[SeaGypsy]

Yep. Looks like the pilot was squished in very busy airspace with storm cells scattered through it. This is an early call from me / my bet is air traffic control will wear blame, primarily for failing to plan reroute allocations around what appeared to clearly be the most active of several cells in the area at the time. Cascading failure with the pilots first failing to convey the urgency to divert, the delay in clearance without a word spoken about the visuals from the cockpit after the first request for diversion, then the failure of pilots to initiate plan override & manual turn around if this was the apparently only safe option. Next guess is they flew right into the middle & got smashed by lightening.

Pity the lost & their kin in this horrible time.

[Poordogabone]

I'm not sure what the bottom line is, I think maybe it's TOO MUCH autopilot going on and then SHTF and the pilots aren't flying the plane to start with so then they don't know what they're doing.

Please refrain from talking about something that you know nothing about, you have no idea how dumb and hysterical you can sound. And do yourself a favor and throw away your TV, it is not helping you.

[Sixstrings]

Please refrain from talking about something that you know nothing about, you have no idea how dumb and hysterical you can sound. And do yourself a favor and throw away your TV, it is not helping you.

Okay, so no experts on TV can be trusted and you're the only expert.

Fair enough -- so how about you posting more, good grief 100 posts in ten years?! We can't hardly have a forum with just ten sentences per year from you now can we?

Please refrain from telling me what to do, knowing what one is talking about is not a requirement in the CoC. If you have a complaint about my post, you can PM Tanada.

Better yet -- take the opportunity to correct what's being said in MSM, since you're such an expert.

[Sixstrings]

That is paranoid & inflammatory. Statistically, deaths per air journey, 2014 was the safest year since records began in 1945. We don't yet know for sure what happened to this flight. The previous disasters this year could have happened to any airline. Air Asia has the newest fleet of Airbus A380's in the world. It has pilots of equal to the highest standards. Calling for a boycott if Asian owned budget airlines due to 3 coincidences, of hundreds of thousands of flights by these same airlines, us parochial & nasty.

Well I'm not calling for a boycott, I am just saying I would not fly on these airlines.

I didn't mean to push any buttons here, if you want to fly these airlines then God bless you. I actually only fly US airlines, or British Airways, and that's it. I really don't even like to fly charters or any off brand US airline.

Only close call I've ever had was on a US airways puddle jumper. It was bad enough where people were crying. Very bad weather, and it had a darn good pilot, thank goodness. I actually have not flown at all since then.

Rationally, statistically, any air travel is far safer then getting in one's automobile and driving down the street.

(I think you must have very different media coverage than we do, I was flipping all the news channels and hearing the same things -- that air travel in this region has grown very fast, that foreign pilots hit the autopilot for the whole trip, that in this particular region they take risks with weather that US airlines do not. I'm just saying what I heard.)

[SeaGypsy]

The USA has the best weather management system, but that goes with the turf.

6 you are being hyped. Do some research on airline crashes. Actual numbers. Flying is hundreds or thousands times safer than driving. Don't fly a 1/10 million risk, buy a Chrysler! Get a bull bar & new hat free! Better mileage than ever! More airbags than ever! Now back to the horrors of budget airlines.

[Tanada]

'Experts' say the flight went nearly vertical, stalled and fell nearly straight down impacting the sea surface at high speed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... l-facebook

[Sixstrings]

'Experts' say the flight went nearly vertical, stalled and fell nearly straight down impacting the sea surface at high speed.

I saw that too, on the CNN I'm not supposed to be watching (according to some).

Latest talk is maybe some kind of weird weather updraft. What they were saying on CNN is that it went vertical beyond the aircraft's "performance envelope." But of course all the talking head stuff on tv is speculation, we'll find out for sure eventually.

What a horrible thing those people went through. So what could cause such a thing? To go vertical and stall and then not be able to get out of a stall, at 37k whatever feet? One would think that's a high enough altitude to pull out of the nosedive, no?

[Subjectivist]

When a plane stalls it means not enough air is moving over the wings to provide lift, so whichever direction it is pointed is often the direction it stays pointed as it falls like a rock, not a glider. Even worse the control surfaces don't have any effect, the only thing the crew can do is firewall the engines and pray they get above stall speed in time to recover before hitting the surface.

[Sixstrings]

When a plane stalls it means not enough air is moving over the wings to provide lift, so whichever direction it is pointed is often the direction it stays pointed as it falls like a rock, not a glider. Even worse the control surfaces don't have any effect, the only thing the crew can do is firewall the engines and pray they get above stall speed in time to recover before hitting the surface.

Well that makes sense, these aren't fighter jets after all.

Just as a layperson though, I had assumed they had the capability to get out of a nosedive like that, given such a high altitude, that should be enough time I'd just think.

