Germanwings A320 Crash

Pulled this from Reddit, height vlaues...

RecordStraight wrote: »

It looks like the plane descended rapidly but maintained its speed...? Is it possible the pilots didn't recognise that they were losing altitude hand over fist?

Anything is possible, we'll know in about 2 years.

The pilots may have known about it but not had control, there may have been an initial incident incapacitating the pilots and/or the cabin occupants, who knows.

RIP

Bummer1234 wrote: »

Premature report is up on AV herald.

They need to be treated with the usual caution. Someone else over there also reported that the black boxes had already been found....:rolleyes:

Larbre34 wrote: »

If those height values are correct, why would an A320 be at 38,000 ft in the first place? Highest Alpine peak is 16,000.

38,000ft is standard cruising altitude, why shouldn't it be that value?

tmq wrote: »

Do you mean 9:31? (just checking I'm reading this correctly)

Yes. Sorry. Tapped the 2 instead of the 3

Bummer1234 wrote: »

Seems to be going fairly south indeed but could be doing what flanzer said, Could be a routine flight im not sure. Something to keep an eye on anyway.

I'm thinking that was a routine flight as it's gone now. If there are any aircraft in the crash area, it doesn't look like they have ADS-B, as there is nothing on flight radar

cppilot98 wrote: »

Looking at the FR24 data it took ten minutes to descend from 38000 to 6800 feet. That's an average descent rate of 3100 fpm. That is a long time to attempt to resolve a problem. The CVR and the FDR will probably reveal what was happening on the flight deck fairly quickly.

There is some similarity to the incident with the AOA probes on the A321 caused a rapid descent.

Very bad news indeed.

That's a good point.
The AOA problem was the subject of an emergency AD last year.

Is there any possibility there could be survivors from a crash like this or does the terrain rule it out entirely?

NoCrackHaving wrote: »

Is there any possibility there could be survivors from a crash like this or does the terrain rule it out entirely?

The speed at which the descent took place, coupled with the ridiculously challenging terrain (look it up!), render the chances of finding anyone alive vanishingly small - indeed, zero.

According to Planefinder, here is the data from the minutes leading up to the loss:



Of interest is the VSI reading showing a rate of climb of -14,400 fpm, timestamped 09:30:20 while at unchanged altitude of 38,000 feet. The plane is then shown to be descending 39 seconds later. It also seems to be time around the beginning of a left turn from ~43 to it's eventual 26.

That's such a big value you'd normally write it off as a sensor anomaly, today though, it looks more like one of the holes lining up in the proverbial swiss cheese.

For information, this chart shows the most recent reading first, so it should be read chronologically from bottom to top. The column marked mtime is a timestamp marked in seconds:

1427189229 = 09:27:09 Earliest reading
1427189420 = 09:30:20 Anomaly showing RoC -14,144
1427189459 = 09:30:59 First indication of the descent
1427189963 = 09:39:23 Final reading

Heading is the direction of travel, based on degrees, with 0 being north, 45 north east. You can see that in the period between the anomaly and the beginning of the descent the plane made a left turn from North-East to almost North-North-East. Note that heading will tend to vary a certain amount due both to wind, and in variances in the Earth's magnetic field. It shows the direction the nose was pointing, which isn't always the same as the direction the plane is travelling. There's nothing jumping out there indicating a spin.

Aren't these aircraft on EIs fleet?

Eye-witness account

Posted at 12:44
A hotel worker in Digne, the closest town to the suspected crash site, has told BBC Radio 5 live the plane was flying "very low". William says there are now several helicopters arriving at the site of the accident. He added that access to the crash site will be "very difficult" and that the area, normally covered in snow, is currently dry.

ectoraige wrote: »

According to Planefinder, here is the data from the minutes leading up to the loss:


Of interest is the VSI reading showing a rate of climb of -14,400 fpm, timestamped 09:30:20 while at unchanged altitude of 38,000 feet. The plane is then shown to be descending 39 seconds later. It also seems to be time around the beginning of a left turn from ~43 to it's eventual 26.

That's such a big value you'd normally write it off as a sensor anomaly, today though, it looks more like one of the holes lining up in the proverbial swiss cheese.

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

flazio wrote: »

Aren't these aircraft on EIs fleet?

Quick ground them!

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 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.

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?