the computer software that enables the plane to fly in extreme circumstances... We may never know what happened but you can't plan for EVERYTHING...