How often has this even happened, before? Nosediving down at such a high altitude, assuming no mechanical failure, and the pilot can't pull out of it? I'm thinking it's a rare situation, I don't think I've heard of it before with a passenger jet at such high altitude.

[Tanada]

How do you know the plane was in a nose dive and not a tail first dive, or a yaw dive with one of the wings pointed straight down? Until we get the black (orange) boxes and the telemetry from the cockpit instruments we don't know what happened it is all just speculations by media proclaimed 'experts'. If the plane really was pointed up by a massive draft that caused it too stall it could have been pointed any which way as it fell. The 'experts' really should explain this well enough for people to understand. In an engines out glide from that altitude an airbus can coast for about 45 minutes/100 km. In a stall it falls just like a dropped apple and accelerates from basically zero speed all the way to the surface. Your best case scenario is a nose dive orientation because that way the air is moving over the wings and tail in the right direction and once you are fast enough you get control back. If you are in a tail first fall then the air is rushing over the wings and tail the wrong direction. I am not a pilot but I think that is probably the worst case scenario and hardest to recover from. Until we get the telemetry we will not know for certain what happened.

[Poordogabone]

To recover from a stall the first thing is to push the nose down and apply thrust to regain speed. Problems occurs when pilots don't recognize that they are stalling, they can get confused by contradictory signals like AF447 and Colgan Air Flight 3407 and instinctively pull on the stick all the way to their death.

I just watched an air crash video on a A320 (same a.c as Airasia) being tested for an "acceptance flight" that is when an airline buys a plane from another airline. On their last test though on this highly automated plane something went wrong which resulted in a high pitch up attitude which the pilots could not overcome and lost control of the aircraft until it crashed in the Mediterranean. Long story short, some maintenance crew had flooded both "angle of attack" sensors which subsequently froze in high altitude and caused the uncontrolled steep climb and lost of speed.
I'm not an expert but find similarities between this and Airasia. If heavy rain can get in those sensors and freezes that would not be good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJrK-1qr59M

[Sixstrings]

By the way --

When is the last time there was a problem with a Boeing plane? Seems like it's always these airbuses crashing, lately.

That one in NYC where the pilot "sully" had to land it in the river, that was airbus.

That weird Airfrance incident, that was airbus.

All of these malaysian crashes including the one shot down over ukraine, all airbus.

I tried looking up a graph but can't find one, I wonder what the numbers are on safety at this point between Boeing planes and Airbus.

[toolpush]

Since when did Airbus start building the Boeing 777-200ER

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_A ... Flight_370
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_A ... _Flight_17

[SeaGypsy]

Sully's plane flew into a flock of birds. The first of the recent Malaysia Airlines disasters is still a mystery, with most likely explanation being sabotage. The next, the idiotic regime in Kiev was taking money for flyover rights in a war zone. The most recent incident appears to be a combination of pilot error, air traffic control planning failure & incident response systems within the airline. Any of these could have happened to any airline, flying any kind of plane.

[careinke]

By the way --

When is the last time there was a problem with a Boeing plane? Seems like it's always these airbuses crashing, lately.

Boeing had a problem with their batteries exploding last year. FAA grounded the plane for a while.

[Poordogabone]

By the way --

When is the last time there was a problem with a Boeing plane? Seems like it's always these airbuses crashing, lately.

All of these malaysian crashes including the one shot down over ukraine, all airbus.

Malaysian flight that disappeared last year was a Boeing 777 with 298 souls on board.

trying to determine whether Boeing or Airbus is safer to fly is an exercise in futility.
The worst record is the boeing 737 with one accident every 500,000 hours of flying and best record is the Airbus A340 with no accidents and that does not mean squat.

[Poordogabone]

BTW the plane that was shot down over Ukraine was also a Boeing 777 but that is irrelevant to safety of aircraft type (airliners don't carry missile countermeasures).

[Keith_McClary]

How long until we find out what happened to AirAsia QZ8501?
13 Jan 2015

"The investigators will have an idea of what went on within a week [of accessing the data] – sometimes it can be much, much quicker," he said.
...
Typically, about two working days after the boxes are recovered, the data will be downloaded using special software. Separately, the timing associated with each bit of data will need to be checked.
Several programmes are capable of quickly using the flight data to build a simulator-style visual representation of the flight, including external and cockpit views.
...
Finally, the cockpit recordings and the flight data are combined to provide a complete picture of the flight. It will then be for the investigators to conclude the reasons for the crash and to make findings aimed at preventing a tragic repeat.
Mr Gleave said investigators typically release an initial factual statement within a month of the crash – or by the end of this month for flight QZ8501 – but the report will not make conclusions and is unlikely to provide explicit comments on issues such as pilot error.