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AirAsia Flight Goes Missing Between Indonesia and Singapore

Posted by timothy on from the hard-loss dept.

iONiUM (530420) writes As reported by many news sources, yet another plane has lost contact during a trip. This comes on the heels of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 which is still missing, and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down. From ABC's coverage: Sixteen children and one infant were among the passengers. At a press conference this morning, Indonesian officials said the plane was several hours past the time when its fuel would have been exhausted. The six-year-old aircraft was on the submitted flight plan but requested a deviation because of enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost. The plane was under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control and had been in the air for about 42 minutes when contact was lost, AirAsia said.

17 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. who cares how many children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    were on the flight, as if adult lifes did not matter just as much.

    1. Re: who cares how many children by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No. Children are underdeveloped and require a considerable amount of investment before they create value. Compared to adults where the investment has already been made and who now cannot pay it back, children are worth less.

    2. Re: who cares how many children by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Funny

      What's the value of an asshole that spends his evening judging the value of others he has never met?

      You mean, like you're doing right now? Good question.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  2. Developing Story by spacefight · · Score: 5, Informative

    With regular updates: http://www.aeroinside.com/item...

    1. Re:Developing Story by geekymachoman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Slashdot - News for nerds, stuff that matters.

      So... airplane crashes and other huge international events is not what matters to a nerd ? To a nerd the only thing that matters is C, Linux, ASM and Stephen Hawking ? Talk about narrow mindedness.

      Why is there one of you commenting every time airplane crashes ?

    2. Re:Developing Story by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I read it on the BBC and came here for the discussion - as with any story, if you don't like it, skip it. Nothing is forcing you to read or take part in comments, so why bitch and moan about Slashdot covering something you personally don't like.

  3. Sixteen children and one infant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why is that so important? Are the other passengers just some randoms we shouldn't give a shit about? Not that we truly do, anyway.

    1. Re:Sixteen children and one infant by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because children are presumed innocent, and tragedy befalling innocence turns the emotional value of the story up eleventy times.

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    2. Re:Sixteen children and one infant by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Adults have lived some of their life. Kids have missed out on things most believe everbody should be able to do before they die, like their first kiss.

      Everybody here actually understands this, I have no idea why you all picked now to suddenly act like you're Mr. Spock.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  4. Re:Note to Self.... by Panoptes · · Score: 4, Informative

    Point of information - this wasn't Malaysia Airlines, it was AirAsia.

  5. Coffin Corner? by mentil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The pilot tried to ascend over a cloud. My guess is that he hit the coffin corner, stalled, and crashed.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Coffin Corner? by jbwolfe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The moment you stall, you lose altitude, and you're no longer in the coffin corner.

      The moment you stall, you are outside the flight envelope which includes that corner. You remain outside until you recover from stall. Losing altitude is not a stall recovery technique. Restoring laminar flow over the wing is. That may involve sacrificing altitude for airspeed, assuming you still have enough elevator authority to reduce AOA. Another method is to use excess thrust, assuming it is available at that altitude (the higher you are the, less available.)

      A simple stall recovery, and you're back in normal flight.

      Stall recovery in large swept-wing aircraft at cruise altitude is anything but simple. It requires a great deal of patience and energy management to avoid secondary stalls. Once recovered, you remain in alternate or direct law- no more normal law until on the ground and reset.

      The A320 in particular is designed so the computer will automatically recover from stalls if the pilots simply release all controls.

      Untrue. When you stall an A320, you revert to alternate law (hopefully with speed stability), as normal law will not let you stall. If you stalled, something went wrong. The flight control computers are saying essentially that "I cant fly the plane anymore- you the pilot must do it." It will not recover without pilot intervention.

      ...one of the pilots on AF447 kept directing the plane to pitch up without telling the other pilot what he was doing, as the other pilot was trying to pitch it down to recover from the stall

      This did happen, and they were disoriented but not stupid, just poorly trained. The aircraft also gave them a "dual input" aural warning and averaged their inputs. The first sense to disappear when under stress is hearing. They were under stress and poor training in stall recovery left them unable to prevent secondary stalls. This was one of many other factors to this particular accident as well as all accidents in general.

      --
      Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
  6. Reddit live thread by Zanadou · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reddit live news thread: http://www.reddit.com/live/u5b...

    Honestly, compared to most news sources these days, it's probably the best one to read.

  7. Re:Don't take airplanes piloted by the Malays by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

    It has everything to do with the race of the pilot: the pilot didn't race away from the missile quickly enough!

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  8. Re:Escort by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > I wonder how viable it would be to just quietly escort flights in that region with stealth aircraft for a while to determine what's actually happening.

    With thousands of flights a day, there aren't enough military jets and support crews to do that.

  9. Re:Don't take airplanes piloted by the Malays by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Informative

    The plane was flying the filed pattern and was where it was authorized to be. The airline should have re-routed it, but that's not entirely the pilot's call. Like the weather, they rely on the word of others for the conditions, then do what they can with that information. They were told the flight path was safe, and it was the one the owners of the plane he was flying told him to take. How is that his fault for being off course?

    --
    Learn to love Alaska
  10. Re:Escort by ledow · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.planecrashinfo.com/...

    Commercial aircraft go down anything up to 20 times a year, even in modern times. Back when you were a kid, likely 30 times a year or more.

    Already we have this lot:

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

    That's one every two weeks. One of the ones you hint at was, what, July and over an entirely different continent anyway.

    Learn some statistics. You soon find that people have selection-bias on what they see in the news, what they perceive as a "close fact" (being a plane heading TO Malaysia crashing in another continent, instead of one heading from Malaysia that crashes near Malaysia... very different things), and what they want to lump together to form some kind of extraordinary circumstance.