#flight 447

Airline pilots were once the heroes of the skies. Today, in the quest for safety, airplanes are meant to largely fly themselves. Which is why the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed 228 people, remains so perplexing and significant. William Langewiesche explores how a series of small errors turned a state-of-the-art cockpit into a death trap.

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/05/14/najib-admits-mistakes-mh370-says-lessons-learned-many/

Najib admits mistakes in MH370 but says lessons to be learned by many

KUALA LUMPUR, May 14:

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, in an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, admitted that the government made mistakes in the first few days after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing.

Although, he said these mistakes did not damn the plane, Najib said there were many lessons to be learnt in light of the tragedy which netted his country and administration much criticism and disdain.

“In the passage of time, I believe Malaysia will be credited for doing its best under near-impossible circumstances.

“It is no small feat for a country the size of ours to overcome diplomatic and military sensitivities and bring 26 different countries together to conduct one of the world’s largest peacetime search operations.

“But we didn’t get everything right. In the first few days after the plane disappeared, we were so focused on trying to find the aircraft that we did not prioritise our communications,” said Najib.

While admitting that it took air traffic controllers four hours to launch the search-and-rescue operation, Najib pointed out that the plane’s disappearance between two countries’ air traffic controls caused maximum confusion.

“Despite this, the search began about a third quicker than during the Air France Flight 447 tragedy in 2009. Nevertheless, the response time should and will be investigated.

“None of this could have altered MH370′s fate. And I pledge that Malaysia will keep searching for the plane for as long as it takes. We will also continue facilitating the independent investigation so we can learn from any mistakes.

“We have already tightened airport security, and investigators are looking for other measures to improve safety,” he said.

But according to Najib, there are lessons here not just for Malaysia, but for the global aviation industry.

“One of the most astonishing things about this tragedy is the revelation that an airliner the size of a Boeing 777 can vanish, almost without a trace.

“In an age of smartphones and mobile Internet, real-time tracking of commercial airplanes is long overdue.

“After Air France 447 crashed into the Atlantic, investigators recommended that the airline industry introduce improvements that would help search teams quickly locate a crash site and reach any survivors. But no action was taken,” said Najib.

He said Malaysia’s preliminary report into MH370 included a recommendation for the real-time tracking of commercial aircraft.

Najib also encouraged members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation to push for real-time tracking of airliners and said changing communications systems, specifically transponders and Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting Systems (Acars), so they can’t be disabled mid-air should be considered.

“Policy makers need to reconsider the capabilities of airliners’ black boxes. At the moment, the location pingers, which are activated if a plane crashes, last only for 30 days. This should be increased to at least 90 days, as the European Union has proposed.

“If MH370′s black box pinger had lasted for 90 days instead of 30, search teams may have been able to locate the plane by now.

“Today’s black boxes can only record the last two hours of cockpit conversation. This seems wholly inadequate.

“When MH370′s black box is finally recovered, the most important portion of the cockpit conversation — the minutes and hours after the plane first vanished — won’t be available.

“Given that a standard iPhone can record 24 hours of audio, surely the black box should have sufficient memory to record cockpit conversation for the full duration of any flight.

“Airliners’ emergency locator transmitters — which emit a distress signal when the plane is in trouble — could also be improved.

“Currently they don’t work very well underwater, and their mandated battery life is just 24 hours,” suggested Najib.

Again reiterating that these changes may not have prevented the MH370 or Air France 447 tragedies, Najib said they would make it harder for an aircraft to simply disappear and easier to find any aircraft that did, which would help reassure the travelling public and reduce the chances of such a drawn-out disaster reoccurring.

“The global aviation industry must not only learn the lessons of MH370 but also implement them.

After seeing all sorts of stories and theories on Tumblr and the news, I'd like to give my... two or more cents on the topic. I am not an expert, but I do research aircraft accidents in my freetime, so I am... informed? Sure why not that. Will be under read more because of extensive details.

The “Final Report” of the French BEA, who undertook the investigation of the Air France 447 crash into the Atlantic on 1 June 2009, comes to some very important and frankly frightening conclusions.  It is clear that what happened was a deadly combination of crew under training and several serious mechanical and design failures.  Some of these can be traced directly to U.S. companies who supplied components for the Airbus.

  In retrospect, the sequence of events is now pretty clear.  And even more clearly is that none of this needed to have happened.   Trouble started when the flight crew elected to continue on its initial course directly across and over the Atlantic, Brazil to Dakar, which would take it into an area of weather where icing could be expected.  The sensors on the aircraft then either did not pick up the fact of the icing, which, if severe enough, can disrupt the lift capability of the wings, but here apparently caused erroneous readings to be fed into the autopilot system by partial blocked pitot tubes,

  As a result of this, the autopilot got conflicting information, one source saying it was going to fast and needed to slow down, the other just the reverse.  In a situation such as this, the autopilot is supposed to disconnect itself, so that the fight crew can immediately take over and “hand tool” (fly manually) and act quickly to diagnose and deal with the situation.  They did not.  The captain, the senior pilot, was not at the controls, and the two junior officers did not respond correctly.  One read the aircraft as going too fast, which if continued, could itself be catastrophic.  The window of speed though which a swept wind modern jet aircraft must fly at high altitudes is really very narrow; too fast and there can be structural damage; too slow and the plane can stall.  (“Stall” here is in the aerodynamic sense, not referring to the engine power; that is. the wings cease to provide lift.)

  In the AF447 case, the pilot at the controls lifted the nose up, thinking he had to slow down the speed.  As it turns out, this is the worst possible thing that could have been done.  At that altitude, the swept wing 500mph plus jet will stall very quickly if what is called the angle of attack, that is the flow of air over and under the wing, is raised even bit too much.  The only way out is to drastically lower the nose and try to increase flying speed, but once the stall is incurred, it may not be possible to recover there from, especially in a high performance jet.  That is what happened here; the machine just keep sinking toward the water, but apparently never did roll over.

  A true tragedy.  There was litigation initiated in the United States against the US component manufacturers as well as AirBus.   In all but two cases, involving Americans, Air France could not be sued in the U.S. because of jurisdictional restrictions in the governing Aviation Convention.  However, a federal court in San Francisco dismissed all of the cases  in favor of a transfer to the French courts.

June 1, 2009: Air France Flight 447 Crashes into the Atlantic

Three years ago today, Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from Rio de Janeiro en route to Paris.

I honestly had panic attacks reading the chain of events which led to the crash of Air France 447: failure to research weather conditions/suitable flight patterns beforehand, pilot inexperience, and failure to communicate between pilots. Click on the link to read the full article/transcripts at Popular Mechanics.