Germanwings A320 Crash

lisaface

pfurey101 wrote: »

Plane Plotter shows a French Airforce KC135 holding in the area the last 90 mins. It cant pick up any other plots.

Is that this plane;

I recorded a bit of its flight plan, after you mentioned the above..,this plane seems to be looping back on itself. The picture above is a screen-grab of said video. The area I found it in originally was 'Gold de Gap-Bayard' ,but like I said it's looping around. Initially it wasn't giving me any info on the name ,but after a while and continuous clicking it gave me the above. One thing to note if this plane isn't out there looking for those poor people, then why does it keep speeding up and looping back to then slow down and almost come to a halt? I'm not familiar with planes in that manner but that is odd.

The amount of plane crashes as of late is very unnerving , I hope these people are found for the sake of their grieving families and close friends

Inquitus

lisaface wrote: »

Is that this plane;

I recorded a bit of its flight plan, after you mentioned the above..,this plane seems to be looping back on itself. The picture above is a screen-grab of said video. The area I found it in originally was 'Gold de Gap-Bayard' ,but like I said it's looping around. Initially it wasn't giving me any info on the name ,but after a while and continuous clicking it gave me the above. One thing to note if this plane isn't out there looking for those poor people, then why does it keep speeding up and looping back to then slow down and almost come to a halt? I'm not familiar with planes in that manner but that is odd.

The amount of plane crashes as of late is very unnerving , I hope these people are found for the sake of their grieving families and close friends

There's an small Airport very close to that location

http://www.gap-tallard.com/

CaptainSkidmark

so it made a constant decent from 38000 to 6500 in how long?

lisaface

Inquitus wrote: »

There's an small Airport very close to that location

http://www.gap-tallard.com/

I noticed that yeah, do you reckon it's someone learning to fly? It's been doing it's circles for the past hour and a bit

wretcheddomain

CaptainSkidmark wrote: »

so it made a constant decent from 38000 to 6500 in how long?

Approximately 10 minutes.

Inquitus

CaptainSkidmark wrote: »

so it made a constant decent from 38000 to 6500 in how long?

It descended from 38000ft at a steady enough 3.5k ft a minute from 9:31 until 9:41 when it crashed into the ground at @6600ft or 2000m.

john kinsella

That aircraft Schempp-Hirth Duo Discus xt is a glider.

Maybe just someone out for a spin.

Surprising they'd be allowed to be there.

lisaface wrote: »

Is that this plane;

I recorded a bit of its flight plan, after you mentioned the above..,this plane seems to be looping back on itself. The picture above is a screen-grab of said video. The area I found it in originally was 'Gold de Gap-Bayard' ,but like I said it's looping around. Initially it wasn't giving me any info on the name ,but after a while and continuous clicking it gave me the above. One thing to note if this plane isn't out there looking for those poor people, then why does it keep speeding up and looping back to then slow down and almost come to a halt? I'm not familiar with planes in that manner but that is odd.

The amount of plane crashes as of late is very unnerving , I hope these people are found for the sake of their grieving families and close friends

CaptainSkidmark

Whats the general decent rate for an aircraft that get a decompression alarm? Im not too up on the terminology but if the aircrafts systems detect an actual or a false decompression, how fast do they descend to a safe altitude?

Chemical Byrne

From the graph earlier it appears that the plane slapped into the mountain at close to 400knts (460mph). There will be no survivors and recovery and identification of remains will be a long and grisly job. RIP.

SpaceTime

flazio wrote: »

Aren't these aircraft on EIs fleet?

Yes, they're one of the world's most popular and most reliable narrow body aircraft along with the Boeing 737. The majority of airlines have them.

About 6452 of them have gone into service since 1988. If you've flown short or medium haul, you you'll almost certainly have been on one at some stage.

These are some of the most reliable and safest workhorses of the aviation industy that's what's making this even more bizarre in some respects.

Inquitus

It just made a controlled descent, and flew straight into the ground, per this infographic.

eatmyshorts

CaptainSkidmark wrote: »

Whats the general decent rate for an aircraft that get a decompression alarm? Im not too up on the terminology but if the aircrafts systems detect an actual or a false decompression, how fast do they descend to a safe altitude?

Holding Vmo, idle thrust, full speed brakes...around 5,000 fpm descent.

ectoraige

check_six wrote: »

What could cause such a strange reading (other than a sensor problem)? Would that be the equivalent of the aircraft standing on it's nose for a second and then leveling off again? Is the figure an average for that time period, or just a reading at that instant?

It would be a point-in-time reading. It shows how quickly the craft is ascending or descending. It is measured using variometers, which detect changes in pressure. As you go up, pressure decreases, as you go down, pressure decreases. So a reading of -14k would indicate a huge increase in the external air pressure.

Since the reported altitude remained the same for at least another 21 seconds, it wouldn't appear to be any actual sudden drop due to an air pocket. So it seems more likely that it's some sort of failure with the instrument.

It's possible though that some explosive event caused a pressure wave. The sensors would be reading the air pressure outside the craft, perhaps an uncontrolled decompression would lead to a momentary pressure spike outside if in the right position. It's important to stress this is highly unlikely, as the chances of it happening, being read, and being reported all at the same time are probably pretty astronomical.

It could also be nothing more that erroneous date caused by a noisy data transmission, and just coincidentally precedes the beginning of the descent. Any other day this would just be ignored as just that.

