AirAsia Airbus 320 flight missing

[muppet]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/27/world/asia/airasia-missing-plane/index.html

(CNN) -- The search is on for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people that lost contact with air traffic control in Indonesia on Sunday.
Before communication was lost, AirAsia Flight QZ 8501 asked to deviate from its planned flight route -- from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore -- because of weather conditions, AirAsia said in a statement.
Flight 8501 went missing at 7:24 a.m. Sunday (7:24 p.m. Saturday ET), nearly two hours after takeoff, as it flew over the Java Sea. From flight tracking websites, it looks as though almost the entire flight path is over the sea.
"At this time, search and rescue operations are being conducted under the guidance of the Indonesian Civil Aviation Authority," AirAsia said.
Of the people on board the Airbus A320-200, 156 are Indonesian, three are South Korean, one is French, one is Malaysian and one is Singaporean, the airline said. It had earlier said 157 of those on the plane are Indonesian.

[orangeman]

Not again. Let's hope they find this one.

[seafoid]

At least it's not Malaysian Airlines again. Any military exercises in the area ?

[seafoid]

It looks like that bit of sea around malaysia is turning into the bermuda triangle.
Must be awful for the families.

[Minder]

Sad but predictable ending

[seafoid]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirAsia

AirAsia operates with the world's lowest unit cost of US$0.023 per available seat kilometres (ASK) and a passenger break-even load factor of 52%. It has hedged 100% of its fuel requirements for the next three years, achieves an aircraft turnaround time of 25 minutes, has a crew productivity level that is triple that of Malaysia Airlines, and achieves an average aircraft utilisation rate of 13 hours a day.

I wonder if this will come under question.
Commercial pressure vs safety. The Herald of Free Enterprise went down to the same forces.

[armaghniac]

I was on Air Asia a couple of times, a sort of Easyjet operation and very efficient at the customer end, don't know about flight operations.

[orangeman]

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/pilots-are-no-longer-trained-to-fly-planes-they-cannot-cope-if-the-computers-fail-30872720.html

Some of you lads are better placed to give an opinion on this piece which basically says that modern day pilots are fine when she's on autopilot but not when emergencies arise.

[Aerlik]

Can't say I agree with that, Orangeman.  A lot of simulator work is required before getting an endorsement  and then from that there is line training which  involves flying with the experienced captain which culminates in being "checked to line".  I'm no longer in the aviation game but am still in touch with many who are and I find it very hard to believe that pilot error led to this. 

There was talk the other day of the plane climbing at a slow speed, which implies a high angle.  If that is so then it can be suggested that the stall warning system failed.  Once you are in a stall it is very hard to get out of in a big machine like the A320.  Basically a plane like that should never be let get to that stage. 

The weather most certainly was a factor and having been in a light aircraft that was being sucked up into a storm system, I can vouch for how frightening it is.  Thankfully I was able to pick it early in the piece - slow speed, high rate of climb - and got out by ramming the nose down very fast and away from the danger area.  I ended up going out to sea beyond the "legal" limits for the single engine plane I was in at the time.  Luckily it was daylight too so I had a horizon to work with.  The storms in the tropics are spectacular to watch from terra firma, but bloody frightening to be anywhere near with flying.

[Minder]

AirAsia jet 'may have made a safe landing on sea surface'

The Times - Jenny Booth

Evidence is mounting that the pilot of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 may have managed to land the plane intact on the sea, only for it to be flooded and sunk by high waves, analysts said today.
The Airbus A320-200 which left the Indonesian city of Surabaya on Sunday 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 that 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."
The plane, carrying 162 people to Singapore, was cruising at a height of 32,000ft when the pilot requested a change of course to avoid storms.

Although permission was granted to turn left, the pilot was not immediately allowed to ascend because of heavy air traffic, and the plane disappeared from radar soon afterwards.
Some analysts have suggested that it stalled because it was travelling too slowly or climbing too steeply. It is not clear why there was no mayday distress signal from the cockpit.
Indonesia's search team scoured the sea for more than 48 hours before the first debris was spotted off the island of Borneo after a tip-off from fishermen.

