www.CostaRicaTicas.com

No, the hydraulic controls will always be there. We need 3,000 psi to muscle the flight controls.

All 'fly by wire' does is to eliminate the control cables that run from the cockpit to the various flight controls.
This gives the engineers another opportunity to make the aircraft more efficient, with the computers manipulating the flight controls.

As pilots we were always told 'use the autopilot' because it saves gas.
The logic is that the pilots will over control and the computer will use less control movements. Every control movement adds drag to the airframe.
Drag increases fuel burn.

_________________
It is cheaper to pay now and get it over with.
It is also easier to get them to leave.

so, bottom line, airbus is an inferior plane due to either the composite issue or problems with the fly by wire technology or combination of the two?

and perhaps the maintenance required for such technology is too much for some carriers, especially those from 2nd or 3rd world countries.

_________________
The difference between a Sea Story and a Fairy Tale is that a Fairy Tale starts out 'Once Upon a Time..' and a Sea Story starts out 'This is no Shit...'

(export version only, some restrictions may apply, some assembly required, not valid where the sun don't shine...

if you live in the states of Poverty, Darkness or anywhere outside of The Blessings of Civilization Trust, Inc...other rules may apply)

No. As a Boeing lover I will admit that Airbus builds a good airplane.


I do think that the Boeing aircraft is more forgiving of bad maintenance practices.

To be honest, there will always be less maintenance performed than should be done. Third world airlines are certainly suspect for that.
But our country has lots of examples of bad (or deferred) maintenance.
Do you remember the NorthWest Airlines DC-10 crash that was caused by incorrect techniques in the change of an engine?
http://aviation-safety.net/database/rec ... 19790525-2
or, the Alaska Airlines crash off the coast of California?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261

_________________
It is cheaper to pay now and get it over with.
It is also easier to get them to leave.

Just saw a show about that on the History channel last month. It was very interesting to see how they found the cause was due to the change in the procedure that the airline used to accomplish routine engine changes. For the record the airline was American not Northwest.

_________________
Pura Vida
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups:
alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

I remember the hawaii air disaster when the skin and frame of the plane failed at 20k feet and a flight attendant was sucked out.

that plane was a boeing 737, i don't know if they ever figured out why the integrity of the skin and frame failed and separated.

the carrier was aloha air.

here is a link with all the accidents on boeing 737's since 1972, a total of over 80 incidents

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/airc ... Boeing+737

_________________
The difference between a Sea Story and a Fairy Tale is that a Fairy Tale starts out 'Once Upon a Time..' and a Sea Story starts out 'This is no Shit...'

(export version only, some restrictions may apply, some assembly required, not valid where the sun don't shine...

if you live in the states of Poverty, Darkness or anywhere outside of The Blessings of Civilization Trust, Inc...other rules may apply)

It was figured out as posted by

The NTSB issued this report citing the probable cause.

_________________
Pura Vida
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups:
alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

here is a link with the final words/sounds of an assortment of incidents.


some of the links have the actual recordings of pilots and/or controllers.


some of them are pretty rough.


hats off to any of you pilot dudes.


http://www.planecrashinfo.com/lastwords.htm

_________________
The difference between a Sea Story and a Fairy Tale is that a Fairy Tale starts out 'Once Upon a Time..' and a Sea Story starts out 'This is no Shit...'

(export version only, some restrictions may apply, some assembly required, not valid where the sun don't shine...

if you live in the states of Poverty, Darkness or anywhere outside of The Blessings of Civilization Trust, Inc...other rules may apply)

I worked navigation on the F-16 and I'm not sure this is an accurate statement. Even if you lost the computer that operated the flight controls (not likely with built-in redundancies) you would have to be less then 2000 feet up to crash in less than 5 seconds.


http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cvr951220.htm

This is from the American Airlines flight that went into a mountain outside of Cali in 1995. My ex-wife's cousin and daughter were killed.

This report doesn't cover all of the pertinent info. As is often the case there were a number of factors involved. I read the complete FAA report back in '99 before my 2nd trip to Cali. I was thinking about it as we descended into the Cauca Valley. Very dark out there.

The First Officer was flying the plane. The Captain typed "R" (for "ROZO") into the auto navigation system but the system automatically accepts what is in it's database. It filled in "ROMEO" which was the actual value for "R". This is the beacon for Bogota. The pilot should have typed in the complete name of "ROZO" but he accepted "R" without realizing the error. The plane turned and these guys didn't even realize it was off course.

They were flying between two mountain ranges into Cali. When they realized their error they turned the plane back headed for a mountain. By the time they realized where they were going they failed to retract the speed brakes EVEN AFTER THE GROUND PROXIMITY WARNING WENT OFF so they lacked the power to clear the mountain.

In the FAA report they have a map of the plane's route. They made almost a complete circle before hitting the mountain.

