Malaysia Airlines Plane "Loses Contact"

[Vipers]

Vaud said:

NinjaPower said:

Airline suffers £80 million loss in the last quarter due to passengers avoiding them.

http://news.sky.com/story/1262143/missing-mh370-pa...

Well they lost £770m over the last 3 years, so £250m a year average, £60m a quarter average, so it's not that big a jump in losses?

A colleague flew with them recently from the US and said it was a very quiet flight with no-one sleeping...

Strange that, did Air France suffer the same fate when their flight fron Rio ditched?

[anonymous-user]

Vipers said:

Strange that, did Air France suffer the same fate when their flight fron Rio ditched?

I have absolutely no idea.

[Auntieroll]

AreOut said:

there are many ways of mounting, some other components are also mounted externally...

it could report status of its batteries to a cabin and engineer would write it down after every flight, service would be easy as it would only need new batteries, if it breaks - buy another one(such device shouldn't cost more than $100 if so), redundancy would be too much to ask for since there is already transponder on the plane, the chance of both transponders breaking at the same time is negligible

If you can find/invent a rechargeable battery that will function at -60c it would help a lot.
There is no way with existing battery technology of having a device function in the way you describe, more is the
pity.

[Apache]

Vipers said:

Vaud said:

NinjaPower said:

Airline suffers £80 million loss in the last quarter due to passengers avoiding them.

http://news.sky.com/story/1262143/missing-mh370-pa...

Well they lost £770m over the last 3 years, so £250m a year average, £60m a quarter average, so it's not that big a jump in losses?

A colleague flew with them recently from the US and said it was a very quiet flight with no-one sleeping...

Strange that, did Air France suffer the same fate when their flight fron Rio ditched?

When flying on Business I always ask for an alternative to AF if possible

[Super Slo Mo]

Apache said:

When flying on Business I always ask for an alternative to AF if possible

Well I, unfortunately, have to fly AF CDG to GRU (Sao Paulo) in a few weeks time, plus BHX to CDG and then an internal AF flight in Brazil. Plus the whole thing in reverse a few weeks after that. Not looking forward to it at all, as if the job itself wasn't bad enough.

I'm sure it'll all be fine, statistically it should be. Thing is though, last time I flew AF we had a small 'incident', nothing serious, but enough to raise eyebrows.

[jmorgan]

Auntieroll said:

AreOut said:

there are many ways of mounting, some other components are also mounted externally...

it could report status of its batteries to a cabin and engineer would write it down after every flight, service would be easy as it would only need new batteries, if it breaks - buy another one(such device shouldn't cost more than $100 if so), redundancy would be too much to ask for since there is already transponder on the plane, the chance of both transponders breaking at the same time is negligible

If you can find/invent a rechargeable battery that will function at -60c it would help a lot.
There is no way with existing battery technology of having a device function in the way you describe, more is the
pity.

Probably get heated and insulated crates but still comes back to the bottom line. What is it going to cost vs benefit. I expect such a testing for safety considering heaters and batteries and other stuff would amount to a fair old bill. I would not expect they pop down Maplins for the bits. You get batteries in worse environments but I think the cost is way up there with the fairies for this?

[Hub]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

British Airways Incidents / Crashes:

What about that one last year where they left the engine fan cowl doors loose which caused engine damage/fire and emergency landing?

Most of AF incidents were years ago, just a couple of biggies in recent years makes the stats look bad!

Edited by Hub on Friday 16th May 10:04

[durbster]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

Says it all.

Theres a reason I dont fly Air Chance.

