Air Asia flight QZ8501 possibly missing

[Ben73]

http://news.sky.com/story/1398597/co...t-to-singapore

Not again! Interesting so see what comes of this one. It was supposed to arrive at Singapore this morning.
Hopefully everyone on this flight is ok.

[csv8]

Not good.. Hopefully survivors are found.

[nstg8a]

Already conflicting reports coming out.

Some say wreckage was found early on, then govt officials are saying no wreckage has been found.

Déjà vu anyone?

[burnz]

history repeats, again and again and again...

[CoupeKing]

Similar to that Air-France flight in 2009 I think. But on this occasion the Pilot tried to go around and over a monster storm, broke the plane up. Relatively small plane too, same one that landed on the Hudson. 2014 all I've seen is people crying at airports.

[MercurySilver]

one fair enough
two
it aint a coincidence

[nstg8a]

So an Aussie search plane thought they spotted wreckage, but that now seems to have been discredited.

[Romulus]

Originally Posted by nstg8a

So an Aussie search plane thought they spotted wreckage, but that now seems to have been discredited.

No surprises there, same thing happened with the MH370 SAR. Jumping the gun once again.

[Romulus]

A poor piece of journalism here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...t-9947868.html

[Bobman]

So many plane crashes where a stall is the cause and totally avoidable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Ca...ays_Flight_708 as well as Air France and numerous others.

Tragic year in aviation. Of interest are the other aircraft at similar altitudes and near where the AirAsia plane made last contact, as well as flying past the area just minutes later.

[nstg8a]

Bodies found in the water, amongst other wreckage.

[fordomatic]

They have found over 40 bodies now. Rest in peace to those that have perished. There could be survivors, stranger things have happened. I am definitely thankful that the families of the deceased can have closure.

[MITCHAY]

I have read that some of the bodies did not have life jackets so the implication is that others did. So it is still possible there could be survivors however unlikely.

[Pepscobra]

Deepest sympathies to the families of the lost ones.
At least the wreckage has been found and hoping that answers can be found quickly.
In this day and age, with all the technology we have available, tragedies like this surely are avoidable??

[mik]

They need to do something to make these aircraft unloseable, and if they do crash have something indestructable that ejects , floats and gives off a signal.
This stuff happens way to often.

[mik]

Originally Posted by Pepscobra

Deepest sympathies to the families of the lost ones.
At least the wreckage has been found and hoping that answers can be found quickly.
In this day and age, with all the technology we have available, tragedies like this surely are avoidable??

Perhaps the answer is too take pilots out of the equation ???

[Bobman]

The planes have outsmarted us.

There have been so many crashes where the plane if left alone would have recovered on its own but pilot input prevented this: AF447, AA587, Aeroflot 593, maybe even Air France 296. All Airbus planes too.

Fly-by-wire still catches pilots off-guard. Very tragic loss of life & hopefully the boxes are found quickly.

[Romulus]

Originally Posted by Bobman

The planes have outsmarted us.

There have been so many crashes where the plane if left alone would have recovered on its own but pilot input prevented this: AF447, AA587, Aeroflot 593, maybe even Air France 296. All Airbus planes too.

Fly-by-wire still catches pilots off-guard. Very tragic loss of life & hopefully the boxes are found quickly.

You mean scarebus! If it ain't a Boeing I ain't going catchphrase has some merit.

The problem is CEO's of airline companies believe these things can fly themselves and pilots occupy seats 0A and 0B to appease the passengers. Give me a capable pilot to fly an aircraft over a computer anyday!

Another Air Asia A320 was involved in an incident at Kalibo airport at Boracay, Philippines late this afternoon. Fortunately no major injuries sustained.

[CoupeKing]

Only a small debris field so far. Emergency door and planes slide are part of it.

[jpblue1000]

Originally Posted by F6 Concorde

You mean scarebus! If it ain't a Boeing I ain't going catchphrase has some merit.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

jp

[Syndrome]

2014 has been a terrible year for aviation.

[Yellow_Festiva]

Originally Posted by CoupeKing

Only a small debris field so far. Emergency door and planes slide are part of it.

Apparently the plane can be seen from the air, must not be that deep in that case. Means a fast salvage operation. Let's hope they recover most of the bodies.

[Silver Ghia]

Originally Posted by F6 Concorde

You mean scarebus! If it ain't a Boeing I ain't going catchphrase has some merit.

The problem is CEO's of airline companies believe these things can fly themselves and pilots occupy seats 0A and 0B to appease the passengers. Give me a capable pilot to fly an aircraft over a computer anyday!

Another Air Asia A320 was involved in an incident at Kalibo airport at Boracay, Philippines late this afternoon. Fortunately no major injuries sustained.

ltd may know more, but what I've heard from experienced Aussie airline pilots who started working for Asian airlines over the last 20 years or so, the training of asian pilots is not all that good. One firmly told his asian copilot not to touch anything! Not being racist either, its the lack of proper training. So I'm not surprised when an aircraft gets out of its normal flight envelope, probably didnt have much idea what to do.

[2011G6E]

Hey, you want "dirt cheap and exotic" be careful what you wish for or you might just get it...


I've heard that saying before, "If it ain't Boeing I ain't going" regarding Airbus's.