Lack of attention to detail by the Captain killed 160 people.

62-page report (no map on this one):
http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/calirep.html

I just watched a History channel or Discovery show about AirBus. 16 different manufacturers build major components in a half dozen countries and ship them to the assembly plant for just in time assembly.

I don't like this concept, too many cooks for the stew.

Shamas O'D

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Shamas O'Dognasty
Gourmet Catering & Septic Tank Cleaning

This is the way all major commercial aircraft are now built. Over 50% of the major components for the Boeing 777 are not only manufactured by outside sources they are manufactured in foreign countries.

Source: http://www.oig.dot.gov/StreamFile?file= ... f2-232.pdf

The Boeing facility in Renton Washington is now referred to as an assembly plant.

_________________
Pura Vida
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups:
alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

I will comment on this, based on my aviation experience
(18,000 hours as airline pilot, possess a aviation mechanics license -A&P, certified flight engineer, and served on 6 crash investigation teams).

First: Airbus has a history of misleading the public. They MAY be trying to shift blame away from an aircraft failure. This would be a case of the foxes guarding the hen-house. Airbus and French credibility is very low.

If the aircraft hitting the water intact is true, there are only a few scenarios.
** One is that all flight computers failed and the pilots became unwilling passengers of an uncontrollable airplane. This is unlikely, but could have been caused by one or more massive lightning strikes. Aircraft get hit by lightning frequently, but usually with only minimal damage. This would probably involve a total electrical failure, including all generators and batteries.
IF Airbus and the French Gov't wanted to protect their interests they would avoid this finding.

** Another scenario is that the crew was unconscious. How could this happen? Either by violence, loss of pressurization or by inhalation of a dangerous substance. The loss of cabin pressure as a cause is unlikely because the crew has "quick donning" oxygen masks and they are well trained in their use. A slow loss of cabin pressure (un-detected) has caused a few crashes because the crew did not know to use oxygen. This would mean a failure of the cabin warning systems and the automatic deployment of the oxygen masks. For both things to occur at the same time would be unlikely. This would also need the autopilot to be disengaged or unpowered. If the autopilot was functioning the aircraft would have continued flying until fuel exhaustion. This would have happened somewhere over Europe, hours later than the crash. Sabotage and human mis-deeds would have have to be considered.

*** A suicidal pilot took control and caused it to happen. There is precedence for this scenario. Air Egypt flight 99 crashed after takeoff from JFK because the co-pilot caused it by intentionally flying into the water. Terrorists threatened his family unless he complied. Egypt has continuously denied this happened, to protect their self interest. The US Gov't down played this because we need friendly Arab countries to continue supporting our efforts in Sandland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990

The black box (flight data recorder) would only record data while powered and receiving data. If there was a total electrical failure, bomb or some other cause of an inflight breakup the Fliight Data Recorder would probably not contain useful data. The last data link transmission that reported problems with the air-speed indicating system was the last minute the plane had electrical power. As long as power was available the telemetry would continue.

IMO you can expect a French finding blaming something other than the airplane as the cause.

The use of multiple parts vendors worldwide is very common should not be a cause of concern.

_________________
It is cheaper to pay now and get it over with.
It is also easier to get them to leave.

Perhaps what I should have said was that the inevitability of a crash would be assured within 5 seconds of failure of the fly by wire computers, however the time of crash would be determined by how long it took the aircraft to impact something, like the earth.

General Dynamics statement:
"Fly-by-wire is an absolute necessity on the F-16 because the aircraft was designed to be statically unstable and cannot be controlled without the artificial stability provided by the flight control system"
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRec ... =ADP002710

_________________
It is cheaper to pay now and get it over with.
It is also easier to get them to leave.

I am a lurker, and rarely post. I'm in the flying business and have been following this investigation. It seems like the French pilots are unhappy with Airbus, and see this another coverup.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6461994.ece
An excerpt showing prior knowledge of the problem:
Unease over the A330 was strengthened by charges from the Alter pilots’ union that Air France had covered up problems with the airspeed instruments. It emerged this week that the airline advised pilots on November 6 last year that there had been “a significant number of incidents” in which false speed readings had upset the automated flight system — in the manner that appears to have happened on Flight 447.

These incidents, from which the crew were able to recover, occurred at cruising altitude, said the two-page circular. As a result of the false readings — apparently caused by ice clogging up the pitot tubes — the automatic pilot disconnected. The data from the doomed Airbus last week reported the same sequence, but the pilots were unable to regain control. A parallel is being drawn with an incident last October in which a Qantas A330 dived inexplicably under the command of its flight system, seriously injuring several passengers. James Healy Pratt, a lawyer with Stewart Law, a London firm handling the Qantas incident, said that the sequence of events was the same, with fluctuating airspeed indications apparently causing the auto-pilot to disconnect.