It doesn't really say it all when you've listed Air France crashes from the 1930s. I've taken those out for a fairer comparison.

wiki said:

12 June 1975
Air France Flight 193, a Boeing 747-128 (N28888) operating the sector between Bombay (now Mumbai), and Tel Aviv to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport was destroyed by fire on the ground at Bombay's Santa Cruz Airport, following an aborted takeoff. The aircraft's tire on its right-hand main undercarriage had failed while the flight deck crew was executing a 180 degree turn at the beginning of Santa Cruz Airport's runway 27. When the flight deck crew began its takeoff run, another tire failed. At that point the plane's wheels and braking assembly came into contact with the runway, starting a fire. The crew aborted takeoff. The ensuing delay in shutting down the engines, as well as the improper deployment of the airport's fire service, caused the fire to spread, leading to the plane's total destruction. There were no fatalities among the 394 occupants (18 crew and 376 passengers).[49]

Operation Entebbe
On 27 June 1976, an Airbus A300 (registration F-BVGG) operating as Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked shortly after departing Athens. After refuelling in Benghazi, Libya, the hijackers demanded it be flown to Entebbe, Uganda. One hostage was freed in Benghazi and in Uganda another 155 non-Israeli and/or non-Jewish hostages were released. The flight crew remained with the hostages after Captain Bacos insisted he was responsible for them. After several days of negotiating and diplomatic interventions, Israel launched a commando raid into Entebbe to free them. During the assault all six of the hijackers were killed as were three hostages. The leader of the assault, Yoni Netanyahu, was also killed. One hostage, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, was unaccounted for. She had been taken to Mulago Hospital prior to the assault and later killed on Idi Amin's orders.
1980s[edit]

18 January 1984
Air France Flight 171, a Boeing 747, suffered an explosion in the cargo hold en route from Karachi, Pakistan, to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, shortly after departing Karachi blew a hole in the right rear cargo hold. The resulting loss of cabin pressure necessitated an immediate descent to 5,000 feet (1,500 m). The aircraft returned to Karachi without any fatalities among the 261 occupants (15 crew and 246 passengers).[50]

2 December 1985
Air France Flight 091, a Boeing 747-228B (F-GCBC), veered off the runway on landing at the Rio de Janeiro-Galeão International Airport, crossed a ditch and collided with a concrete ramp. No fatalities nor injuries among the 250 passengers and 23 crew. The aircraft was scrapped.

26 June 1988
Air France Flight 296, Airbus A320-111 (F-GFKC) crashed near Mulhouse-Habsheim Airport, in the French region of Alsace. The accident occurred during an airshow while the flight deck crew was performing a flypast at low height and speed. The aircraft overflew the airfield in good weather. Seconds later the aircraft struck treetops behind the runway and crashed into a forest, as a result of flying too low and too slowly. Three passengers died and about 50 were injured.[51]

1990s

24 December 1994
Air France Flight 8969, an Airbus A300B2-1C (registration F-GBEC) was hijacked at Houari Boumedienne Airport in Algiers, by four terrorists who belonged to the Armed Islamic Group. The terrorists apparently intended to crash the plane over the Eiffel Tower on Boxing Day. After a failed attempt to leave Marseille following a confrontational firefight between the terrorists and the GIGN French Special Forces, the result was the death of all four terrorists. (Snipers on the terminal front's roof shot dead two of the terrorists. The other two terrorists died as a result of gunshots in the cabin after approximately 20 minutes.) Three hostages including a Vietnamese diplomat were executed, 229 hostages survived, many of them wounded by shrapnel. The almost 15-year-old aircraft was written off.[52]

5 September 1996
During Air France Flight 437 turbulence caused injuries to thirty people on a Boeing 747 in mid-air, going from Johannesburg to Paris. One passenger died later from injuries received from an in-flight film projection screen.[53][54]

20 April 1998
Air France Flight 422: the Air France flight from Bogotá's El Dorado Airport, to Quito, using an aircraft leased from TAME and flown by Ecuadorian crew, crashed into a mountain near Bogotá. All 43 passengers and 10 crew died.[55][56]

