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Air France A330 Down


Homerun

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IMHO - there has never been a very good course from any manufacturer dealing with avoidance of severe WX and it's because no one, including NASA or Environment Canada wants to take the associated liability of showing the dangers of flying into either the now, infamous ITCZ, or a huge build-up on the Prairies or NW Ontario.

I took the few courses we were offered over the years but it seemed to me they were woefully inadequate. Every time we saw red or purple on the RADAR and LTG detectors in the aeroplane, we just diverted around it, whether it was real or not. Sometimes it made us 30 minutes short on fuel but with our reserve and the occasional diversion it just might have saved our areses. I'll never know if it did or didn't because we got through it all after all.

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Last Thursday I diverted around a line of storms. The next morning I find out there where tornadoes in that line and two people died after their cabin was hit. There was nothing in the weather I saw before leaving that indicated a possibility of tstorms of that kind.

In my opinion 'avoidance of severe WX training' should be dealt with like 'ICING training'. It should be taught every year.

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Just did an arrival into YYZ yesterday with severe wx between YYZ and YUL. More than once the controllers told pilots their radar did not present the weather.

Makes it easy to decide if I take their headings!

We're on our own in this game in Canada anyway and I will take no chances...

Chico

PS Landed on 24R with what turned out to be a 32 knot 90 degree crosswind.

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Yo Chico: It's not only in Canada that vectors during severe weather should be considered carefully prior to following them. The Med has routinely severe weather especially in late summer and some of the highest traffic volumes in Europe. I had more than one instance where we were to hold at a fix that was square in the middle of a red/magenta paint. One of the resident pilots I was flying with was actually going to follow the instruction until I got on the radio and told the controller we would hold somewhere else (PPOS) due to weather. No argument whatsoever. The reaction of the resident pilot was interesting to say the least.

No concept whatsoever!

I'm surprised there haven't been more enroute accidents due to severe weather.

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Moon;

One of the resident pilots I was flying with was actually going to follow the instruction until I got on the radio and told the controller we would hold somewhere else (PPOS) due to weather. No argument whatsoever. The reaction of the resident pilot was interesting to say the least.

No concept whatsoever!

Yes, I've known of and heard of a number of these kinds of stories - "no concept whatsoever". Without going into hangar stories, we were #3 or so behind Eastern 66 when he went in at Kennedy on 22L while New York continued to vector, (rather, they tried to vector) us and everyone else through the same storm - they were just working the dots. I doubt if it's changed even today, so crowded is that area.

ACSidestick;

Air Canada did do courses a few years ago. They were taught by Bob Kosteka, who is back at Transport now. He offered them at all bases, I think.

Good as far as it goes but I wonder how many were unable to attend and why it isn't part of recurrent training? The 330/340 AOM has a section on the use of radar but it isn't thorough. Like all AOMs today, very basic, not the least bit technical. In contrast, the technical section on EGPWS is quite thorough and helpful.

I don't know any pilot who had had any training or even manufacturer's information on radar during my career there. Like everybody else, I picked it up from the guys in the left seat. The flight safety magazine had a very good article on radar use a few years ago, but unless pilots kept the magazine for reference, that knowledge is gone for those hired after it came out. I heard such a story from a good friend the other day that illustrates this exact point; he was over the Pacific and discovered his brand new RP had no clue about diverting around the line of thunderstorms ahead of them. In fact the RP had no idea how to read the radar, use the controls, (had never been overseas) and, obviously, wasn't taught. That AC "had a course" at one time is laudable but like the article in the magazine, it was a once-off and that doesn't address the lack of knowledge. That means that the mythologies about the use of the gain control, the use of MAP mode, the use of turbulence mode and the use of antenna tilt for analysis and what that analysis means will continue. There are definitely wrong ways (dangerous ways) to use the radar, (like using Map mode to find ice crystals at high altitude!). The 777 radar is apparently a brilliant design and does much of this analysis for you but it's no good if the returns can't be interpreted.

I actually don't understand the liability issues of teaching this information. Just like collecting flight data but not using it, not knowing is a far great liability issue. If it turns out that the two pilots on AF447 did not know how to use the radar and the captain was on his break, (now the most likely scenario), I think there are substantial liability issues if indeed that's how it went - we may never know.

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Last month on a YUL-YYZ leg, and in the YYZ area while diverting around storms that were right on the arrival's track, I personally witnessed one of my peers from another company fly directly through one of them... watched his TCAS target fly right through the center of a cell, and THEN he reports moderate-severe turbulence through 14000'!!!

The kicker? Early this month I witnessed a plane from the same damn company do the same damn thing!!

i have to wonder what these guys are thinking?! Sure, maybe it's not a fully developed thunderstorm, but maybe it is! Aren't these guys concerned about lightning strikes, or at the VERY least, the ride for the people who pay for their livelihood?

Mind boggling. mad.gif

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After all these years of driving around in sometimes crappy WX, I have very rarely or even ever asked an ATC guy about a diversion around WX. I have always let them know, however, that the flight path was going in a certain direction to avoid flight into something I don't like.

I have never had any kind of problem with the NAVCAN controller guys. Divert if you need to at the last minute and let them know about it while you're doing it, obviously but, you won't run into someone else at the same FL. That's an issue that the ATC guys can resolve really soon.

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you're damn rights! wink.gif I no longer accept flying even through any cell no matter how small. WJ had a string of 5 lightning strikes in one day last year in YVR, after flying through an area of 'green' on the radar. 5. Needless to say we had a major IROP situation in YVR the rest of the day.

