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Could a Meteor Have Brought Down Air France 447?
niktemadur writes "In light of an Air Comet pilot's report to Air France, Airbus, and the Spanish civil aviation authority that, during a Monday flight from Lima to Lisbon, 'Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,' the Cosmic Variance blog team on the Discover Magazine website muses on the question 'What is the probability that, for all flights in history, one or more could have been downed by a meteor?' Taking into account total flight hours and the rate of meteoric activity with the requisite mass to impact on Earth (approximately 3,000 a day), some quick math suggests there may be one in twenty odds of a plane being brought down in the period from 1989 to 2009. Intriguingly, in the aftermath of TWA flight 800's crash in 1996, the New York Times published a letter by Columbia professors Charles Hailey (physics) and David Helfand (astronomy), in which they stated the odds of a meteor-airplane collision for aviation history up to that point: one in ten."
Glad they hang out on Slashdot.
Fair?
Finding the REAL causes - through speculation and investigation - are the route to improvements that prevent this sort of thing from again happening.
I can think of no more fitting tribute to the departed ones, and their families.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
So any guess is equally likely/unlikely until there is more information. I think even a lot of the 'debris' they've found is probably not from the jet.
They disengaged the main flight control system because they thought it was flying too fast in the turbulence, or was causing too much passenger discomfort.
They slowed down to a very narrow margin above stall speed.
They hit a 100 mph updraft, causing the AOA to go beyond the stall angle.
They went into a high-speed dive.
Because they were on manual backup control they could not exert enough force on the controls to recover before Vne or the flutter speed of something was attained.
Something (wing, tail surface, aileron, spoiler... whatever) tore off.
The resulting asymmetric forces caused a violent departure from normal flight.
At a speed probably above Vne, that resulted in the aircraft structure being instantly destroyed.
This accounts for the fact that there was a an elapsed time of approximately a minute between the first failure messages and the last.
If it had been a bomb, or simple explosive decompression from another source, that time would have been at most a few seconds, and more likely zero.
The crew was struggling, all three physically, to pull the aircraft out of a high-speed dive and nobody had a chance to radio what the hell was happening.
That's my call.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
What you want (and what you are getting with your thought process) is the illusion of control.
We want to feel as if we are in control of our destiny, not handing it over to some faceless being behind a locked cabin door. It doesn't matter if you are the sort of driver that spends more time on the sidewalk racking up points for hitting old ladies; you believe in your heart that you would be better at saving your skin than some highly trained but anonymous professional.
This is also why there is such a huge push against automated driving, not because it isn't safer than letting the average driver control things, but because we as a species have a difficult time trusting in a 'higher power' to save us.
(Incidentally, you probably don't want me to get into my ideas on what the implications this has on our 'need' for religion.)
Nothing I've read or know from flying in the Air Force and working at the USAF Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB indicates this was a collision....with a meteor or anything else.
I personally believe the aircraft encountered weather conditions that Airbus never tested against or thought possible. 100+ mph updrafts, as some have reported, would definitely cause control issues.
By that, if the plane was on autopilot or simply "in trim" and suddenly went nose up, it would have required immediate and CORRECT actions to handle. Having recently read the transcripts of the commuter crash, where the pilots were inattentive, then compounded a stall problem by pitching up, I think the real cause was a combination of events, including pilot error.
If a lightning strike caused electrical and control problems while the pilot(s) were trying to recover from a sudden attitude change, they were screwed. Going into a flat spin at 35000+ feet at 400 knots would have ripped the airframe to pieces. Given the reported debris field, and no apparent evidence of explosion, I'd bet that's what likely happened; unexpected event combined with control/system problems resulted in an unrecoverable spin and the aircraft came apart well before impact.
I am my own gestalt.
> Statistics are cold hard ideas, but don't account for personal decisions. ...
>
> You're not just a sitting duck, y'know?
It's exactly the attitude you've so nicely expressed which keeps people from living happier, healthier, and safer lives. Since perceived control is *so* much more important than outcome, you'd rather run riskier odds on the hope that you've got some special stuff in you that will make you an outlier in the statistically probable outcomes of your actions.
The fact is, that on the road (or on a bus, or on a bike) you *are* a sitting duck to an inattentive, incompetent, or otherwise overly aggressive driver... regardless of your actions. The reason we even have most traffic accidents is that many drivers overestimate their abilities and underestimate the risks involved with their actions. When you get on the road, you're out there with other multi-ton vehicles where there is no barrier of entry (other than a key or a hotwire job) for control of those vehicles.
What the statistics actually show is that if you replaced all of the hours you spend in a car on the road with hours in a plane in the sky, you're chances of being injured or killed are still *lower*. So, if you take how many hours you fly during the year, your chances of dying on a plane are just about zero. Got it? So stop spreading the fear and ignorance and enjoy the plane ride.
Sorry for the counter rant.
Exactly, I don't understand why churches needs lightning rods if they have nothing to hide from God.
There's a simple explanation, they fear Thor.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
If I told someone in the 1700's or 1800's that many people across the country often travel 50+ miles a day to and from work and home, I imagine they would be very awestruck.
Maybe... but perhaps that'd be because they're simply bewildered as to why everyone doesn't just move closer to where they work 8P