The Breitling Watch Source Forums

there are so many pilots on here...would anyone have any ideas as to what may have happened or can elaborate on what exactly has happened?

_________________
GOTTA LOVE BREITLING!!!

Lots of possibilities. I'm wondering if it might be something like "Castaway".

Structural overstress and failure in extreme turbulence?

Lighting strike igniting fuel tank?

_________________
Chris
Club Member #0070
2009 TT Chrono Evo w/Rose gold, blue face
2009 Airwolf w/black face, Co-Pilot module
2009 TT Lady Cockpit w/Mother-of-Pearl, Diamond face for the wife

Looks like an absolute nightmare of a situation.

My sympathies go to anyone affected by this tragic incident.

_________________
Driver8

Site Moderator

May they all rest in peace, bless them all.

_________________
YOU CAN'T HAVE A GREAT TIME WITHOUT A GREAT WATCH.........MAKE IT A BREITLING

I would not be the least surprised if it was blown out of the sky by a terrorist attack but nobody seems to agree on that...

_________________
BREITLING EMERGENCY + UTC CORAL DIALS
BREITLING AEROSPACE TITANIUM PROF (SOLD)
ROLEX SUBMARINER BI-COLOR BLUE DIAL
LOUIS VUITTON TAMBOUR DIVERS
PANERAI LUMINOR

Someone would take responsibility for that by now.

I am not in the know but if a plane does go to the bottom of the ocean we will probably never find out what really happened it will just remain a mystery

_________________

I will attempt to provide some basic info on lightning strikes.

Most lightning strikes are cloud to cloud with the aircraft becoming part of the lightning channel, the lightning mostly strikes the nose or the wing tips and sweeps over the aircraft leaving somewhere at the tail. An aircraft of metal construction leads the charge at the outside of the skin using a Faraday's cage and the damages are mostly slight. However in those cases where the strike is cloud to ground, the stike may cause the skin to buckle or burn through. If this happens to a fuel tank, the fuel might, in extreme cases, explode. However this would depend on the type of fuel used, whether it be JET A which is found not to be explosive at normal temperatures and pressures or JET B which is. In the case of an explosion parts of the wing will probably seperate from the aircraft. Among the wreckage of flight 447, some oil stains were found, this would suggest there was no fire, as the oil would have burned.

A more frequent problem is flame out. If the lightning channel ends up close to the air intakes of a jet engine, the heated air by the lightning will be sucked into the engine resulting in a flameout. Normally the engines are not damaged and can be relighted.

Computers and digitised instruments will be subjected to powerful pulses, possibly leading to malfunctions. Warning systems may suddenly indicate lots of failures, some relevent, others false. The last known transmissions from the aircraft were from its automatic ACARS, or Acircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting system, which transmitted that the aircraft's autopilot had been disengaged and it's fly by wire systems had entered 'alternate law' mode. In a nutshell, Airbus program into the aircraft systems exactly what the aircraft can and cannot do, so if the a pilot were to attempt something which the aircraft is incapable of, the aircraft would detect this and prevent the pilot from performing it. This is known as flight envelope protection, and there are several cases where it has saved lives, and there are also several cases where it either did cause death, or would have if it had been fitted. If the aircraft had indeed entered alternate law mode this means the aircraft was overriding the pilot. Also transmitted were the failure of several electrical systems indicating failures of the Air Data Inertial Reference Unit, the Integrated Standby Instrument System (a backup system providing basic flight instruments), and the master units of the primary and secondary flight control computers. The ADIRU in part provides the data for the pilots EFIS (Electronic Flight Information Screen) including the attitude, altitude and airspeed. It also provides information to the autopilot, which could explain why the autopilot was disengaged, either automatically if it had no reference systems, or manually by the pilot when he realised this. With the indicated failure of the basic flight instruments also, the pilot would have had no reference to any of the basic instruments needed to fly the aircraft. And with the indicated failure of the primary and secondary flight control computers, the controls in the cockpit would have been rendered useless, as they are fly by wire controls, and have no mechanical attachment to the control surfaces.

Of course all of these indicated failures could have happened, or they could have been false indications caused by lightning strikes. They have 30 days from the time of the accident to find the black box. The sea floor in the area of the Atlantic it is bleieved to have gone down in is around 16,000ft deep, and the french have sent submarines which can dive as deep as 20,000ft, we just have to hope they can find the wreckage. The black box is designed to float, but if it is still connected to the fuselage of the aircraft, it will of course sink.

I'll stop there for now. I tried to keep it factual rather than opinionated. Sorry if that dragged on, and if i made any mistakes feel free to correct me!

_________________
Men are from Mars, women are from Hell.

Great knowledge you have there, whizzler. Very interesting read.

_________________
Driver8

Site Moderator

thats a greatly informative post mate i didnt know 98% of that not being in the industry.

thanks for taking the time to write it.

thanks for the great info. My dad and I have been talking about this every night after dinner so I am going to read what you wrote that way we have some factual knowledge to go off of

_________________
SA-Baton White Dial/ProII
Tissot Le Locle

Thanks guys. I'm lucky to be in a line of work which is easy to be passionate about! and its by doing our bit like this from time to time which makes this such a great place!

_________________
Men are from Mars, women are from Hell.