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10 Dec 09
13:21
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Date Joined:
27 Apr 07
Air accident experts have launched an investigation into why an Air France jet dropped 5,000 feet last month at the precise spot where an airliner plunged into the Atlantic in June, killing 228 people.
They believe it may provide clues as to what caused flight AF447 to fall out of the sky on June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Flight AF445, which replaced the ill-fated AF447, took off from Rio on Nov 29 at 5.20pm universal time and hit massive turbulence four hours later.
Air France said in a statement that the pilots "carried out a normal descent to avoid a zone of severe turbulence and to reach a less turbulent flight level".
According to French media reports, the pilots issued a mayday message while carrying out the manoeuvre as they were unable to receive air traffic authorisation for the procedure.
But instead of descending by the 300 ft that is standard procedure to avoid turbulence, the plane plunged from 33,000 feet to 28,000 feet a drop of 5,000 feet, according to the newspaper Le Figaro.
One passenger recounted in a blog how the plane "was no longer under control", and said that cabin crew were panic-stricken. There were no reported injuries.
The incident took place around 10 nautical miles from where AF447 is thought to have gone down, in an area known as "le pot au noir", or murky cauldron, due to the frequency of tropical storms there.
Both planes came from the same Airbus A330 family and were on night flights.
Investigators believe that faulty air speed sensors may have played a role in causing the June crash. Since then all such "pitot tubes" have been changed on Air France planes. The speed sensors on AF445, however, showed no signs of malfunctioning.
France's air accident investigation bureau, the BEA, said: "The flight data could provide us with new information. We cannot pass up [looking into] such a coincidence."
The BEA is due to provide an update on the investigation into the AF447 crash next week, and the search for the AF447 black boxes is due to resume in February.
They believe it may provide clues as to what caused flight AF447 to fall out of the sky on June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Flight AF445, which replaced the ill-fated AF447, took off from Rio on Nov 29 at 5.20pm universal time and hit massive turbulence four hours later.
Air France said in a statement that the pilots "carried out a normal descent to avoid a zone of severe turbulence and to reach a less turbulent flight level".
According to French media reports, the pilots issued a mayday message while carrying out the manoeuvre as they were unable to receive air traffic authorisation for the procedure.
But instead of descending by the 300 ft that is standard procedure to avoid turbulence, the plane plunged from 33,000 feet to 28,000 feet a drop of 5,000 feet, according to the newspaper Le Figaro.
One passenger recounted in a blog how the plane "was no longer under control", and said that cabin crew were panic-stricken. There were no reported injuries.
The incident took place around 10 nautical miles from where AF447 is thought to have gone down, in an area known as "le pot au noir", or murky cauldron, due to the frequency of tropical storms there.
Both planes came from the same Airbus A330 family and were on night flights.
Investigators believe that faulty air speed sensors may have played a role in causing the June crash. Since then all such "pitot tubes" have been changed on Air France planes. The speed sensors on AF445, however, showed no signs of malfunctioning.
France's air accident investigation bureau, the BEA, said: "The flight data could provide us with new information. We cannot pass up [looking into] such a coincidence."
The BEA is due to provide an update on the investigation into the AF447 crash next week, and the search for the AF447 black boxes is due to resume in February.
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Call me old fashioned, but why not fly around an area known as "murky cauldron"? Why go through it?
With the amount of**pit sex going on these days the pilots would be lucky to know what hemisphere they're in.
serious question, why is it old fashioned to suggest a detour?
Mitt, because the extra distance would produce more CO2.
Wur, Afghanistan is thousands of square miles wide but if I was on foot i'd still probably opt to give it a swerve - same theory applies to the 'murky cauldron'
On a different note you can forgive people going through the Bermuda triangle as it sounds nice, the murky cauldron surely gives the game away?
The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is the area encircling the earth near the equator where winds originating in the northern and southern hemispheres come together.
The ITCZ was originally identified from the 1920s to the 1940s as the "Intertropical Front" (ITF), but after the recognition in the 1940s and 1950s of the significance of wind field convergence in tropical weather production, the term "ITCZ" was then applied.[1]
Where the ITCZ is drawn into and merges with a monsoonal circulation, it is sometimes referred to as a monsoon trough, a usage more common in Australia and parts of Asia.
The ITCZ appears as a band of clouds, usually thunderstorms, that circle the globe near the equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, the trade winds move in a southwesterly direction, while in the Southern Hemisphere, they move northwesterly. The point at which the trade winds converge forces the air up into the atmosphere, forming the ITCZ.[2]
The location of the intertropical convergence zone varies over time. Over land, it moves back and forth across the equator following the sun's zenith point. Over the oceans, where the convergence zone is better defined, the seasonal cycle is more subtle, as the convection is constrained by the distribution of ocean temperatures.
The ITCZ was originally identified from the 1920s to the 1940s as the "Intertropical Front" (ITF), but after the recognition in the 1940s and 1950s of the significance of wind field convergence in tropical weather production, the term "ITCZ" was then applied.[1]
Where the ITCZ is drawn into and merges with a monsoonal circulation, it is sometimes referred to as a monsoon trough, a usage more common in Australia and parts of Asia.
The ITCZ appears as a band of clouds, usually thunderstorms, that circle the globe near the equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, the trade winds move in a southwesterly direction, while in the Southern Hemisphere, they move northwesterly. The point at which the trade winds converge forces the air up into the atmosphere, forming the ITCZ.[2]
The location of the intertropical convergence zone varies over time. Over land, it moves back and forth across the equator following the sun's zenith point. Over the oceans, where the convergence zone is better defined, the seasonal cycle is more subtle, as the convection is constrained by the distribution of ocean temperatures.
mitttheimp, it's another way of saying "isn't it obvious?" The things go at 400+ miles an hour, even if it's an hours detour, I'd rather that than hear the pilot say "Ladies & Gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts, we are about to go through the murkey cauldron, where, in recent months, one aircraft never got through it, and another one dropped 5,000 feet. Hopefully soon, the cabin crew will be around with scrathcards. Thank you".
I once read that the Bermuda Triangle area saw large pockets of gasses escape from the sea bed and rise like a bubble up through the air. These gasses were less dense than the air (or water), and as such, if a plane (or boat) were to travel through it, they would suffer a sudden drop in air pressue and plunge.
This was one theory of why planes and ships would suddenly dissapear.
This was one theory of why planes and ships would suddenly dissapear.
how many planes a day do you think go through the murky cauldron? Hardly a reason to circumnavigate it, unless this becomes a regular occurence
Surely it's someone on the ground playing with magnets? :-)
Dunno how many go through, but 2 dodgies is enough for me. Beware someone called Gunner on a 'plane thread...
Surely it's someone on the ground playing with magnets? :-)
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