"Ron" wrote in message
...
Arfa Daily wrote:
Seems that today, an Air France Airbus A330 en route from Rio to Paris
with
238 people on board, has gone down without warning over the Atlantic.
Hard
to see what the pilot might have done wrong with the thing at 38000 ft
in
the cruise ...

Apparently, it disappeared off African trans-atlantic ATC radar, at
around
3am, our time.

This is not instilling a lot of confidence in me, regarding flying on
one of
these things in October, instead of my usual Boeing ... :-|

Electrical and turbulence problems reported. Aircraft was sending
distress signals so it may have made a decent ditch. Air France's last
air disaster was the Concorde in 2000.

I've flown the 320-100 several times and the Mulhouse crash never
entered my mind. We actually had a 5 hour delay one time after a
hydraulic pump failed on the ground and had to be replaced.

I wouldn't worry about the 330 considering the number of those things
in the air at any given time and it's wonderful track record.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. It just bothers me a little that on say
a 747, the driver has got a triple redundancy control system which
hydraulically links his yoke and pedals directly to the control surfaces,
and a robot driver that can be thoroughly switched off, such that in an
unusual set of circumstances, a quick-thinking and experienced guy
sitting behind those controls, might be able to recover a potentially
catastrophic situation by thinking outside the box, and doing something
which maybe puts the airframe outside of the 'safe' envelope. From what I
can understand of the FBW systems, they are never going to allow you to
do this, and in the event of a total electrical systems collapse, your
little joystick, and the computer(s) that it's connected to, are not
going to be of any use to control the aircraft, anyway.

My pilot friend rang me yesterday when all this was going down (honestly,
no pun intended). He felt that there had to be more to it than just
flying into a storm. He says that in general, if lightning hits an
aluminium-bodied plane, it tends to pass around the outside, and
re-discharge and carry on its way from the opposite side or wherever. He
questioned whether the same would happen on a carbon composite bodied
plane, as the A330 apparently is, or whether the higher electrical
resistance of such a material, would cause the lightning to 'stick
around' as it were, and just fry the internal systems, or even heat the
material to the point where it just exploded. He reckons that unless
there was an absolutely catastrophic failure of the airframe, a distress
signal should have been able to be broadcast almost all the way down, as
the last voice transmitter is battery powered to ensure that it can still
operate, even in the event of a catastrophic electrical or systems
failure. Sobering thoughts ...

From reading the boards, it appears that, rather than flowing arond the
outside of the aircraft, lightning is more inclined to punch holes right
through composite skins, thereby getting into the metalwork and wiring.

Ron(UK)

So, perhaps not the best choice of material to make a long haul aircraft
from, given that it is going to fly to areas of the world where
thunderstorms are prevalent, and at cruising altitudes where it is well up
amongst the crap, as it were.

I have actually flown in and out of both Orlando and Las Vegas, with
thunderstorms in the area, without giving them a second thought. But then
that was in a nice 747 aluminium cigar tube ...

If it is true that CC skins are not good in areas of electrical storm
activity, I'm sure pilots regularly flying such planes, must be aware of
this, so if the weather radar on this flight showed that he was heading into
bad air and storms, I wonder why he didn't go around it, or see if it was
possible to climb above the worst of it ? I understand that thunderheads can
extend above the maximum ceiling of airliners, but I would have thought that
there might have been a 'way through' between cells ? Fuel constraints maybe
? Looking on a map, the path from Rio to Paris looks awfully long for a
plane of this size.

BTW, is that Ron ex LVA ? If so, you haven't by any chance got a schematic
set for a Warwick Sweet 25.1, have you ? Or anyone else reading this ?
Warwick have refused to even acknowledge requests for assistance, let alone
supply info.

Arfa