Interesting note there camberiu. So sad. One black box found, but the flight data recorder has not been found yet I believe. Germanwings is in the process of being integrated into Eurowings. They say this particular A320 had just undergone a routine safety inspection the previous day.
Germanwings Crash In Alps
- Thread starter GS_Dirtboy
- Start date
camberiu
Registered
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2012
- Messages
- 3,880
- Likes
- 4,612
The sad reality is that short commuter planes are much more vulnerable to structural fatigue than long haulers, even if the long hauler has recorded many more hours of flight.
Short routes means that the plane takes-off and land a lot more frequently, which puts a lot more stress in the fuselage due to the pressure change. A Boeing 777 or an Airbus 330 doing the NY - Buenos Aires route takes off and land every 12 hours or so (maximum). A short hauler doing the Buenos Aires - Sao Paulo route takes off and land at least 3 times more frequently.
And the plane involved in this accident was a short hauler, doing frequent short trips.
Short routes means that the plane takes-off and land a lot more frequently, which puts a lot more stress in the fuselage due to the pressure change. A Boeing 777 or an Airbus 330 doing the NY - Buenos Aires route takes off and land every 12 hours or so (maximum). A short hauler doing the Buenos Aires - Sao Paulo route takes off and land at least 3 times more frequently.
And the plane involved in this accident was a short hauler, doing frequent short trips.
GS_Dirtboy
Registered
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2012
- Messages
- 2,495
- Likes
- 4,316
The flight profile they have been showing is a relatively controlled decent for 8 minutes. And, they are saying the pilots never made a distress call. Those two things are not consistent with explosive decompression. You would expect 1) a dramatic change in altitude to get down to oxygen and 2) at least one distress call by the pilots during 8 minutes of controlled flight. Sending a mayday call certainly isn't the first thing that one does in an emergency. You need to deal with the emergency and still fly the jet so your hands are pretty full in the cockpit in the first part of any inflight problem. But, at some point when you have the situation stabilized you certainly would call.
They are saying now that communication was lost between ATC and the aircraft. The evidence is beginning to fit closely with an in-flight oxygen problem that the pilots did not detect in time to take corrective action. It appears that the pilots were incapacitated. We will know more today when they release more info.
So sad.
Hybrid Ambassador
Registered
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2012
- Messages
- 1,851
- Likes
- 568
Please quote your source of posted information. Otherwise, is just speculation on the Lufthansa and its Germanwing scion safety maintanance schedule.
Hybrid Ambassador
Registered
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2012
- Messages
- 1,851
- Likes
- 568
So a friend of yours told that story ? All dubious people flying the more "expensive" airliners believe, higher price the better?A friend of mine works at fleet management for Lufthansa Technik where both Lufthansa and Germanwings machines are maintained... Maybe the speculation is found in peoples believe that "more expensive always means its better"
Well, you get what you pay for...Quality cost money thus needin' to spend more, simple..Fact. FAA finds more safety violation from LCC than regular more expensive airliners, period!
Hybrid Ambassador
Registered
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2012
- Messages
- 1,851
- Likes
- 568
Germanwings A320 Crashes in the Alps
March 25, 2015
SOME preliminary thoughts, comments, and cautionaries on Tuesday’s crash of a Germanwings Airbus A320 in France, drawn from some of the points being made by the media:
— The descent
Reportedly the plane descended 31,000 feet in eight minutes before impacting the mountains. Some news sources are citing this as an unusually high rate. This is false. A roughly four thousand foot-per-minute descent is NOT particularly steep, and would imply the crew was still in control of the aircraft, and that it was not plummeting as a result of some catastrophic structural failure.
People are talking a lot about the possibility of a decompression (loss of cabin pressure), but a simple decompression by itself is not likely to be the culprit. So long as they aren’t explosive, decompressions are rarely dangerous. That’s true even when flying over mountains. Crews will pre-program so-called “escape routes” into a plane’s flight management system that will help navigate them away from high terrain in the event an emergency descent is required. One person I spoke to raised the possibility that the crew, after initiating this more or less stable descent rate, became unconscious somehow as the plane descended, perhaps as a result of not going on supplemental oxygen quickly enough after a loss of pressure. Pure speculation there, but it’s possible (as are a hundred other things). It’s clear that at some point the crew either lost control, became disoriented, or were incapacitated. We don’t know how.
— The missing mayday
One supposed expert on NBC voiced that it was “highly unusual” that the pilots did not send a distress call. The opposite is true. Distress calls are not sent in a majority of accidents, and communicating with air traffic control is well down the task hierarchy when dealing with an emergency. The crew’s primary concern, it should go without saying, is controlling the aircraft, followed by troubleshooting whatever problems have caused the emergency. Later, if time and conditions permit, ATC can be brought into the loop. There’s an old aviation maxim that says: aviate, navigate, communicate. Communicate, you’ll notice, is number three on that list. Eight minutes might seem a long time, but who knows what level of urgency they were dealing with.
— Hack job?