5 March 1999
Air France Flight 6745, an ex-UTA Boeing 747-2B3F (SCD) freighter (registration F-GPAN) carrying a revenue load of 66 tons of cargo from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Madras, (now Chennai) India crash-landed, caught fire and burned out. Madras ATC had cleared the aircraft for an ILS approach to the airport's runway 07. The crew abandoned the approach due to technical difficulties. The aircraft circled to attempt a second approach and at the end of the second approach, the aircraft's nose struck the runway while touching down because its nose gear was either not down or not locked. The plane skidded and came to rest 7,000 feet (2,100 m) down the 13,050 foot runway. After it had come to a standstill, the crew noticed smoke on the flight deck and began to extinguish the flames. Soon after, flames erupted in the aircraft's front section. One crew member managed to escape from the flight deck via a rope ladder. The remaining four crew members were rescued by the airport fire service from the rear, before the flames engulfed the entire aircraft. The fire service was unable to extinguish the fire and the aircraft burned out.[57][58]

2000s

25 July 2000
Air France Flight 4590, a chartered Concorde (F-BTSC) departing from De Gaulle airport in Paris bound for New York's JFK Airport crashed into a hotel in Gonesse, France, just after takeoff. All 109 people on board died along with four people on the ground. According to the accident investigation report, the probable cause was the destruction of one of the aircraft's main wheel tires, as a result of passing at high speed over a part lost by a pre-departing Continental Airlines DC-10 during the takeoff run. The piercing of one of the fuel tanks by a piece of the exploding tire ignited the leaking jet fuel and caused a loss of thrust in engine number one and two in quick succession.[59]

2 August 2005
Air France Flight 358, an Airbus A340-300 (registration F-GLZQ) overshot the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport during a thunderstorm. The plane continued for 300 metres before coming to rest at the bottom of a ravine at the end of the runway adjacent to Highway 401. All 297 passengers and 12 crew survived but the plane was completely destroyed by fire. The investigation predominately blamed pilot error when faced with the severe weather conditions.

1 June 2009
Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-203 (registration F-GZCP) from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board lost contact with air traffic control while over the Atlantic Ocean, 300 km (190 mi) north-east of the Brazilian city of Natal.[60] In the days following the crash only portions of the plane and 51 bodies were found. All passengers and crew members were killed in the crash. It took just under two years to find the black boxes. The BEA's final report stated that the cause of the crash was the aircraft's pitot tube icing over and leading the aircraft's state of the art onboard systems to fail. The pilots were confused and pulled the nose of the plane up to the point where the aircraft stalled which then led the aircraft into an uncontrolled rapid descent into the Atlantic Ocean.[61]

British Airways Crashes

Wiki said:

November 1974, British Airways Flight 870 was hijacked shortly after take-off from Dubai for London Heathrow, The Vickers VC10 landed at Tripoli for refuelling before flying on to Tunis. The captain, Jim Futcher, returned to the aircraft to fly it knowing the hijackers were on board. The hijackers eventually surrendered after 84 hours, but not before a hostage was murdered. Futcher was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal, the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators Founders Medal, the British Air Line Pilots Association Gold Medal and a Certificate of Commendation from British Airways for his actions during the hijacking.[140][141]

On 10 September 1976, a Trident 3B on British Airways Flight 476 departed from London Heathrow to Istanbul. It collided in mid-air with an Inex Adria DC9-31 near Zagreb.[142] All 54 passengers and 9 crew members on the BA aircraft died. This is the only fatal accident to a British Airways aircraft since the company's formation in 1974.

On 24 June 1982, British Airways Flight 9, a Boeing 747-200 registration G-BDXH, flew through a cloud of volcanic ash and dust from the eruption of Mount Galunggung. The ash and dust caused extensive damage to the aircraft, including the failure of all four engines.[143] The crew managed to glide the plane out of the dust cloud and restart all four of its engines, although one later had to be shut down again. The volcanic ash caused the cockpit window to be scratched to such an extent that it was not possible for the pilots to see out of the plane. However, the aircraft made a successful emergency landing at Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport just outside Jakarta. There were no fatalities or injuries.[144]

On 10 June 1990, British Airways Flight 5390, a BAC One-Eleven flight between Birmingham and Málaga, suffered a windscreen blowout due to the fitting of incorrect bolts the previous day. The Captain, Tim Lancaster, suffered major injuries after being partially blown out of the aircraft, but the co-pilot landed the plane safely at Southampton Airport. Despite the physical trauma he suffered, Lancaster fully recovered, and five months later he returned to duty.[145]

