Lady Luck
- Thread starter Gonz
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paul_valaru
100% Pure Canadian Beef
final destination 4: European vacation
Innervision
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Ohh yea
Frodo
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This will be an interesting investigation:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/04/air-france-crash-debris
It looks like the French are trying to cover their butts right now. It is pretty safe to say that there was an inflight breakup, but why. The Airbus is fly by wire where computers fly the airplane and the pilot just tells the computer what he wants to do. However, in the French (Airbus) architecture, if Hal and the pilot disagree, Hal gets the 51% vote.
Now, combine that with heavy Tstorms and a faulty air probes that tend to ice up (Airbus is replacing them all, but this plane still had the old ones) and you have a recipe for disaster. If the probes ice up, less air comes in leading the computer to think that the airplane is getting slower. When it thinks that the airplane is getting close to a stall, it will push over to pick up speed. At some point, the airplane can't handle the speed of the ensuing dive and it comes apart.
Of course, there is the possibility that a lightning strike took out the computers directly, but that seems unlikely. The F-117 had three hardened flight control computers. I assume that Airbus had hardened redundant computers also.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/04/air-france-crash-debris
It looks like the French are trying to cover their butts right now. It is pretty safe to say that there was an inflight breakup, but why. The Airbus is fly by wire where computers fly the airplane and the pilot just tells the computer what he wants to do. However, in the French (Airbus) architecture, if Hal and the pilot disagree, Hal gets the 51% vote.
Now, combine that with heavy Tstorms and a faulty air probes that tend to ice up (Airbus is replacing them all, but this plane still had the old ones) and you have a recipe for disaster. If the probes ice up, less air comes in leading the computer to think that the airplane is getting slower. When it thinks that the airplane is getting close to a stall, it will push over to pick up speed. At some point, the airplane can't handle the speed of the ensuing dive and it comes apart.
Of course, there is the possibility that a lightning strike took out the computers directly, but that seems unlikely. The F-117 had three hardened flight control computers. I assume that Airbus had hardened redundant computers also.