tomgoodman

That's my understanding as well. The Wright-Patterson weather guys had a radar picture of the huge Xenia, OH tornado, and they said that their "height-finder" radar lost the top of the cell at 60,000 feet. That probably matches any storm in the world.

TurnAndBurn

From avherald.com

New information provided by sources within Air France suggests, that the ACARS messages of system failures started to arrive at 02:10Z indicating, that the autopilot had disengaged and the fly by wire system had changed to alternate law. Between 02:11Z and 02:13Z a flurry of messages regarding ADIRU and ISIS faults arrived, at 02:13Z PRIM 1 and SEC 1 faults were indicated, at 02:14Z the last message received was an advisory regarding cabin vertical speed. That sequence of messages could not be independently verified.


The sequence of messages reportedly received via ACARS raises memories of the Accident: Qantas A333 near Learmonth on Oct 7th 2008, sudden inflight upset injures 74 people on board and Incident: Qantas A333 near Perth on Dec 27th 2008, navigation system problem, and turns attention towards the emergency airworthiness directive released by both FAA and EASA, see also EASA issues updated emergency directive regarding Airbus A330 and A340 ADIRU issues."

johnso29

I just got chills reading that. It's unimaginable to me what the last 5 mins must have been like. God Bless.

RAHPilot5

I know same here! Your heart goes out to the crew and passengers. Sorry to hear this

OldAg84

Condolences to the crew and passengers.

What does alternate and direct law mean regarding the controls?

__________________
[b][i]Every time I go to the airport- I feel like a tourist in France[i][b]

TurnAndBurn

olympic

Nosmo King

If it was anything like the Qantas incident(s), the ECAM messages may have been too numerous to deal with in the available time.

The first question that needs to be asked is which brand of ADIRU is installed on AF's 330s. If it is the LTN101 from Grumman-Northrop (formerly Litton) then it raises a huge RED FLAG as that is the same one requiring action under the EASA and FAA emerggency ADs.

Regarding ISIS failure... ISIS is the acronym for Integrated Standby Instrument System. In other words the standby ADI and altimeter and airspeed indicators.

I actually made a phone call to find out which brand ADIRUs we have in our A330s. We have Honeywells.

elfarto

This is my First Post on this forum..so you will excuse my techical incompetence , as i'm more of an afficionado..


I've been some reseach and found some striking similarities between the sequence of events reported by ACARS and the following Emergency Airworthness Directive from 01/15/09:

15 January 2009 - The EASA issues Emergency Airworthiness Directive No 2009-0012-E to address the above A330 and A340 Northrop-Grumman ADIRU problem of incorrectly responding to a defective inertial reference.



EASA Airworthiness Directives Publishing Tool

IF you look at the pdf inside that URL you will see that:

"An A330 aircraft experienced a sudden nose down order while in cruise. This
order was preceded by an automatic autopilot disconnection and triggering of the
“NAV IR1 FAULT” Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) Caution. "

There is also a procedure to recover from such cases of failure

- NAV - IR 1 2 (2 3) (1 3) FAULT
Note: Flight controls are in alternate law. Refer to F/CTL %u2013 ALTN LAW
(chapter 4 of the AFM)
Turn off the affected IRs.
Turn off the corresponding ADRs.
Set the affected IR mode rotary selectors to OFF.
Use AIR DATA switching as appropriate.
Use ATT HDG switching as appropriate.
Do not use speed brakes
-If CG above 32%:
Manually perform a forward fuel transfer from the trim tank.
Note: If trim tank pump is not available, do not perform manual forward fuel
transfer while speed is at or below 270 kt or while in climb.


Which seems to be a very similar scenario to the one at the moment of the accident.

Big Question:
Had the pilots been trained in that procedure.

BTW: I came across that EAD looking on wikipedia's ADIRU page:
Air Data Inertial Reference Unit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

jet320

[quote=olympic;621428]The airplane CAN be stalled in Alternate Law.



It depends on the level of failure. Alternate law with or without reduced protections.

Alternate Law with reduced protections:

High speed stability, low speed stability

LSS: come around 5 to 10 Kts above the stalling speed, depending on the Flaps/Slats configuration, and GW of the airplane. (Not a factor in this case)

HSS: Nose up when it reaches VMO/MMO + 4 Kts or 0.05 Mach

Without it, only Load factor limitations

SO YES IT CAN BE STALL ON ALTERNATE LAW