This does not look good:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30614627
QuoteAn AirAsia Indonesia airliner flying from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board has gone missing.
Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at around 06:20 local time (23:20 GMT) over the Java Sea.
The plane, an Airbus A320-200, disappeared midway into the flight of more than two hours from the city of Surabaya. No distress call was made.
Bad weather was reported in the area, and an air search operation has now been suspended for the night
This area is like the new Bermuda Triangle
Con
While this one does seem to be possibly weather-related, still its always bad news when a plane full of people goes missing. :(
Any updates on this? Saw it late last night on the news.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30619085
QuoteThe AirAsia Indonesia plane in question was delivered in 2008, has flown 13,600 times, covering 23,000 hours, and underwent its last maintenance on 16 November.
Correct me if i'm wrong but that's an average of 161 flights a month, or more than 5 a day
every day. While not impossible, with cleaning, fueling, loading/unloading, and all the rest that goes into a single flight that seems a bit excessive for a plane the size of an A320.
Any feedback on this from Yskonyn or other commercial pilots?
heavy puddle jumping all day between islands. say each flight is under 500 miles but over lots of water.
consider how much use Smucks Vulva gets and it only recently broke down.
Quote from: GDS_Starfury on December 28, 2014, 04:24:56 PM
heavy puddle jumping all day between islands. say each flight is under 500 miles but over lots of water.
consider how much use Smucks Vulva gets and it only recently broke down.
Assuming that the flight it was on is it's regular route then it was spending at least 10-12 hours flying each day. Add an hour at each airport to unload, load, fuel, etc, and you would have to do that every day 7 days a week 365 days a year to make thoset 13,600 flights. And that's assuming that the plane started flying it's route on the first day of the year it was delivered. If the airline started flying it in December of 2008 then it really gets hairy. How many hours is it allowed to operate before undergoing an engine overhaul and how long is it out of service for that overhaul?
It hardly seems like there is any actual time for maintenance.
This is not a lucky year for aviation. I have a lot of colleagues passing through the area this month and the coming months. The guy next to me was supposed to fly a few days after Christmas to Jakarta via Toronto & Hong Kong. Not sure which carrier he chose for his connect flight to Jakarta. Waiting to hear back that he's on a beach sipping beers hopefully soon.
Latest bit of news I heard: pilot asked to climb to 38,000 ft to avoid the thunderstorm. ATC declined because the altitude was taken by another flight.
It's hard to accept that in this day we can still have airliners completely disappear without a trace or indication of a problem. It's time for airlines to be required to live-stream data from aircraft. It's long overdue actually.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/airasia-flight-qz8501-why-airlines-don-t-live-stream-black-box-data-1.2586966
http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/flight-mh370/57688/flight-370-its-time-airlines-live-streamed-their-flight-data
This is scary stuff. I had a biz trip from the US to India in October and don't think I was not just a little apprehensive. Plus I was flying Air France for a good chunk of the trip.
Then there were the domestic flights in India I had to take. I think they hire ex-naval aviators given the some of the landings we made. I should move to India and sell aircraft tires.........
Man, I am glad I got home in one piece. I have a bad feeling about this one but I agree with mirth that is way past time to use modern technology to get real time information.
from everything I've seen/heard, this is a pretty simple "went down in bad weather over mostly-shallow water" that should get answers in pretty quick time
anyone heard anything significantly different?
Nope that's about it.
Real time ACARS and black box streaming should be made mandatory.
Well if you go to nutbag sights like Alex Jones's, yet again there's some sort of government conspiracy happening.
Probable plane parts, rafts and life jackets found. Could the passengers have deboarded the plane? http://www.channelnewsasia.com/mobile/asiapacific/items-resembling-slide/1557832.html
Update: body found.
Quote from: jomni on December 29, 2014, 04:55:35 AM
Latest bit of news I heard: pilot asked to climb to 38,000 ft to avoid the thunderstorm. ATC declined because the altitude was taken by another flight.
If your life depends on it you climb, no matter what ATC says.
Its then their job to provide seperation.
If you see on TCAS that a climb would cause serious danger, but you still have to avoid bad weather, a 180 on your level is always an option. You can then either climb or descent to get to a proper level for the other way.
Sometimes people think that ATC is the boss in the air (even controllers themselves at times :D), but reality is that they are a service to aircraft and their crew. Not the other way around. ;)
(Not implying anything here. Just illustrative remark being made)
The bad weather is the most likely cause of this crash. And if I have to make a guess, its probably got to do with a (few) bad decisions being made by the crew and / or lack of proper training to handle adverse weather conditions and / or aircraft upset recovery.