[tweeked]

Both Boeing and Airbus are amazingly safe planes. The pilots? I am not so sure. The amounts of crashes in scenarios where other planes just fly by in the same conditions in the Asian region is a bit scary. Adam Air, Air Asia, Garuda, Korean Air (Managed to crash land a perfect BOEING in perfect weather).......... Crashing on landing, runway overruns, they just seem to struggle when something out of the ordinary hits them.

Then you see the way the Qantas flight crew handled QF32, landing a crippled airframe, damaged by a Rolls Royce engine. I fly in the A380 very comfortable that it can survive major structural and hydraulic damage but still land when a 1st class flight crew is in charge.

[cram_it_frog]

Now they are slaying this year is one of the safest for aircraft since records have been kept

now I think the cost of finding and working out what went wrong might end up being one of the most expensive on record when the figure for the MH 370 costs finally come in

[Bobman]

Originally Posted by cram_it_frog

Now they are slaying this year is one of the safest for aircraft since records have been kept

In the last 30 years, 1985 & 1996 have to be the worst in modern times, indeed with the types of crashes and first-time rare events that happened in both of those years it does make 2014 seem like quiet, but no less tragic!

Originally Posted by Silver Ghia

One firmly told his asian copilot not to touch anything! Not being racist either, its the lack of proper training. So I'm not surprised when an aircraft gets out of its normal flight envelope, probably didnt have much idea what to do.

Asian pilot culture has changed over the years but has been responsible for a number of crashes in the past (especially Korean Air). The same can be said for some other airlines' culture; for example the Tenerife crash and KLM. No-one can question the captain, so the co-pilots sit in fear and to their deaths after being afraid to take control or dare question the captain.

[CoupeKing]

From an aviation standpoint, probably is the safest era to be in a plane. That's if you consider how many are up there flying at any one time. Also needs to be mentioned, that the 2 bigger disasters this year, MH370 and the plane shot down over Ukraine (for arguments sake lets just say one was the actions of a rogue pilot/hijacker and the other complete incompetence) wern't exactly what we normally expect when a plane goes missing.

CEO`s of airline companies are just like many others. Its cheaper to pay compensation and fund a rescue party once every 10 years than implement and maintain new technology that allows us to track and locate you`re entire fleet in real-time. With MH370 I think they're hoping to find some Spanish Bullion in the process to help fund it, it could take decades. That 777 will look like a sesame-seed that far down,providing it's there.

[ltd]

Another tragedy. It seems however in this case the captain was very skilled and had a distinguished military career before commercial aviation.
There are a number of factors which all play a part in the loss of an aircraft. Until we know these factors there's no point in idle speculation, however historically we can see what has happened in the recent past such as AF447. The factors include:
Prior training,
recency of recurrent training,
Cockpit Resource Managment (CRM, where all pilots work the problem),
Human Factors,
Cockpit environment and layout,
Engineering limitations,
Weather.

First off, the engineering limitation of the pitot tube allowed icing causing the airspeed to drop out which disconnected the autopilot.
Secondly the FFO (flying first officer) had little training, and very little recurrent training in type.
Thirdly, the CRM was a debacle and the captain was not notified until late in the emergency, and the crew still hadn't diagnosed the stall, or even the cause of the stall.
Fourth, Human factors was that the crew were slightly fatigued as it was late at night, and their respective previous duty time had meant they were working when ordinarily they would be asleep, which affected their ability to identify the problem in a quick enough manner.
Fifth, cockpit layout and design was the biggest culprit in the cause of this accident. We know that the FFO, after losing the auto pilot basically panicked and pulled his control stick fully aft which caused the very high nose attitude, inducing the stall. The layout in all modern Airbus cockpits is such that as the FFO sits in the right seat, the stick is to his right and is obscured from view by others in the cockpit. The sticks for both the FFO and the NFFO are not linked to show inputs like in other aircraft. As such, the NFFO (non flying first officer) was not made aware of the FFO's control inputs until around 10,000 feet. Had this been a Boeing cockpit which has the two central control yokes which are linked, the NFFO would have identified the cause immediately as the controls being pulled too far back inducing the stall, and a full recovery would have been made early into the stall. In fact, the NTSB goes so far as to say that this design factor alone would have saved all the lives on board.
Finally, the weather was the trigger to the event with icing, blocking the pitot tubes which were inadequate for traversing through such severe icing conditions (although the planes anti-ice was fine), causing the autopilot to drop out and gifting the FFO the panicked reaction which caused the planes demise.

The above is just a description of how numerous factors can conspire to bring the worst possible outcome. Each factor on its own is completely survivable, however a bunch of them can collectively be too much. Until we know some more data on AirAsia we will otherwise only be speculating.
Oh, and BTW, Asian carriers have questionable standards because of how they recruit pilots - in Australia, most airline pilots hail from either military where they earn thousands of hours, or GA where they have done thousands of hours in 30 plus year old aircraft. If they have survived either, chances are they have some skills.
In Asia, a lot of juniors are recruited with minimal flying experience (300 hours or more) and are often put in as FO's. They do not have the depth of experience that their western counterparts have, and most have more sim time than flying time. Think Asiana Airlines, the woeful approach, the seawall and the 777.

[Romulus]

Great input ltd.

There's a lot of talk on PPRune as to what you've said (as well as the usual utter garbage) about P2F plus the lack of pilot training, not understanding VOR etc. Scary stuff indeed.

On a positive note, Qantas have been voted the worlds safest airline