So far the search team has found eight bodies. All 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 focused.

An emergency exit door and an inflatable slide were among the first items recovered by the search team, suggesting that the first passengers may have started the evacuation process once the plane had landed on water.
Jusman Syafii Djamal, a former Indonesian transport minister, said that in his view the discovery of the floating exit door meant that "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, Mr 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.
The cause, and more details, of the crash will remain unclear until investigators find the all-important black boxes, which will answer questions such as why the underwater locator beacon did not work.

Experts from France and Singapore have joined Indonesian transport safety investigators in their search for wreckage of the plane operated by AirAsia Indonesia, an arm of the Malaysia-based AirAsia which previously had a good safety record.
If found, the cockpit voice recorder should contain the conversations of the pilots for the whole of the short flight and reveal their last moments.

"We can only find out from the black box," said Mr Sudibyo.

[muppet]

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/pilots-are-no-longer-trained-to-fly-planes-they-cannot-cope-if-the-computers-fail-30872720.html

Some of you lads are better placed to give an opinion on this piece which basically says that modern day pilots are fine when she's on autopilot but not when emergencies arise.

All the emergencies, small and not so small, that arise the world over, year in and year out, are successfully managed by crews without much commentary form Learmont. And that is the way it should be.

We know the AF447 co-pilots failed to perform as necessary. But there aren't that many of the 93,000 flights taking off every day by pilots unable to control the aircraft.

We don't know anything about this accident yet, so Learmont is being a tad premature.

That Times article doesn't make any sense to me. If heavy traffic prevented the aircraft manoeuvring to avoid weather, then how come some of that heavy traffic didn't have at least some major incidents with the same weather? As for the on water landing, it is hard to believe that from 32,000' all the way down to the water, neither pilot managed a distress call. Remember Sullenburger lost both engines at around only 3,000' and managed to calmly tell ATC that he was putting it in the Hudson.

"We can only find out from the black box," said Mr Sudibyo.

That is about the only statement from him that is sensible.

[orangeman]

It is hard to accept the landing on water story alright. You would imagine there ought to have been some communication from the plane at that stage. At least they seem to have found the plane and will found out soon what actually happened. The Malaysian airlines victims' families haven't been so "lucky".

[Aerlik]

From 35,000ft (approx. 6 miles up) to sea level and not even a change of transponder code?  Not likely  they'd have had plenty of time for one of them to initiate the emergency drills while the other controlled the radio.  Would take 5 seconds at most to flick to 7700.

Hypoxia is the logical conclusion, I feel as the bodies were found close to each other rather than being dispersed were the plane to have been destroyed at altitude.

[muppet]

From 35,000ft (approx. 6 miles up) to sea level and not even a change of transponder code?  Not likely  they'd have had plenty of time for one of them to initiate the emergency drills while the other controlled the radio.  Would take 5 seconds at most to flick to 7700.

Hypoxia is the logical conclusion, I feel as the bodies were found close to each other rather than being dispersed were the plane to have been destroyed at altitude.

Hypoxia coupled with the high altitude loss of control could explain a lot of what happened. The latter would mean the automatics wouldn't save the aircraft and the former would rule out the crew from doing anything, at least until they got lower.

But what would take out both at the same time?

BTW AirAsia are not having a good week: http://abcnews.go.com/International/airasia-zest-plane-overshoots-airport-runway-philippines/story?id=27894269

[Eamonnca1]

Some analysts have suggested that it stalled because it was travelling too slowly or climbing too steeply.

Didn't think it was possible to stall an Airbus, the fly-by-wire isn't supposed to let you pull up too steeply or slowly.

"We can only find out from the black box," said Mr Sudibyo.

Can't believe we're still using local data storage in this day and age, instead of beaming everything into the cloud as the flight progresses.