Either way, this is all pure speculation, while out there in the real world rescuers are tasked with victim recovery, and family members are still being contacted. Germanwings are to hold a press conference at 3pm.

arubex

astrofluff wrote: »

Very sad news.
When all the speculation about MH370 was happening, I remember one expert saying that the crew would not spend anytime contacting ATC as they need to concentrate on gaining control of the plane - ATC can't do anything for them.

ATC can't do anything for them, but they can clear other aircraft out of the area and notify emergency services. Perhaps save some lives if the disaster occurs.

My opinion is that the traditional aviate-then-communicate training should be re-evaluated.

Just like cockpit resource management made the cockpit a less captain-centric space, pilots have to be aware that they are one component of a crowded sky and it's not always their personal actions that will save lives.

Airlines are partly responsible for this communication conundrum, by insisting that additional cockpit crew were an unnecessary financial burden. So now we just have two crew, apparently too busy at critical times to let ATC know what is happening. That doesn't seem right.

Peregrine

wretcheddomain wrote: »

A distress signal was sent as the plane was descending - surely this rules out hijacking.

Don't want to go off topic but they could have squawked 7500.

cml387

The age of the aircraft, the suddeness of the onset of trouble and the fact that it happened in the cruise in probably clear air would tend to point to some sort of structural failure.

eatmyshorts

Nim wrote: »

Don't want to go off topic but they could have squawked 7500.

Why would they do that?

martinsvi

please don't treat that -14k fpm value as one actually detected and originating from aircraft sensors. Radio frequency used and ADS-B signal is prone to intermodulation with other signals, thus secondary radars as well as plane plotters ignore these extremes - they happen all the time, the busier the airspace, the more false pings

check_six

eatmyshorts wrote: »

Holding Vmo, idle thrust, full speed brakes...around 5,000 fpm descent.

So, would the flightpath here match that procedure? The airspeed didn't increase even though the plane was making a descent, would that suggest a degree of control over the speed brakes, or the engine thrust? Or is the recorded glideslope not steep enough to increase the airspeed much?

Peregrine

eatmyshorts wrote: »

Why would they do that?

Sorry that was in reply to a post, I don't know where the quote went. It wasn't meant to be speculation at all.

eatmyshorts

check_six wrote: »

So, would the flightpath here match that procedure? The airspeed didn't increase even though the plane was making a descent, would that suggest a degree of control over the speed brakes, or the engine thrust? Or is the recorded glideslope not steep enough to increase the airspeed much?

There's too much speculation on unconfirmed, unreliable data to make any assumptions.

RecordStraight

cml387 wrote: »

The age of the aircraft, the suddeness of the onset of trouble and the fact that it happened in the cruise in probably clear air would tend to point to some sort of structural failure.

But, on the other hand, the descent was steady, as was the speed.

Kencollins

The conclusions on this thread being drawn on the flight radar ect feeds are scary.

There is no way to verify the accuracy.

The information is correlated from numerous uncontrolled receivers.

In an air traffic control environment, neither Mode S or ADS-B are relied upon in isolation.

They are snapshots, NOT realtime data. The refresh rate could be anywhere from 6 seconds to 60 seconds.

3500 feet per minute in a descent is NOT uncommon at all. Many flights exiting Irish airspace going into Manchester and Birmingham do that rate and more on a daily basis. These aircraft have a level restriction at the Irish boundary and many choose to stay level until they are a few minutes from the boundary and then descend quickly to make the restriction.

We have NO way to know if this descent of the aircraft in question was controlled, intentional, or otherwise.

The aircraft crashed, why not leave it to the investigators to determine the cause instead of giving the news outlets another avenue for sensationalist headlines?

crisco10

Inquitus wrote: »

It just made a controlled descent, and flew straight into the ground, per this infographic.

Great chart. The number of airports the plane cruised over really jumps out at you. Incapacitated flight crew?

ectoraige

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

very informative, thanks.

For those (like me) who is seeing this type of data for the first time, the table should be read bottom up

I just edited it to add a few notes, hope it makes it a bit clearer.

CaptainSkidmark

aviation journalist, told Sky News: “The log suggests (the plane) went straight down at a significant rate, up to 5,000 feet per minute at one point, which suggests it happened in a matter of seconds.

“It is unlikely the passengers on board would have known anything about this.

”As far as I am aware that the pilots did not send a typical distress call, a squawk of 770."


Did the pilots squalk?

vicwatson

pfurey101 wrote: »

Bad timing OK, but maybe the guys in the office dont have the radio on or maybe it was a preplanned email launch.

Yes of course, I was just referring to the bad timing is all

RecordStraight

CaptainSkidmark wrote: »

aviation journalist, told Sky News: “The log suggests (the plane) went straight down at a significant rate, up to 5,000 feet per minute at one point, which suggests it happened in a matter of seconds.

This makes no sense. They started at over 38,000 feet. It took minutes to come down, not seconds.

Kencollins

Nothing happened in a matter of seconds...It would have taken nearly 8 minutes for the aircraft to come down from FL380 at anywhere near 5000FPM

eatmyshorts

crisco10 wrote: »

Great chart. The number of airports the plane cruised over really jumps out at you. Incapacitated flight crew?

Doesn't jump out at me. There may be lots of airfields, but most around there are just little GA strips.