Air France Incident!!!

**V8Ian** · 3rd August 2009, 06:18 PM

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

From the wiki.

"The aircraft involved was an Airbus A330-203, with manufacturer serial number 660, and French aircraft registration F-GZCP.[11][12] F-GZCP was powered by two General Electric CF6-80E1 engines with a maximum speed of Mach 0.86 (913 km/h, 493 KT) at flight level 350 (10.7 km altitude) and a range of 12,500 km (6749 NM).[11] The first flight of the aircraft was on 25 February 2005 and at the time of the accident it had flown for 18,870 hours"

Quite a new aeroplane...

That's not big hours, surely other 330s have flown in similiar conditions. It puts fatigue in doubt. Did the aircraft fly into the storm? I was under the impression that they were merely "in the vacinity".

**Captain_Rightfoot** · 3rd August 2009, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by V8Ian

That's not big hours, surely other 330s have flown in similiar conditions. It puts fatigue in doubt. Did the aircraft fly into the storm? I was under the impression that they were merely "in the vacinity".

I think the problem is they don't know exactly where it was as it was a long way off the coast....

All fingers are pointing to pitot icing at the moment. It would be a surprise if the cause was deemed to be anything else - if they find a cause. If you loose airspeed in "coffin corner" at night and in a thunderstorm many people are saying that it would be almost impossible to keep things within the airspeed window despite there being a procedure for it.

Airbus issued a procedure some time ago that if you loose airspeed you set the throttles to a designated position, and hold a specific number of degrees of positive incidence. Then, you basically hope that the ASI starts working again. There is no descent procedure without an ASI.

**V8Ian** · 3rd August 2009, 07:03 PM

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

I think the problem is they don't know exactly where it was as it was a long way off the coast....

All fingers are pointing to pitot icing at the moment. It would be a surprise if the cause was deemed to be anything else - if they find a cause. If you loose airspeed in "coffin corner" at night and in a thunderstorm many people are saying that it would be almost impossible to keep things within the airspeed window despite there being a procedure for it.

Airbus issued a procedure some time ago that if you loose airspeed you set the throttles to a designated position, and hold a specific number of degrees of positive incidence. Then, you basically hope that the ASI starts working again. There is no descent procedure without an ASI.

Now that's a bit of a worry.

How hard would it be to fit a heating element around the ASI?

**muddymech** · 3rd August 2009, 08:55 PM

Originally Posted by V8Ian

Now that's a bit of a worry.

How hard would it be to fit a heating element around the ASI?

the ASI is just an instrument the information comes from the pitot static tubes and these are heated (too hot to touch in air mode), in the old days the instrument would basically read the difference between pitot air and static air px, but now thats read by sensors that tell a computer that tell the instrument what to say, this is better as it reduces the run of pipe work required so reduces chance of error or error from damaged pipes that make great steps or hand holds.
ian

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