Another Plane Missing-Airasia

[Jollygoodfellow]

 

We shouldn't speculate as to what happened. Let's wait until more information becomes available.

 

I agree.  I just hope the "more information" is not in the form of another attack with aircraft!

Pray they find the lost plane wreckage.

 

 

Looks like they might have with wreckage now showing up but of course not confirmed as wreckage.

 

Plane debris spotted in AirAsia search

 

Items resembling an emergency slide, plane door and other objects have been spotted in the sea during an aerial search for missing AirAsia flight QZ8501.

 

An AFP photographer on the search flight that spotted the possible debris said he had seen objects in the sea resembling a life raft, life jackets and long orange tubes.

 

Indonesian air force official Agus Dwi Putranto told reporters: "We spotted about 10 big objects and many more small white-coloured objects which we could not photograph."

 

 

Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/world/2014/12/30/16/49/plane-door-slide-seen-in-airasia-search#BVmrLkVbPjcCVoj4.99

[Jollygoodfellow]

This makes sense

 

 

As search teams hunt for the black boxes of AirAsia Flight QZ8501, analysts say the pilot may have managed to make an emergency water landing, only for the plane to be overcome by high seas.

 

The Airbus A320-200 left the Indonesian city of Surabaya early Sunday and disappeared from radar over the Java Sea during a storm, but it failed to send the transmissions normally emitted when a plane crashes or is submerged.

 

Experts say this suggests the experienced former air force pilot, Captain Iriyanto, conducted an emergency water landing which did not have a destructive impact.

 

"The emergency locator transmitter (ELT) would work on impact, be that land, sea or the sides of a mountain, and my analysis is it didn't work because there was no major impact during landing," said Dudi Sudibyo, a senior editor of aviation magazine Angkasa.

 

"The pilot managed to land it on the sea's surface," he added.

 

The plane, carrying 162 people to Singapore, was cruising at a height of 32,000 feet when the pilot requested a change of course to avoid storms.

 

So far the search team has found eight bodies which appear to be intact.

 

"The conclusions I have come to so far are that the plane did not blow up mid-air, and it did not suffer an impact when it hit a surface, because if it did so then the bodies would not be intact," Chappy Hakim, a former air force commander, told AFP.

 

The fuselage is also thought to be largely intact after aerial searchers saw a "shadow" on the seabed, where operations are now being focused.

 

An emergency exit door and an inflatable slide were among the first items recovered by the search team, suggesting the first passengers may have started the evacuation process once the plane landed on water.

 

Former transport minister Jusman Syafii Djamal was convinced the discovery of the floating exit door meant "someone had opened it".

 

Passengers may have been waiting for a flight attendant to inflate a life raft when a high wave hit the nose and sank the plane, Djamal added.

 

"High waves may have hit the plane, the nose, and sunk the plane."

 

Flight safety standards require that all passengers can be evacuated from a plane in 90 seconds.

 

 

 

Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/01/02/09/00/airasia-pilot-may-have-managed-to-ditch-plane#cdyoDkgr5GtUxZSg.99

[Dave Hounddriver]

Experts say this suggests the experienced former air force pilot, Captain Iriyanto, conducted an emergency water landing which did not have a destructive impact.

 

So he is good enough to do that and not brilliant enough to say "Mayday" on the radio, yeah I guess that makes sense, nah, I don't think so.

[MikeB]

The fact that there was no "mayday" call is not necessarily significant. The crash that this is most compared to (at this point) is Air France 447 in 2009. Same type plane and also entering bad weather. There were 4 full minutes after the autopilot and autothrust systems disengaged before it hit the water and there was no mayday or any communication from the 3 pilots. Ultimately blamed on crew error.

[Jollygoodfellow]

 

Experts say this suggests the experienced former air force pilot, Captain Iriyanto, conducted an emergency water landing which did not have a destructive impact.

 

So he is good enough to do that and not brilliant enough to say "Mayday" on the radio, yeah I guess that makes sense, nah, I don't think so.

 

 

I could only imagine how busy the pilots were at the time, plane could have been spinning or upside down for a minute. What would you do, take a break and make a radio call or try to save your life and all on board. Who knows, a call may have been made but lightning might have wiped out communications. We are not talking about a normal flight here.  :)

[i am bob]

Though a CPI is suppose to be ejected from the aircraft upon a crash, they are not indestructible. In the past, some have even been found to be permanently mounted on the aircraft by ground crew (so they could not be fired) and thus no beacon signal upon a crash.

[Methersgate]

Out climbing a storm cell in the inter tropical convergence is not reckoned to be a good idea, as the updrafts and downdrafts may extend into clear air above the visible cloud.

Anyway the wreckage has now been found.

[jpbago]

Best source of information:

 

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/553569-air-asia-indonesia-lost-contact-surabaya-singapore.html

 

 

Quite the read on that forum. It makes me wonder about flying so often. The risk can be reduced if one is careful with the W5s.

[Dave Hounddriver]

What would you do, take a break and make a radio call or

 

It seems that you are suggesting it is quite an effort to make a Mayday call (as in taking a break is needed) but the protocol seems to be:

 

Key the microphone and announce to the world Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, the flight's callsign, and a description of the emergency. This is generally the way an emergency is declared, particularly for commercial (airline) service, as they're generally always in contact with an ATC facility

 

 

I would have made a Mayday call and it looks like CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo  agrees with me as she said that:

 

if there was an onboard emergency, the pilots should have issued a mayday call or a pan-pan call.

 

"Mayday means you're immediately in danger of losing the flight; pan-pan means that it is urgent but that you can continue the flight and request an alternate route or an alternate airport," said Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

 

"It's disconcerting in that the standard procedures for an emergency don't seem to have been deployed," she said.

 

Edited January 4, 2015 by Dave Hounddriver

[Jack Peterson]

I would have made a Mayday call

 

 

so would have  I Dave and here is a report that would Highlight that .

 

but what remains unclear is what role the pilots may have played in the disaster.

Inadequate training and inexperience were slated as factors in the Air France disaster. All over the world, experts have insisted that weather alone could not be enough to down a modern jetliner, particularly the nearly crash-proof A320-200.

Early-warning systems, autopilot, back-up power and a multitude of default systems combine to make the aircraft one of the safest in the skies.

In the very rare event things do go wrong mechanically, pilots still have options to recover. Australian aviation expert Ron Bartsch, from AvLaw, says the lack of a mayday call adds to evidence that pilot error was involved.

 

 Full source and further article on this issue

 

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/the-latest-air-disaster-has-highlighted-safety-fears-and-questions-on-how-planes-in-the-modern-age-can-simply-disappear/story-fni0fiyv-1227173108479?nk=3652cf96e8ec1e7e85b7bf1eec96456a

 

so the saga will go on I guess

 

JP