This again: the theory that the plane’s “flight computer,” whatever that is, exactly, was maliciously hacked by parties unknown. People are so enamored of electronic gadgetry these days, and so vastly ill-informed as to how airplanes actually fly, and how pilots interact with all of the alleged computerization in a modern cockpit, that this bizarre theory is given undue credibility, and thrown around to help fill in the empty spaces. The media has been shamelessly gullible when it comes to this topic, and the public needs to be wary of those who’ve been interviewed or quoted. Typically they have very little knowledge about the operational realities of flying commercial planes.
— Crash cluster?
It would seem, to some, that the number of plane crashes over the past several months has skyrocketed. But although, from a safety perspective, it hasn’t been the best twelve-month stretch, you need to look at things in the larger context: The accident rate is still down, considerably, from what it was twenty or thirty years ago, when multiple large-scale accidents were the norm, year after year. What’s different is that, in years past, we didn’t have a 24/7 news cycle with media outlets spread across multiple platforms, all vying simultaneously for your attention. The media didn’t used to fixate on crashes the way it does today. These fixations tend to be short-lived, but they are intense enough to give people the impression that flying is becoming more dangerous, when in fact it has become safer. The past decade has been the safest in civil aviation history, and the cluster of serious accidents over the past year, tragic as they’ve been, is unlikely to change the overall trend.
March 25, 2015
SOME preliminary thoughts, comments, and cautionaries on Tuesday’s crash of a Germanwings Airbus A320 in France, drawn from some of the points being made by the media:
— The descent
Reportedly the plane descended 31,000 feet in eight minutes before impacting the mountains. Some news sources are citing this as an unusually high rate. This is false. A roughly four thousand foot-per-minute descent is NOT particularly steep, and would imply the crew was still in control of the aircraft, and that it was not plummeting as a result of some catastrophic structural failure.
People are talking a lot about the possibility of a decompression (loss of cabin pressure), but a simple decompression by itself is not likely to be the culprit. So long as they aren’t explosive, decompressions are rarely dangerous. That’s true even when flying over mountains. Crews will pre-program so-called “escape routes” into a plane’s flight management system that will help navigate them away from high terrain in the event an emergency descent is required. One person I spoke to raised the possibility that the crew, after initiating this more or less stable descent rate, became unconscious somehow as the plane descended, perhaps as a result of not going on supplemental oxygen quickly enough after a loss of pressure. Pure speculation there, but it’s possible (as are a hundred other things). It’s clear that at some point the crew either lost control, became disoriented, or were incapacitated. We don’t know how.
— The missing mayday
One supposed expert on NBC voiced that it was “highly unusual” that the pilots did not send a distress call. The opposite is true. Distress calls are not sent in a majority of accidents, and communicating with air traffic control is well down the task hierarchy when dealing with an emergency. The crew’s primary concern, it should go without saying, is controlling the aircraft, followed by troubleshooting whatever problems have caused the emergency. Later, if time and conditions permit, ATC can be brought into the loop. There’s an old aviation maxim that says: aviate, navigate, communicate. Communicate, you’ll notice, is number three on that list. Eight minutes might seem a long time, but who knows what level of urgency they were dealing with.
— Hack job?
This again: the theory that the plane’s “flight computer,” whatever that is, exactly, was maliciously hacked by parties unknown. People are so enamored of electronic gadgetry these days, and so vastly ill-informed as to how airplanes actually fly, and how pilots interact with all of the alleged computerization in a modern cockpit, that this bizarre theory is given undue credibility, and thrown around to help fill in the empty spaces. The media has been shamelessly gullible when it comes to this topic, and the public needs to be wary of those who’ve been interviewed or quoted. Typically they have very little knowledge about the operational realities of flying commercial planes.
— Crash cluster?
It would seem, to some, that the number of plane crashes over the past several months has skyrocketed. But although, from a safety perspective, it hasn’t been the best twelve-month stretch, you need to look at things in the larger context: The accident rate is still down, considerably, from what it was twenty or thirty years ago, when multiple large-scale accidents were the norm, year after year. What’s different is that, in years past, we didn’t have a 24/7 news cycle with media outlets spread across multiple platforms, all vying simultaneously for your attention. The media didn’t used to fixate on crashes the way it does today. These fixations tend to be short-lived, but they are intense enough to give people the impression that flying is becoming more dangerous, when in fact it has become safer. The past decade has been the safest in civil aviation history, and the cluster of serious accidents over the past year, tragic as they’ve been, is unlikely to change the overall trend.
Wouldn't it also be speculation that they don't? Do you have a source? I think Thorsten is from Germany. He probably knows as much as any of us.
EDIT: More than anything else, airline crashes are subject to speculation and gross misunderstandings. Also, regarding your other post, what does the FAA have to do with European civil aviation?
Hybrid Ambassador
Registered
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2012
- Messages
- 1,851
- Likes
- 568
A reginally flying pilot has to push.They have to push the bounds of operational safety.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/view/special.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/view/special.html
