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Krisnatharok
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Krisnatharok

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German A320 airbus crashes in French Alps

A bad year for airlines...

»www.theguardian.com/worl ··· nch-alps
lutful
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lutful

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The debris has been spotted already, but very difficult to reach the spot.

The aircraft was cruising at FL380 when it reached French coastline near Marseilles. Then it started descending rapidly, going all the way down to FL068 (approx 6800ft) in a few minutes. Somehow it managed to stay at that altitude for a minute before crashing in a remote valley.

Someone literally screamed "Emergency Emergency" on the radio. The transponder was working until the end, but no signal was transmitted to indicate either an emergency or an intruder in the cockpit.

*** Probably coincidence ... but flight took off from Barcelona, a region of Spain which wants autonomy, and crashed near Barcelonette in France, during a visit by the Spanish king and queen.

bluedemon
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The descent rate was 3000 feet per minute i.e. 10 minutes from cruising altitude to the ground which was at 6000-7000 feet. Such a descent is not outside the range of commercial aircraft. One black box recovered so far. No emergency report from pilot only from air traffic controllers. First guesses on cause would be either mechanical failure or terrorism. The black box(es) will be critical.
lutful
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lutful

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I was checking FlightAware DB: »flightaware.com/live/fli ··· tracklog

It was visible to Marseilles, Cannes, and Nice airports as it dropped from FL380 cruise altitude to approx 11,000ft. The aircraft maintained same heading, but lost altitude and airspeed over 8 whole minutes.

Obviously any clear-thinking pilot would have requested permission to return to any of those airports within first 5 minutes, before the plane dropped below 20,000ft and headed into a sparsely populated mountain area with no large airstrips.

Even if they thought they could recover, rational and conscious pilots would have communicated the nature of the emergency, long before aircraft dropped below the radio horizon of all major return airports.

So my early hunches are:
a) some incident near Marseilles coastline, resulting in loss of engine power
b) pilots somehow became impaired, and could not communicate
c) plane was structurally sound, and autopilot tried to maintain heading
d) plane dropped in altitude and eventually crashed into a mountain

bluedemon
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Click for full size
Above is a plot of altitude and airspeed from Flightradar24. Looking at the final trajectory it looks very much like a parabola i.e. the path taken by a falling stone moving forward. Curiously the forward speed goes up a bit before dropping somewhat. That doesn't sound like engine failure because you would expect a slowdown of forward speed then. Gliding speed is 300 knots or less which is less than the observed forward speed:

»www.askcaptainlim.com/fl ··· elt.html
lutful
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lutful

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said by bluedemon:

Curiously the forward speed goes up a bit before dropping somewhat. That doesn't sound like engine failure ...

Yes, I have to agree.

FlightAware table has heading, speed, altitude and rate of descent. Cruise speed was probably set to 480 at FL380. Speed went down to 472 initially, then back up to 488, and then back down.

It was an older aircraft and there was some sort of repair on Monday. There could have been a leak all along, but loss of pressure was too slow for alarms. Even if pilots failed to don oxygen masks, the voice recorder would probably capture some incoherent talk before they became unconscious.

I hope they subscribed to ACARS over satcom, otherwise we have to wait for data recorder analysis to solve the mystery.

Unbundled
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As the flight descended, did air controllers try to contact them to ask what was going on? ? ?

saillaw
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said by lutful:

Someone literally screamed "Emergency Emergency" on the radio.

Where did this info come from? Everything I have read said there was no communication.

Unbundled
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»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· PuiKXRtQ
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Re: German A320 airbus crashes in French Alps Raw Footage

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· thbvBbKk
kcrupp
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Re: German A320 airbus crashes in French Alps

Aviation Herald Page
»avherald.com/h?article=4 ··· 51&opt=0

Flyertalk Forum
»www.flyertalk.com/forum/ ··· 5-a.html

Airliners.net Forum - Part 8
»www.airliners.net/aviati ··· /6354510

PPRUNE Forum
»www.pprune.org/rumours-n ··· -28.html

Reddit Page
»www.reddit.com/r/4U9525/
lutful
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said by saillaw:

said by lutful:

Someone literally screamed "Emergency Emergency" on the radio.

Where did this info come from? Everything I have read said there was no communication.

That was directly from a detailed post in AV Herald thread soon after the incident, but it has been removed for some reason.

The person had already created a detailed map of the descent and mentioned squawk codes for emergency and intruder (IIRC 7700/7500), so he is probably in aviation.

