Breaking news: AirAsia plane missing with 162 passengers!

[SvenSvensonov]

Good job guys. Bring solace back to grieving families. I hope all the men and women lost in this horrible occurrence will be returned to their families

The crew from USS Sampson (DDG-102) has recovered several bodies from the Air Asia Flight QZ8501 and delivered them to Indonesia, according to a Friday report in theAssociated Press.

A total of 16 bodies from the crash have been recovered in the search for the plane — believed to be at the bottom of the Java Sea — most found by the crew of Sampson.

The bodies have been taken via the ship’s MH-60R Seahawk helicopter to the Indonesian town of Pangkalan Bun.

A Friday AP photograph shows crew from the ship offloading the bodies from the helo.

Sampson has been on station assisting with the crash efforts since Dec. 30, 2014.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Airbus A320-200 two days earlier.

Poor weather has hampered the search for the missing airliner. Sonar equipment and hydrophones brought in from the French aviation accident investigation agency — Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA) — was unable to be used on Friday due to high seas.

A total of 162 people onboard are believed dead.

Destroyer Sampson Recovered Bodies from Airliner Crash - USNI News

 

[Donatello]

The stall warnings on AF447 were valid.

None of them came on prior to the aircraft stalling.

The reason for their intermittent nature is because the angle of attack vanes which are required for the stall warning only work when airspeed is 60 knots or greater indicated.

On occasions during the AF447 stall, the IAS was below 60 knots.

The Unreliable Airspeed procedure tells you to heed stall warning if present, something AF447 never did:

View attachment 179387

This is what baffles me about AF447.....even if they lost the pitot speed readings, why didn't they have a clue from the GPS readings? (I know GPS give speed relative to the ground, but it would be something to work with)

 

[JSCh]

Aircraft tail pinpointed in search for AirAsia wreckage
By Gayatri Suroyo and Fergus Jensen
JAKARTA/PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia Wed Jan 7, 2015 1:00am EST

1 of 3. A Russian search team member looks out the window of a Super Puma helicopter during a search operation for passengers onboard AirAsia Flight QZ8501, off the Java sea, in Indonesia
January 7, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Beawiharta

(Reuters) - Search teams looking for underwater wreckage from a crashed AirAsia passenger jet have located the tail of the aircraft, the section where the crucial black box flight recorders are housed, Indonesia's search and rescue agency chief said on Wednesday.

Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens over the northern Java Sea on Dec. 28, less than half-way into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. There were no survivors among the 162 people on board.

"We've found the tail that has been our main target today," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, the head of the search and rescue agency, told a news conference in Jakarta.

The tail had been identified using an underwater remote operated vehicle, Soelistyo said, adding that the team "now is still desperately trying to locate the black box".

Aircraft tail pinpointed in search for AirAsia wreckage| Reuters

Pictures released from the tail part of Flight QZ8501 found by Indonesia searchers in the Java sea.

 

[imiakhtar]

This is what baffles me about AF447.....even if they lost the pitot speed readings, why didn't they have a clue from the GPS readings? (I know GPS give speed relative to the ground, but it would be something to work with)

The crew ignored or disbelieved most of the information in front of them.

There was no mention of ground speed on the CVR nor was there any attempt to follow checklist procedures.

If they had followed the UAS followed by ADR check procedures in the QRH, they would have known to x check their instruments with GPS altitude and ground speed. A ground speed of 150 knots would have been a big clue.

 

[Donatello]

The crew ignored or disbelieved most of the information in front of them.

There was no mention of ground speed on the CVR nor was there any attempt to follow checklist procedures.

If they had followed the UAS followed by ADR check procedures in the QRH, they would have known to x check their instruments with GPS altitude and ground speed. A ground speed of 150 knots would have been a big clue.

But in a thunderstorm your ground speed can be very misleading since the wind can change direction very quickly. So at altitude while 250knots Airspeed might be stall speed, we don't know the exact Airspeed and hence GPS might give a value which is too low in tailwind conditions........AF447 was a typical case of poor crew management, that is agreed. But my main question is, that in absence of knowing the true air speed via the Pitots, what other methods are there to get an approximate fix on your air speed and not ground speed?

Air speed of 200knots with 50knot head wind would be 150knots ground speed, right?

 

[imiakhtar]

But my main question is, that in absence of knowing the true air speed via the Pitots, what other methods are there to get an approximate fix on your air speed and not ground speed?

The Unreliable airspeed procedure will give you an approximate speed at a given weight and engine thrust.

Air speed of 200knots with 50knot head wind would be 150knots ground speed, right?

No.

I've posted a link to the FAA pilot handbook on these forums in the past.

It will give you a good background on the indicated airspeed, true airspeed etc.

Concorde cruised in the region of 400 knots indicated or M2.0 with no headwind/tailwind, yet ground speed was 1150-1200 knots.