Debris, Bodies Recovered From AirAsia Flight 8501

Searchers have found traces of the crashed AirAsia Flight 8501, which lost contact with ground controllers shortly after requesting a weather-related course change. Reuters reports that both debris and some passenger remains have been recovered off the coast of Borneo, in a search complicated by waves "up to three meters high." From the report: About 30 ships and 21 aircraft from Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and the United States have been involved in the search. The plane, which did not issue a distress signal, disappeared after its pilot failed to get permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather because of heavy air traffic, officials said. It was travelling at 32,000 feet (9,753 metres) and had asked to fly at 38,000 feet, officials said earlier. Pilots and aviation experts said thunderstorms, and requests to gain altitude to avoid them, were not unusual in that area. ... Online discussion among pilots has centred on unconfirmed secondary radar data from Malaysia that suggested the aircraft was climbing at a speed of 353 knots, about 100 knots too slow, and that it might have stalled.

Comments

Re:Stall?

[tlhIngan]

I'm not anything close to an expert, but wouldn't a stall be easily recoverable at 32,000+ feet? If a plane fell from this altitude without any radio contact I would think it would be some kind of catastrophic structural or mechanical failure.

Or a cumulonimbus (CB) cloud. Pilots are generally advised to stay 20 miles AWAY from storm clouds because of intense up and down drafts.

It's likely the pilot was trying to do that when denied by ATC - and towering CB can go up to the stratosphere (literally - it's why they get their anvil shape).

No plane can outfly the up or downdrafts which can be several thousand feet per minute. Fly into it and 32,000 feet can be gone in just a few minutes. Never mind wind shear which can basically rob an airplane of all airspeed.

Embedded CBs are even scarier.

Re:Pilot Proof Airbus?

[OldSport]

It's interesting... most of the expert opinions I have heard say that the asynchronous nature of Airbus sidesticks was *not* to blame, and that the crash would not have happened if the pilots were properly communicating as per Cockpit Resource Management protocol. However, when you consider that the crash happened basically because a very junior pilot was pulling the stick back *the entire time* and the senior pilot did not realize this, I can't help but think that synchronous flight controls a la Boeing jets would have at least partially mitigated this problem (the senior pilot would have seen very clearly that the junior pilot was pulling back constantly). IANAP (I am not a pilot), but nevertheless... anyway, back to our regular scheduled programming.