Malaysia Airlines Plane "Loses Contact"

[Targarama]

Vaud said:

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.

Agreed. It is also a very confusing place even for a seasoned traveller.

The Sheraton hotel is OK there though, very handy to take the last flight out the night before a meeting and avoid an early start from England the next morning.

[Ozzie Osmond]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

Says it all.

Theres a reason I dont fly Air Chance.

Those listings start in 1930 for France and 1970 for UK. Amongst other things it conveniently overlooks the unmitigated disaster of Comet airliners disintegrating in mid-air, a problem which essentially handed the whole aviation business over to the Americans....

[Vaud]

Western "Flag Carriers" are generally quite safe.

But their customer service and experience can be bloody awful, which is why avoid AF.

[Hooli]

croyde said:

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

+1

France only exists to keep the decent parts of Europe further away.

[MartG]

Hooli said:

croyde said:

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

+1

France only exists to keep the decent parts of Europe further away.

Wasn't it Clarkson who summed it up like "France is a lovely country only spoiled, like Wales, by the people who live there"

[Vaud]

Hooli said:

The French only exists to keep the decent parts of Europe further away.

EFA. France is lovely.

[Chrisgr31]

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.

Is that true though? Hadn't BA done some work to their Concorde fleet following a previous incident and therefore the incident may not have happened to a BA Concorde

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/135...

[mybrainhurts]

Vaud said:

Hooli said:

The French only exists to keep the decent parts of Europe further away.

EFA. France is lovely.

That's why we're going to invade when I take over.....

[AreOut]

Auntieroll said:

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.

battery doesn't have to be rechargeable as it shouldn't be expensive to put new battery every 2 or 3 months, that device should just periodically listen to main transponder and if it stops, start emergency transmitting (which requires a bit more energy but should last that one flight)

also that battery would be insulated, not exposed to -60c

[gaz1234]

I don't think it will ever be found

[Dr Jekyll]

durbster said:

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.

There were maintenance and procedural issues with the AF Concorde crash as well. Once the tyre had burst the aircraft veered off towards the edge of the runway. According to AF this was because of the loss of thrust from one left engine and nothing at all to do with the missing port undercarriage spacer, but if it was asymmetric thrust the pilots should have been able to easily control it with the rudder, and this would not have left the skidmarks on the runway from the port undercarriage.

To prevent the Concorde running onto the grass the pilot took off at less than the normal speed and at the edge of the runway, clouting a runway light as he did so. Bits of the runway light ended up in the number one engine and my have contributed to it failing. The flight engineer then shut off the number 2 engine which he should only have done once the aircraft had gained flying speed. So the pilot was struggling to gain flying speed on 3 engines one of which wasn't producing full power, once this engine failed altogether a crash was unavoidable. If the number 2 engine hadn't been shut down and/or the Concorde had been allowed to gain flying speed before take off it's possible it could have made it to Le Bourget.

There is even a theory that it was the undercarriage problem not the metal strip that lead to the burst tyre. Some firemen watching the take off reckoned the fire started long before the aircraft reached the metal strip.

[Hooli]

Vaud said:

Hooli said:

The French only exists to keep the decent parts of Europe further away.

EFA. France is lovely.

You might be right actually. We should let the Germans have it, a much nicer group of people.

[Mabbs9]

Chrisgr31 said:

Is that true though? Hadn't BA done some work to their Concorde fleet following a previous incident and therefore the incident may not have happened to a BA Concorde

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/135...

Air Chance chose not to follow some safety recommendations that BA decided were a good idea. It is quite likely a BA Concorde would not have suffered the same outcome.

[AreOut]

gaz1234 said:

I don't think it will ever be found

'ever' is a very tricky word

[Steffan]

AreOut said:

gaz1234 said:

I don't think it will ever be found

'ever' is a very tricky word

Found is another one in this context. I have real concerns the plane crashed and literally disintegrated on crashing and is widespread over the ocean involved. I do hope some evidence will be found of the probable causes of the loss but whether any really useful information will be gleaned has becom a somewhat moot point sadly. Time will tell but regrettably this matter may not be determined with any real certainty. Unexplained loss of all cabin pressure and anoxia seem to be the most probable causes to me.

[anonymous-user]

Steffan said:

Unexplained loss of all cabin pressure and anoxia seem to be the most probable causes to me.

Doesn't explain the switching off both the transponder and CPDLC though.

[Athlon]

Pink Floyd - Bike.

[s p a c e m a n]

I read something the other day about a flight recorder on a private jet jettisoning itself when if felt a certain amount of g force, had parachute/beacon/inflatable stuff for when it landed.

Real, possible, or made up rubbish?

[Dr Jekyll]

The principle behind the homing beacon on the black box is that you already know roughly were it is because it's surrounded by wreckage, separating the black box from the airframe would normally make it harder to find. Not that finding the wreck or the box is normally the problem, this is a very unusual case.

[MartG]

Dr Jekyll said:

The principle behind the homing beacon on the black box is that you already know roughly were it is because it's surrounded by wreckage, separating the black box from the airframe would normally make it harder to find. Not that finding the wreck or the box is normally the problem, this is a very unusual case.

If you were to go for some system that automatically jettisoned a black box under certain circumstances, surely one of the parameters you would make sure it recorded would be the aircraft's position at the time of impact ? No matter how far the box then drifted it would provide information allowing the wreckage to be found.