FLIGHT MH370, Missing JET

[dnmun]

many of the southeast asian airlines are on the european warning list. airasia is not one of them.

i was under the impression the pilot had received permission to change altitude to go over the thunderstorm but he was actually denied by the controller.

i read a comment about how his last radar transponder indicated 353 knots and that guy mentioned that it was slow for that plane at that point so maybe the pilot had reduced speed before encountering the thunderstorm if he was forced to fly through it.

but hail could have blown out the windscreen also, as well as damage to the engines and the leading edges of the wings and elevator.

the hail would have been almost like the shrapnel in the russian anti aircraft missile that took down MH17.

 

[The fingers]

On the news it was reported that the pilot and copilot had combined experience of 8,000 hours, but major airline pilots have many times that.

 

[Ykick]

On the news it was reported that the pilot and copilot had combined experience of 8,000 hours, but major airline pilots have many times that.

With that airline. Pilot over 20k hours.

 

[The fingers]

On the news it was reported that the pilot and copilot had combined experience of 8,000 hours, but major airline pilots have many times that.

With that airline. Pilot over 20k hours.

With that airplane. Storm strength estimated to equal that of an atomic bomb.

 

[Hillhater]

They must have weather radar and the best storm information.
I don't understand , Why would they not just turn away from it before any major risk is encountered ?
Like you would keep driving fast on a road, straight into a snow blizzard , when you could turn off to avoid it ?

 

[Ykick]

They must have weather radar and the best storm information.
I don't understand , Why would they not just turn away from it before any major risk is encountered ?
Like you would keep driving fast on a road, straight into a snow blizzard , when you could turn off to avoid it ?

Here's a post from AVHerald offered by a commercial pilot:

I have been forced to deviate around very bad weather many, many times. Sometimes I will start the turn before I get clearance from ATC. I tell ATC I am deviating and the clearance comes very quickly afterwards. In all those times I have never considered climbing without a clearance because:

1) I might be climbing into another aircraft
2) there is really nothing to be gained by climbing

Is it is clear to me. They were observed climbing through FL363 WITHOUT a clearance, and the airspeed had deteriorated to the approx stall speed. That tells me they had entered a very strong CB and were caught in a massive updraft.

No other explanation makes sense.

 

[amberwolf]

Money.

Costs more fuel to do that, and also costs more pilot time.

And I dunno about over there, but in the USA you have to have a rest break with no flying every so often. If you time things so you're already in the air by the time that happens, well, that's life. But if you get delayed somewhere along the way, and then before you can take off again you reach that limit, the crew (pilot/copilot anyway) can't take off again, and if you have no standby crew then the plane will just have to sit there for however many hours they have to rest, and so will the passengers/cargo.

Sometimes pilots choose to rush things (including takeoffs in weather conditions they know could cause severe problems, even crashes), so they can beat those limits.

There's been crashes attributed to this before, and probably will be in the future.

 

[edcastrovalley]

They must have weather radar and the best storm information.
I don't understand , Why would they not just turn away from it before any major risk is encountered ?
Like you would keep driving fast on a road, straight into a snow blizzard , when you could turn off to avoid it ?

I agree. They should fly around it.

I've been watching a bunch of these air crash investigation shows on You Tube and how these pilots get into trouble is their pitot tubes or vane sensors get iced up at 30,000 feet during a storm and their speed indicator will read zero, etc. Then the auto-pilot kicks out of automatic because of conficting information from other sensors. The pilot, who was flying a wonderful fully automatic plane like the Airbus 300 is now burdened with flying a plane he really never had to fly much before and now he has to fly in a storm. And not only that, now he's not sure which sensors to believe. Couple that with your inner ear, which will tell you that upside down is really right side up when you can't see a horizon and you really have a mess on your hands.

 

[dnmun]

i agree with ykick. they were cruising at 32000 and last observed at 36300 and 353 knots so i also speculated that they had been caught in a huge updraft. if it it was that strong they could have suffered significant stresses on the airframe and the possibility that hail was encountered at the same time is also significant imo.

 

[Joseph C.]

many of the southeast asian airlines are on the european warning list. airasia is not one of them.

i was under the impression the pilot had received permission to change altitude to go over the thunderstorm but he was actually denied by the controller..

The pilots are generally the weakest link in a plane next is bad maintenance and then there is a gap followed by the actual technology itself.

Apparently, refusing permission to go higher is quite routine especially if there are other planes in close proximity. An experienced airline pilot on another forum said that it's best to go around storms rather than fly above them as going higher can sometimes make the situation worse.

 

[Hillhater]

So, before they went anywhere near this shit storm, they should have changed course on safety grounds.
Cost, seat time, reputation, etc etc , are all secondary if the obvious risk of flying into a predicted high risk storm is known.
The guy in front is given the significant title of "Captain". For a reason...
He is responsible for all souls on board, and should put their safety before any other consideration.
....and has ultimate authority to do so !

 

[Alan B]

In an updraft should the airspeed remain fairly normal? Climbing would reduce it, but level flight in an updraft?

 

[Joseph C.]

So, before they went anywhere near this shit storm, they should have changed course on safety grounds.
Cost, seat time, reputation, etc etc , are all secondary if the obvious risk of flying into a predicted high risk storm is known.
The guy in front is given the significant title of "Captain". For a reason...
He is responsible for all souls on board, and should put their safety before any other consideration.
....and has ultimate authority to do so !

