NOVA - Crash of Air France flight 447 accident investigation PART 3

PART 3

Similar to ACI/Air Crash Investigation/Mayday. This is about an hour long instead of the usual ACI 45 minutes per episode.

Forensic investigators reconstruct the final moments of the Air France disaster. Flight AF447, an Air France Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of all 228 lives. How could a state-of-the-art airliner with elaborate electronic safety and navigation features and a faultless safety record simply fall out of the sky? NOVA assembles a team of seasoned pilots, engineers, and safety experts to examine the evidence that emerged in the weeks following this horrific disaster.

Igore the following, just keywords:
Cockpit Failure / The Invisible Track Crossair LX Flight 3597 Heathrow Crash Landing / Heathrow Enigma / Heathrow Miracle British Airways Flight 38 Pilot Betrayed / Uncontrolled Engines Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 Who's In Control? / Who Pilots Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 Hudson River Runway / Hudson Splash Down / Heroric Landing on the Hudson US Airways Flight 1549

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[Carlusha919]

I cannot believe how in this day and age a multimillion Dollar new jetliner relies in only one or two ways of measuring its travelling speed. It's amazing these magnificent jets do not have multiple ways of reading their speed, altitude, outside temp, etc with the help of satellites and ground signalling pulses among other ways. A pitot tube is great, but it could easily fail by freezing in seconds. Multiple ways of monitoring basic flight variables should have been in place decades ago! Shame!!

[LiLTMac123]

@Carlusha919 pitot probes sense air PRESSURE... which means sensing the amount of air that goes past the aircraft. and then convert them to speed and sends info to the air speed indicator. radars, satelites cannot do that. they may be able to do that for vehicles on the ground but not in the air. those devices are not able to sense how much air is flowing past the aircraft. i just learned this stuff in my engineering class and wrote a report on pitot probes.

[LiLTMac123]

@LiLTMac123 at about 00:41 seconds the guy explains exactly what pitot probes do. if there is another way to measure air speed. engineers for any aircraft manufactures would have already considered and probably used it on their aircrafts. many people failed to understand the keywords are "air pressure" which pretty much determines air speed not just "speed"

[dazzmatazzz]

@bulkazesmalcem It's air speed what matters. A GPS can't messure airspeed, just ground speed, and planes do have that too, of course

[buomoable]

@Carlusha919 to spot the differences, whilst the speed indicated by the pitot probe (air speed) may indicate 280knots, your GPS may indicate your groundspeed to be some 480kts at 36000ft lets say. And if you have a tailwind of lets say 100kts, then your groundspeed would be 580kts while your airspeed remains 280kts. And thats not the same AT ALL.

[fluffycheep]

@sparky47807 Firstly. I am not in competition with anyone here. I realise that there are many millions who know a lot more about a lot more stuff than I. I am just frustrated about the fact that such an amazing piece of technology is hanging on the balance of tube that can clog. I appreciate that the pilots should have pitched the nose up 5% and so on, whatever (that is their mistake). If people dont suggest things in life how does anyone learn. There has to be a better way than pitot tubes

[BRI535D]

@BRI535D Please disregard comment about airspeed being able to be calculated but the GPS groundspeed could be put to use if a manual insertion of wind speed data is inserted because the indicated windspeed actually uses airspeed derived from pitot system so we would have to input a reasonably accurate wind.

[BRI535D]

@LiLTMac123 Of course GPS can be used to produce an indicated airspeed.This can be done by using the GPS groundspeed then deducting the IRS generated windspeed and corrected from resulting True airspeed all without ice being part of the equation.All Airbus aircraft display GPS groundspeed but not on a primary flight display.I fly one full time.

[sparky47807]

@fluffycheep BTW, the only reason air traffic control is able to tell a pilot his airspeed is because the transponder is sending out the air speed the aircraft is registering via its pitot tubes. If the air data computer goes down or is giving faulty data, the ATC is going to have no or invalid data. Regardless of the presence or absence of airspeed data, there are ways to assure the aircraft does not stall and these were discussed in the show. The pilots failed to respond appropriately.

[sparky47807]

@fluffycheep You do realize there would be an inherent delay in that which would render it practically useless for maintaining controlled flight. Also, triangulation based upon satellite contact would give you ground speed (as @dazzmatazzz pointed out 8 months ago), not airspeed which are two very different (and often widely varied) things. This is one of those things that just because you're thinking outside the box does not mean what you are suggesting is practical or useful.

[fluffycheep]

@LiLTMac123 I am not doubting your pitot tube expertise. The one question I have is this. How come air traffic control is able to accurately tell a pilot his air speed? Now I know AF447 was out of radio contact but the fact still remains that the air speed can be ascertained by satellite. 

[phantomf41]

@LiLTMac123 Yeah pitot tube is the best device even today for measuring dynamic pressure.

[zephead97]

Airbus sucks ass kurwa

[wallace84st]

@sam9116 a parachute for 250 people not trained for lauching?It's not possible evacuate 250 people in panic while the aircraft is not under control...do you know how skydivers get off from a plane? That plane is flying, is not falling down stalled...