On 2 August 1990, British Airways Flight 149 landed at Kuwait International Airport four hours after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The aircraft, a Boeing 747-100, registration G-AWND, was destroyed, and all passengers and crew were captured. Two of the landing gears were salvaged, and are on display in Waterside, BA Headquarters in London.[146][147]

The damaged British Airways Flight 38
On 29 December 2000, during British Airways Flight 2069 G-BNLM Boeing 747-400, a cockpit intruder caused the aircraft significant loss of control over a period of nearly 3 minutes. The aircraft stalled twice, achieved 94 degrees of bank and descended at over 30,000 feet per minute. The Captain eventually removed the intruder from the controls and the co-pilot recovered a safe flight path. Passenger assistance was called for and along with cabin crew assistance, the intruder was then removed from the cockpit.

On 17 January 2008, British Airways Flight 38, a Boeing 777-200ER G-YMMM, departed from Beijing to London. It crash-landed approximately 1,000 feet (300 m) short of London Heathrow Airport's runway 27L and slid onto the runway's displaced threshold. The damage to the landing gear, the wing roots and the engines, resulted in the first hull loss of a Boeing 777. There were no fatalities, but there was one serious injury and twelve minor injuries.

On 22 December 2013, British Airways Flight 34, a Boeing 747–436 G-BNLL, hit a building at O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg after missing a turning on a taxiway. The starboard wing was severely damaged but there were no injuries amongst the crew or 189 passengers, however four members of ground staff were injured when the wing smashed into the building.[148] The aircraft was officially withdrawn from service in February 2014.[149]

[croyde]

Jader1973 said:

Ozzie Osmond said:

The later discounted detections have been ruled out because some were simply noise generated within the British warship which claimed to have detected them and others were found to have emanated from a passing freighter.

I hope that particular warship never has to do anything important like track down an enemy submarine.

"We've got a target lock! Fire anti-submarine things!"
closely followed by:
"What was that bang?" Why are we sinking?"

[durbster]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

They were rough stats from Wiki, nothing more.

The fact is that BA havent killed anyone since 1976 in the Zagreb mid-air collision.

Air France have killed about 400 since the 1990s.

I work with the Pilots day in and day out, my personal decision is not to fly AF. Ridicule/dismiss as you see fit, its a personal choice based on 7yrs of direct experience over 1000s of hours work.

I'm not in a position to agree or disagree, I just thought it was a misleading way to present your argument.

And having read through the lists I'm still not convinced as some are terrorism linked and events like the Concorde crash could just as easily have happened BA plane.

[ajcj]

I refuse to fly Air France too, based on several thousand hours of passengering with airlines all over the world in the course of my career, but it isn't a decision that has anything to do with safety or technical competence.

Rude, surly, dismissive, careless and uncaring, ill-mannered, half-arsed, bad-tempered, uncommunicative, poorly organised, maladministrated, disinterested and humourless staff would be the main reason.

And it means flying in to and out of Charles de Gaulle airport, which is probably my least favourite in the world. I would rather transit through Gabarone, Siliguri, Kathmandu, or even Abidjan. A four-hour layover in Douala looks like a spa break compared to a routine transfer in CDG.

Avoid them like a bad case of infected boils, is my advice.

[ajcj]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

ajcj said:

Rude, surly, dismissive, careless and uncaring, ill-mannered, half-arsed, bad-tempered, uncommunicative, poorly organised, maladministrated, disinterested and humourless staff would be the main reason.

This is a fine description of how I find a decent proportion of the air-crew to be, which is strange, as in a professional environment its just not needed.

It seems like that attitude pervades through all aspects of AF.

The dis-interested, dismissive and uncommunicative aspect are ones that strike a chord.

Corporate culture. Which may be a reflection of national culture too.....

I agree with your comment on professionalism - most aircrew I have worked with are intelligent, communicative, easygoing types.

[Vaud]

ajcj said:

And it means flying in to and out of Charles de Gaulle airport, which is probably my least favourite in the world.