*** Just thought of an explanation. Imagine some air traffic controller screamed "emergency emergency" after failing to contact the pilots. Other pilots heard that, and one of them posted in AV Herald. Seems plausible.

bluedemon
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The depressurization theory seems plausible. The plane might automatically head for low altitude after that and if the pilots were knocked out this would explain the rest.

Snakeoil
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They were talking about this one the radio this morning. They said Airbus has a computer controlled flight system. And that it might be possible the crash was a result of a computer error/glitch.

They said Boeing uses a system similar to Airbus, except pilots have an easier time over riding the computer on a Boeing aircraft compared to an Airbus aircraft.

But only time will tell as they reassemble the plane and black box.
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Germanwings Crash Investigation Hits Snag in Retrieving Data

»www.nytimes.com/2015/03/ ··· tml?_r=0

saillaw
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I hope this thing still works:


Kearnstd
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Kearnstd

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damn that thing looks like the results of a small sports car being hit by a semi going 85.
kcrupp
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The round dome part is where the memory modules are and that looks intact.
kcrupp

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said by bluedemon:

The depressurization theory seems plausible

I agree and that seems to be the consensus, but we will see. It's still very early in the investigation.
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Excerpts from press conference

»www.pprune.org/8916653-p ··· 725.html

"We have not been able to analyze everything the pilots said after recovering the voice recorder of the crashed Germanwings plane."

We should be able to analyze and time-stamp everything recorded in the cockpit, but it may take a couple of days.

This is what Rémi Jouty, Director BEA (Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile) explained today.

He did not confirm to have located the second part of the black box containing all technical data.

He had no reason why the plane started a decent and crashed with full speed in the French mountain region. French civil aviation professionals tried to contact the pilots after they noticed the unexpected decent without success.

When asked if they were be able to recognize the voice of pilots after the decent started, he refused to respond.

The speed of descent was about 3,500ft per minute, he says. There is a question about rumours of lithium in the cargo. Jouty says such questions have to be investigated.

When asked about a possible a terror attack, he also refused to respond."

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Could someone please clarify something for me, if they have knowledge of this:

After the flight reached altitude, it began descending, until it tragically crashed.

As the plane descended, and before it was lost on radar, did any air traffic controller (ATC) try and contact the flight????

And please.... do *not* respond by saying something like "I'd assume so". Not interested in assumptions on this question. Simply, did or did not ATC speak to the flight, as it descended.

IF you know something positive, please do respond.
kcrupp
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said by Unbundled:

IF you know something positive, please do respond.

Please note my post right above yours.

"French civil aviation professionals tried to contact the pilots after they noticed the unexpected decent without success."
kcrupp

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Another translation on the fly posted to Airliners.net

Reply 161

»www.airliners.net/aviati ··· /6353070

"I did a simultaneous typed translation of the BEA presser as I was listening
via

www.francetvinfo.fr live feed

Start Presser:

priority will be given to find the recorders and finding the aircraft main components

then certain choices will be made to recouperate and analyze certain parts of the plane made difficult by the scattered aircraft parts all over

the aircraft has followed the planned route it was at cruise alt 38,000 ft arouund 9.30 am las tmessage to the tower the message was routine

he was allowed to continue as normal

about one mi nute later the aircraft started a descent until the last radar position - the impact at the impact site -about 10 minutes

the last altitude recorded by the radar was 6000 feet

we cannot tell why the aircraft descended to the crash and why the contact was lost

the flight recorder found yesterday was remitted to us at 9.45 am t his morning

the important part containing the data is in our hands there is also a part for the sea which is not important for us

the work of read ing of t his has began immediately and some difficulty have been met but we have succeded extracting an audio file that can be used

but it is too early to draw conclusions on what happened

we need to work on this audio file to decipher all the details in the f ile

we have the audio files for the whole length of the flight so we need to work on it

they will have to do it in conjunction with the other flight recorder and work on the two recorders to refine the comprehension of the flight so they can transcribe the data

could take several weeks or months

we will communicate as soon as we have more information

they have not found the second flight recorder he said

they have noo knowledge of any flight recorder that was totally destroyed in the whole aviation history.

he cannot confirm that no element of the second flight recorder were found

he says the area of the crash is not that big so they should not have too much trouble finding the other flight recorder and be able to fully analyze the flight data

he said they will scour the whole of the area and do everything necessary to find the second flight recorder

