A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps.

[Ducado]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

From repost it's very strange that the information has leaked out at all

 

[Gelsons Dad]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

The reports said it was a steady descent and that ties in with the fact that the A320 has (or certainly used to have) three separate and I dependently control systems, any one of which can override the other two if it thinks they've done something wrong or dangerous. What civil aircraft don't usually have is terrain following radar, which low flying military planes use to avoid flying into the ground (although it doesn't seem to stop them flying into each other).

Shouldn't laugh really but my ex-boss at BAe used to tell the story (which I'm sure was apocryphal) of going to a conference in the early days of fly-by-wire systems and being asked who would be confident of flying in a plane for which their team had written the flight management system. He said he put his hand up straightaway, the only person to do so. When asked why he would feel so safe he replied "Because if my team wrote it, it would never get off the bloody ground."

The A320 does have a terrain display but not a radar, when activated the local terrain is imposed on the main navigation display. It does it by use of a database of the world containing height information - the plane already knows it's position by GPS and it's altitude so it can figure where it is in relation to terrain in real time. It also has the old radio altimeter which triggers the voiced GPWS alerts to warn of imminent terrain threats as it gets closer to the ground. These alerts I'm sure will certainly be heard on the voice recordings as it approached the mountaineous areas but still the terrain aspect of the GPWS can be turned off which is the norm for example during airshow displays or any planned low altitude maneuvers.

Fly-by-wire is much better now and the gold standard. I know of many pilots who made the switch from Boeing to Airbus and they swear by it. I even know an A380 pilot for BA who says the A380 is the best he has ever flown, someone who flew for the military for yonks and also was brought through on BA's first 747-400's.

This might interest some, especially if you like Iron Maiden! -

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKBABNL-DDM[/youtube]

Bollocks.
Back to your Microsoft flight sim games.

 

[west didsblue]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

The most simple answer of all is to make planes automated with no pilots at all, the technology has been around for years and could easily be applied...no more suicidal pilots, no more pilots put at risk of being hijacked in fact no cockpit needed at all.

You are quite right, this is perfectly feasible. But would you be happy to be a passenger on a aircraft which is controlled entirely by millions of lines of software code which needs to take into account, without intervention from the ground, anything that might happen during the flight? If you included a pilot on the ground in this with a control link, you would need to be sure that the control link was 100% secure and the ground controller has no malevolent intentions.

I'm afraid there's there is no answer that would cover all eventualities. The authorities will learn from this crash and may make minor procedural or technical changes eventually but knee jerk reactions would likely introduce more problems than they would solve.

 

[Akai]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

This is my theory. Cockpit has an issue - window has cracked of suffers decompression for some reason. Pilot a decides to go and tell Tracy the air steward and while he is talking to her - pilot b passes out and pilot a is locked out.

Pilot a has started the decent as he cant breath very well while pilot a is talking to Tracy / having a piss?

Window cracking during a flight has happened before and the pilots are trained to take a rapid descend to the appropriate altitude which is about 10k feet.

 

[Gelsons Dad]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

Of course you can reduce the suicide rates by not continually fucking everyone over for the last 5 years while you try and sort out the fucking mess you've made of the Group by overexpansion in your quest to dominate European aviation.

Just saying.


I'm not convinced by any of the rumours but if you go back to my first post in this thread It was a possibility and looks more likely now that this was intentional.

 

[BlueHammer85]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

4. Facility to take over control of the aircraft by experts on the ground, should be possible in this electronic age.

Then why bother with Pilots at all ?

 

[inbetween]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

The reports said it was a steady descent and that ties in with the fact that the A320 has (or certainly used to have) three separate and I dependently control systems, any one of which can override the other two if it thinks they've done something wrong or dangerous. What civil aircraft don't usually have is terrain following radar, which low flying military planes use to avoid flying into the ground (although it doesn't seem to stop them flying into each other).

Shouldn't laugh really but my ex-boss at BAe used to tell the story (which I'm sure was apocryphal) of going to a conference in the early days of fly-by-wire systems and being asked who would be confident of flying in a plane for which their team had written the flight management system. He said he put his hand up straightaway, the only person to do so. When asked why he would feel so safe he replied "Because if my team wrote it, it would never get off the bloody ground."

The A320 does have a terrain display but not a radar, when activated the local terrain is imposed on the main navigation display. It does it by use of a database of the world containing height information - the plane already knows it's position by GPS and it's altitude so it can figure where it is in relation to terrain in real time. It also has the old radio altimeter which triggers the voiced GPWS alerts to warn of imminent terrain threats as it gets closer to the ground. These alerts I'm sure will certainly be heard on the voice recordings as it approached the mountaineous areas but still the terrain aspect of the GPWS can be turned off which is the norm for example during airshow displays or any planned low altitude maneuvers.

Fly-by-wire is much better now and the gold standard. I know of many pilots who made the switch from Boeing to Airbus and they swear by it. I even know an A380 pilot for BA who says the A380 is the best he has ever flown, someone who flew for the military for yonks and also was brought through on BA's first 747-400's.

This might interest some, especially if you like Iron Maiden! -

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKBABNL-DDM[/youtube]

Bollocks.
Back to your Microsoft flight sim games.

TAWS uses a database so how else can it be called a radar?

 

[Ronnie the Rep]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

4. Facility to take over control of the aircraft by experts on the ground, should be possible in this electronic age.

Then why bother with Pilots at all ?

We need to get rid of the London underground drivers first

 

[Aguero_Element]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

Could it be the case thst the cockpit pressure changed like you say and that made the door impossible to open

 

[Gaylord du Bois]

Re: A320 Airbus Crashes In The Alps. BBC

Looking like the co-pilot took them down on purpose.