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you're damn rights! wink.gif I no longer accept flying even through any cell no matter how small. WJ had a string of 5 lightning strikes in one day last year in YVR, after flying through an area of 'green' on the radar. 5. Needless to say we had a major IROP situation in YVR the rest of the day.

You make it sound like ATC has been purposely vectoring you into thunderstorms.

Anytime I have seen thunderstorms on the arrival or departure end at YVR alternate headings are given freely. If you tell ATC about an area of thunderstorms you want to fly around they will most often ask what heading will keep you clear and then assign it. If wind conditions permit ATC will also change the landing runway to keep aircraft on final out of harms way, as departures are, naturally, easier to change headings with.

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Last month on a YUL-YYZ leg, and in the YYZ area while diverting around storms that were right on the arrival's track, I personally witnessed one of my peers from another company fly directly through one of them... watched his TCAS target fly right through the center of a cell, and THEN he reports moderate-severe turbulence through 14000'!!!

The kicker? Early this month I witnessed a plane from the same damn company do the same damn thing!!

i have to wonder what these guys are thinking?! Sure, maybe it's not a fully developed thunderstorm, but maybe it is! Aren't these guys concerned about lightning strikes, or at the VERY least, the ride for the people who pay for their livelihood?

Mind boggling.

user posted image

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Guest woxof

This Spiegel article(down below)is something that came to mind immediately after and even before this crash. Why does Air France crash so much. I use BA as a comparison. Big difference it seems. AF has written off a 320, 330, 340, 2 747(as well as seriously damaging a third one).

These fatal flights were on regional carriers/codeshare with an Air France flight number(CRJ, F100 and 727).

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2003/f-js030622...-js030622a.html

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2007/f-pg070125.../f-pg070125.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_422

By coincidence, I just happened to finish reading an incident report by the company in South America. Still waiting for the YUL excursion report

http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2001/f-zc010525...f-zc010525a.pdf

It also mentions about this incident....

15 February Air France Airbus A340-300 (F-GLZO) Douala airport, Cameroon

The captain decided to go around again late on final approach in a rainstorm, and the main gear touched the runway before the aircraft climbed away. After a successful second attempt to land, the landing gear was cleared by the airline’s ground crew.

MAIN ARTICLE

Air France Airbus Jets Have Above-Average Crash Rate

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe...,635821,00.html

Secret aviation industry calculations have raised uncomfortable questions for Air France: Airbus aircraft belonging to the French carrier have an above-average rate of crashes. An internal report obtained by SPIEGEL criticizes the company's safety culture.

The crash of Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean on June 1 claimed 288 lives and caused a public relations disaster for the French airline. Now new information is raising disturbing questions about the airline's safety record.

SPIEGEL has learned of secret aviation industry calculations which conclude that Air France's Airbus fleet has an aircraft loss rate of 1.26 per 1 million flights, That is four times higher than other airlines' average (0.3 losses per million flights).

Three Air France Airbus jets have crashed since 1988. A fourth Airbus jet belonging to Air France's later subsidiary Air Inter also crashed.

The new figures coincide with a debate in France about whether the crash of the Airbus A330, flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in which all 288 people aboard were killed, resulted in part from reckless behavior by the pilots.

In an interview with Le Figaro, Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon countered speculation that the pilots had headed straight into a thunderstorm because they wanted to save fuel or to avoid a delay.

An internal report from 2006, which has been obtained by SPIEGEL, had complained about a deficient culture of safety at the airline. The report said the company lacked "a clear and objective view of performance in the area of flight safety."

According to the report, eight out of 10 accidents or incidents at Air France resulted from human factors -- such as a lack of attention, poor decision-making processes and mistakes in co-operation between pilot and co-pilot.

It added that an analysis of incidents with A330/340 models indicated that pilots show "a certain degree of overconfidence or even complacency." Air France says it has rectified all shortcomings since the report was presented in June 2006.

But Jean-Cyril Spinetta, chairman of the Air France/KLM group, conceded at a shareholder meeting last week that the airline had a poor safety record. "We must find out how that could have happened," he said.

SPIEGEL

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You make it sound like ATC has been purposely vectoring you into thunderstorms.

absolutely not. ATC can usually only see the big ones, and they have no idea where they're sending planes. I only meant that when I see a line of airplanes accepting vectors or a route that takes them through the center of a cell, I don't follow, I turn.

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Guest rattler

French investigators have abandoned a search in the Atlantic Ocean for the black boxes from Air France Flight 447 that crashed on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing everyone on board.

In a statement, French air accident investigation agency BEA said the research ship leading the search for the black box flight recorders of Flight 447 left the area and was to arrive in Dakar, Senegal, on Thursday.

The second phase of the search efforts focusing on the underwater hunt for the black boxes "has finished," the agency said.

"We have not found the wreckage, we have not found the recorders," said BEA spokeswoman Martine del Bono.

Investigators and experts will meet in the coming weeks to determine whether to begin a third phase. But no details were provided.

Investigators into the May 31 Air France crash believe the pitot probes may have iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers. The A330 aircraft flew into heavy storms off the coast of Brazil before crashing. All 228 people aboard Air France Flight 447 — including Canadian Brad Clemes, a native of Guelph, Ont., who had been living in Belgium for 14 years — were killed.

Fifty-one bodies were recovered amid the debris 640 kilometres northeast of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha islands. More than 600 pieces of the plane were also recovered.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/08/20/airfrance-flight.html?ref=rss
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