3000 ft minute descent (constant) radar data

he said he will close no door on the cause of the crash

he says the aviation world had a lot of mishaps so the context is difficult but the work will be done and we will take all the time necessary aside from all the emotional feed coming from the crash

the radar trajectory goes to some hundred meters of the crash point the aircraft flew until the end

the debris do not show an aircraft that exploded in flight

they are too small this kind of debris shows an impact on a very hard surface at very high speed

(mali accident last summer)

they are going to recoop all the weather data at departure, during flight and at crash point to see if this can be a factor for the crash but nothing shows any weather problems

the accident
technical problems?
or intentional action?

they have no information on this yet so they cannot tell for hte time being.

techies from the airline and from the constructor will participate in the inquest

some bea people are on site they are not there to inspect precisely certain debris but to find the missing recorder and examine certain debris they have found

some might be repatriated to be sent to a lab

they will start transcribing the first recorder asap before they find the second recorder

they hope to find the second recorder soon

too early to tell about the engines not one engine failure and not two engine failures

they will look at the professional backgrounds of the pilots but their names will not be made public

End Presser

Another presser at Barcelona airport will take place at 7.00 PM local time"
lutful
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said by Unbundled:

As the plane descended, and before it was lost on radar, did any air traffic controller (ATC) try and contact the flight????

See my earliest post. Some pilot had posted in Aviation Herald forum that someone screamed "emergency emergency" which matches many reports that air traffic controllers initiated emergency procedures after failing to communicate with the pilots.

The emergency alert was probably from Cannes ATC, which recorded the final ADS-B transmissions. They obviously noticed the unplanned rapid descent, and wanted to discuss the reasons with the pilots. Since pilots did not respond, French air force scrambled a Mirage, but it was already too late.

So far there has been no reports of any passenger trying to call through French cell towers. They have to check at what time contact was lost with Barcelona ATC and cell towers. It is possible that a slow leak was present before take-off, and everyone became unconscious long before the aircraft reached French coastline.

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The casing of the second box - the flight data recorder - has been found, but not its contents

from BBC
lutful
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lutful

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They MUST find that memory card. Since the aircraft is obliterated, there is no other way to reconstruct the sequence of events. The ADS-B logs are not enough.

»www.nytimes.com/2015/03/ ··· tml?_r=0

Rémi Jouty, the director of the French Bureau of Investigations and Analysis, said at a news conference that the plane took off at around 10 a.m. local time from Barcelona and that the last message sent from the pilot to air traffic controllers had been at 10:30 a.m., which indicated that the plane was proceeding on course.

But minutes later, the plane inexplicably began to descend, Mr. Jouty said. At 10:40 and 47 seconds, the plane reported its last radar position, at an altitude of 6,175 feet.

“The radar could follow the plane until the point of impact,” he said.


The final message at 10:40AM appears to have been sent automatically. But it is not clear from his comments if a conscious pilot manually initiated transmission of the 10:30 message. If that is confirmed, we have to rethink the "slow leak leading to hypoxia" theory.

*** »www.telegraph.co.uk/news ··· ard.html

The captain’s last communication with the ground was at 10.30am (9.30GMT) when he confirmed instructions to continue on the planned flight path ... At 10.31, when the aircraft began descending without approval, air traffic controllers tried to radio the cockpit on its assigned radio frequency, without success.
...
(Remy Jouti, BEA director) expected initial analysis in “a matter of days” and stressed that terrorism or sabotage could not yet be completely excluded. He did, however, say the crash scenario did not appear to be linked to depressurisation.


So it seems pilot was conscious 10 minutes before impact, but failed to respond to ATC query just a minute later.

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That selective bolding and italicizing is extremely irritating, FYI.

So now NYT is reporting the pilot left the cockpit just before the crash for unknown reasons and was locked out of it. There is clear audio recording of him asking the co pilot to open the door with no response ever being heard. Then you can hear the pilot trying to break down the door.

»www.nytimes.com/2015/03/ ··· tw-share

So either the co pilot had a heart attack or some other health problem that knocked him unconscious while the pilot was peeing, then left locked out of cockpit, unable to regain airplane controls if a problem arose.

Or there is the terrorist conspiracy also being thrown around in the comments.

First scenario is more likely.
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kcrupp

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said by TigerLord:

First scenario is more likely.

Or option number 3 - The reporting is completely full of crap - again
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Some hi rez pics

»www.laprovence.com/media ··· ash2.jpg

»www.metabunk.org/sk/2015 ··· 4j6m.jpg

»si.wsj.net/public/resour ··· 3229.jpg
Expand your moderator at work