There are numerous occasions when it's the captain that's responsible for killing everyone. There was a very sobering article I read about the culture of pilots. I'll see if I can dredge it up. Bottom of the list were Asian and French pilots. With the Asians it was the captains that were the biggest problem.

Edit: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash

 

[edcastrovalley]

There are numerous occasions when it's the captain that's responsible for killing everyone. There was a very sobering article I read about the culture of pilots. I'll see if I can dredge it up. Bottom of the list were Asian and French pilots. With the Asians it was the captains that were the biggest problem.

Edit: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash

Yes Flight 447 was one of the shows I watched on Air Crash Investigations. Very interesting show. It could be similar to Flight MH370.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUnD2sJnzUI

 

[Ykick]

On the news it was reported that the pilot and copilot had combined experience of 8,000 hours, but major airline pilots have many times that.

With that airline. Pilot over 20k hours.

With that airplane. Storm strength estimated to equal that of an atomic bomb.

Sorry to nit-pick, but as I understand the official press release information:

In an updated press release Indonesia Air Asia clarified the captain had a total of 20,537 flying hours, thereof 6100 hours for Indonesia Air Asia, the first officer had 2,275 hours total with Indonesia Air Asia.

No mention about aircraft/equipment type hours in the official airline statement. Merely, hours flying for QZ and total flying hours.

Indonesia Air Asia Airbus A320-200, registration PK-AXC performing flight QZ-8501:

http://avherald.com/h?article=47f6abc7&opt=0

avherald.com is where folks can and should digest non-sensationalized aviation incident information provided and corroborated by professional aviators.

 

[dnmun]

AF447 involved a stall at altitude because the copilot had his stick pulled back for the duration of the event when the plane initially stalled because of slow speed.

the pilot was out of the cockpit and he was able to get back to the cockpit just as the plane stalled and fell out of the sky.

 

[The fingers]

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/vide...ighs-in-on-disappearance-of-airasia-jetliner/

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014...ave-played-in-airasia-jetliner-disappearance/

"No pilot in their right mind would fly into this" referring to the severe weather. Comments about pilot hours came later in the interview, after comments about how much better our controllers and their equipment are. Still remember the Aero Mexico Cerritos disaster 25 years ago. My wife flew on an Aero Mexico jet prior to that and said the pilots were so bad that everyone cheered upon landing.
Third World pilots, airlines, radar, and governments are most likely to shoulder much of the blame, along with the bad weather.

 

[Hillhater]

There are numerous occasions when it's the captain that's responsible for killing everyone. There was a very sobering article I read about the culture of pilots. I'll see if I can dredge it up. Bottom of the list were Asian and French pilots. With the Asians it was the captains that were the biggest problem.

Edit: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash

If there is any solid evidence to substantiate those suggestions, then there is something greatly lacking in pilot assessment and FAA certification procedures !

 

[amberwolf]

Yes, there is, unfortunately.

 

[Joseph C.]

There are numerous occasions when it's the captain that's responsible for killing everyone. There was a very sobering article I read about the culture of pilots. I'll see if I can dredge it up. Bottom of the list were Asian and French pilots. With the Asians it was the captains that were the biggest problem.

Edit: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash

If there is any solid evidence to substantiate those suggestions, then there is something greatly lacking in pilot assessment and FAA certification procedures !

Here is what I got.

I went through the list of Mayday episodes, a programme that is broadcast internationally, as it covers a lot of the accidents that mainly concern first world countries and it is a relatively short list in a handy format on Wikipedia.

Out of 110 episodes four involved vehicles other than planes while three were what I would consider too early, Munich Air disaster etc.

That leaves 103 episodes although a few involve more than one incident.

Here is the breakdown I compiled which should give a rough idea:

Causes of plane incidents

Pilots
45 (contributed to a further 7)

Maintenance/Operating Procedures/Risk Protocol
27

Air Traffic Control
4

Manufacturing Defects/Recommended Operating Procedures Not Communicated
7

Plane Technology/Design At Fault
13

Hijacking/Terrorism
11

Freak Events/Nature/Cargo
7

Unknown
2

Out of those 52 pilot-caused incidents (45 plus 7) three were Air France flights and one was Air Inter - 7.7 per cent. Of the Asian pilots three were Korean, two Indonesian, one Singaporean, one Chinese and one Indian. That makes eight or 15.4 per cent.

Turkey, along with Russia you can have both ways - either Europe or Asia which would add two more to the Asian list. Though I wouldn't count them as Asian.

Germany in comparison to France (82 million versus 66 million) has one-quarter the pilot-caused incidents from the limited sample. You can say the exact same thing about the UK, similar population to France and just one incident caused by pilot error.

However, I do think Asia is under-represented, I'd maintain that China and Japan would have an awful lot more pilot-caused incidents than what Mayday has covered so far.

On the flip side, Asia is a massive continent and has many countries possibly giving it a much larger number of flights than other regions.

But being obsequious to authority is certainly a prevalent stereotype in Korea, Japan, India and China. Basically South-East Asia. Just don't go asking me for evidence of this.

 

[The fingers]

http://www.businessinsider.com/airasia-flight-engine-damage-2015-1
Weather conditions suspected.

 

[Hillhater]

Another day,.....another theory !
..sorry Fingers, ..not you.

 

[dnmun]

more than icing of the engines i think since there was not a single radio signal from the plane so they lost everything fast.

 

[The fingers]

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/01/...d=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk3&pLid=593118 More information will come out of flight data recorders.

 

[The fingers]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...d-to-fly-on-day-of-crash/vi-BBhyHQQ?ocid=iehp
Uh oh.