Hateful place, on a par with Manchester.

[Super Slo Mo]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

But they didnt, they happened to AF - and thats a theme which repeats itself on a surprisingly regular basis (about once every 5 years).

Theres no smoke without fire and AF produce a lot of smoke, as it were. There are deep-rooted socio-psychological issues within a small but significant percentage of AF and the flight-deck attitudes IMO.

If the AF447 incident wasnt such a tragedy, itd almost be 'funny' from a professional perspective.

I have to say, you're not doing an awful lot to reassure me .

[anonymous-user]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

durbster said:

events like the Concorde crash could just as easily have happened BA plane.

But they didnt, they happened to AF

How can you possibly attribute the Concorde crash to AF?

If it was caused by debris from another plane. If it had been a BA Concorde doing that flight instead then it would have met its doom in exactly the same fashion.

So that's 113 people you can take off your list of persons killed by AF.

[Vaud]

NinjaPower said:

How can you possibly attribute the Concorde crash to AF?

If it was caused by debris from another plane. If it had been a BA Concorde doing that flight instead then it would have met its doom in exactly the same fashion.

So that's 113 people you can take off your list of persons killed by AF.

Their flight code, their crash. It may not have been caused directly by them, but it was their plane and crew.

[Perik Omo]

Report released today about AF447.

Quote:
THE 2009 Air France disaster, in which 228 people died when a plane flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic Ocean could have been avoided, a report claims.

The expert report, which was ordered by investigators, found that “an inappropriate response after the momentary loss of speed indications” following a malfunction in the aircraft’s speed sensors was a key factor in the disaster.

The five experts said the “predominance of human factors in causing the accident and acting as contributory factors had been clearly established”.

The crash “could have been avoided if the crew had taken appropriate action,” they said.

A 2012 report by France’s BEA authority, which is responsible for investigations into accidents or incidents in civil aviation, blamed a mix of technical faults and human error.

The experts also said that the pilots of flight AF 447 had not been adequately trained to handle unusual situations, such as instrument malfunctions, during flights.

They listed 14 factors that contributed to the crash, including stress and fatigue, a lack of understanding of the situation, and what they said was “the questionable attitude of the captain in leaving the cockpit, despite questions from his copilot”.

End quote.

[bodhi]

ajcj said:

I refuse to fly Air France too, based on several thousand hours of passengering with airlines all over the world in the course of my career, but it isn't a decision that has anything to do with safety or technical competence.

Rude, surly, dismissive, careless and uncaring, ill-mannered, half-arsed, bad-tempered, uncommunicative, poorly organised, maladministrated, disinterested and humourless staff would be the main reason.

And it means flying in to and out of Charles de Gaulle airport, which is probably my least favourite in the world. I would rather transit through Gabarone, Siliguri, Kathmandu, or even Abidjan. A four-hour layover in Douala looks like a spa break compared to a routine transfer in CDG.

Avoid them like a bad case of infected boils, is my advice.

Out of interest, how the hell can Air France be part of the same company as KLM, who I've always found helpful, welcoming and friendly, if maybe occasionally a bit too keen to overbook the last flight out of Schipol to Birmingham. Their safety record since the 1970's looks pretty good as well.

I've managed to avoid AF so far, normally taking flybe if I have to go to Paris (or the Eurostar, or drive, or walk, or do anything but take bloody AF), but I do remember waiting in California for our French team to turn up to our annual conference, only to find out their plane had been cancelled. Turned out they got everyone on, one of the passengers notices kerosene pissing out of one of the fuel tanks, then they kept them on the plane for 3 hours whilst they tried to fix. Surely if fuel is pissing out all over the tarmac, patching the plane up and sending it off to LA from CDG isn't the wisest move in the first place?

[croyde]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

This is a fine description of how I find a decent proportion of the air-crew to be, which is strange, as in a professional environment its just not needed.

It seems like that attitude pervades through all aspects of France.

The dis-interested, dismissive and uncommunicative aspect are ones that strike a chord.

ETA

[cobra kid]

Have they given up now it's not in the news anymore?