Its been a known issue and a hot topic in the aviation industry. Especially after the Air France incident some time back.
It has resulted in an extra syllabus in upset recovery training and adverse weather familiarization standards being updated in our Company at least. It would be relevant to find out how the state of this is within AirAsia.
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More weird news. 1) Indonesian authorities suspend AirAsia license for that route. They claim the said flight was unauthorized to fly that route at that time and day. How did it get out of the airport in the first place? 2) The flight preceeded without updated weather information. They claim the weather agency wasn't available to give an update early in the morning. Huh?
I havent seen the report myself, but I heard today that another AirAsia flight had an uncontained engine seizure during taxi today or yesterday? Can anyone confirm this?
Three incidents (rejected takeoff with alleged overrun, the crash and this engine seizure) in a short time at the same airline... Talk about bad karma. :S
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Yes I read that.
I used to fly with them quite often when I lived in that part of the world. The planes were definitely older. I think the thing that stuck with me most was that the seats in some of them looked like they were pulled out of 1970s era Chevy Impalas. They didn't have individual seats but used red upholstered bench seats instead and you'd have to dig between the backrest and the seat to find your seat-belt.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on January 04, 2015, 06:36:44 PM
I used to fly with them quite often when I lived in that part of the world. The planes were definitely older. I think the thing that stuck with me most was that the seats in some of them looked like they were pulled out of 1970s era Chevy Impalas. They didn't have individual seats but used red upholstered bench seats instead and you'd have to dig between the backrest and the seat to find your seat-belt.
They were ahead of their time. Retro is so hot right now.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on January 04, 2015, 06:36:44 PM
I used to fly with them quite often when I lived in that part of the world. The planes were definitely older. I think the thing that stuck with me most was that the seats in some of them looked like they were pulled out of 1970s era Chevy Impalas. They didn't have individual seats but used red upholstered bench seats instead and you'd have to dig between the backrest and the seat to find your seat-belt.
when was that ?
I have flown with them alot the last few years and never seen anything like this.
It was on the Bangkok-Phnom Penh run between '98 and 2002. Got the bench seat plane 2-3 times on that run. I never saw it on any of the other legs.
Last flight I had with them was from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok back in 2011. It looked pretty recent, I guess they had some time to buy some newer aircraft.
Well the Airbus A320 series has been in service since '88 or '89 and are still being manufactured today. So eventhough it is regarded as a modern airliner, it might be old in fact. I have no idea what the state of the A32x fleet of AirAsia is, nor how old or young their aircraft are.
Regardless, I think this might be pretty irrelevent in the case of the crash (much more relevant perhaps for the issue with the engine seizure incident). As I've said before, the bigger chances are that this crash has been caused by bad weather with or without an aircraft upset situation (meaning upside down or otherwise is an abnormal excessive aircraft flight attitude) and with or without pilots not able to get it out of said upset due to bad procedures, bad training or both.
Also, the question arises why they got caught in severe weather if this was, in fact, the cause of the crash.
Currently they are thinking clouds of ice particles were a suspect.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ice-to-blame-for-downing-of-airasia-jetliner-report-suggests/article22288450/ (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ice-to-blame-for-downing-of-airasia-jetliner-report-suggests/article22288450/)
I remember a few episodes of Mayday that detailed hail/ice & engine incidents, those were pretty interesting. TACA Flight 110 double engine flame-out, where the ice caused the engines to flame-out as a result of low engine speed during a descent).
Indonesian authorities suspend ATC officers
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2897458/Indonesian-government-suspends-control-tower-staff-allowed-AirAsia-flight-8501-without-permits-punish-airport-s-operators.html
The permit issue is not the cause of the crash but it highlights the fact that controlling the Indonesian Airspace is challenging with outdated equipment and practices.
http://m.todayonline.com/world/crowded-skies-southeast-asia-put-pressure-pilots-air-traffic-control
Interesting links, Jomni. Thanks for sharing.
Has anything more been said about the aircraft apparently averaging 5 flights a day? Even on puddle hops I would think that's daring the craft to spontaneously fragment midair... ???
Tail section found! http://www.channelnewsasia.com/mobile/asiapacific/live-blog-airasia-flight/1573208.html?cid=TWTCNA
fuselage found
http://news.yahoo.com/indonesia-investigators-hope-clues-airasia-crash-days-053008908--finance.html