Egyptair 804 Down
 

Egyptair plane heading from Paris to Cairo goes missing | Daily Mail Online Egyptair plane heading from Paris to Cairo goes missing | Daily Mail Online

The working assumption by the US is a bomb.

If true, this will have a major impact on air travel, since the flight originated in Paris....a place already on heightened tensions for such heinous activity.

In recent attacks, bombs were smuggled through airports of somewhat less than sterling scrutiny.

My fear is that if you thought TSA lines were bad before, it is about to go beyond comparison.

And, I'm thinking international transfer of baggage and passengers might be going through a new filter; ie, a recognition that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link...and some of the big links may be flawed. It would not surprise me if all inbound cargo to the US went through initial re-screening again....or does it already?

Might not be a bomb. EASA has just (10 May 2016) come out with a proposed AD to prevent a rudder malfunction that might cause the vertical stabilizer to separate. I like Airbus, I really do, but they have grossly overcomplicated the flight control systems on a class of aircraft that is hardly bigger than the DC-9. Also, did the Egyptians ever release any flight data recorder information on the Russian aircraft that crashed in the Sinai?

Is there a way to see this AD that came out?

This one?

http://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/EASA_P...f/PAD_16-066_1

This should do it (EASA Airworthiness Directives Publishing Tool). If not just google 'EASA proposed airworthiness directive 16-066'.

Great, thanks! Very interesting.

The media coverage makes me want to puke. There is so much wrong with this country and they are part of it. They are *****s and we are the stupid johns

That AD seemed to indicate rudder doublets could cause the tail to break...not sure they were doing rudder doublets at high cruise.

Now is the perfect time to brush up the aviation expert resume. Get on TV and make it big!

From the Aviation Herald:

On May 20th 2016 The Aviation Herald received information from three independent channels, that ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) messages with following content were received from the aircraft:

00:26Z 3044 ANTI ICE R WINDOW
00:26Z 561200 R SLIDING WINDOW SENSOR
00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE
00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE
00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR
00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT
00:29Z 2700 F/CTL SEC 3 FAULT
no further ACARS messages were received

Looks like things were going downhill quickly.

Uncontrolled cockpit fire, then?

Could have been an electrical fire somewhere in the airplane. In a fly-by-wire jet, that's a bad thing.

Still, 3 minutes is a long time for an incendiary device. I'm beginning to think everyone jumped the gun on declaring it a terrorist act. Not improbable, but starting to lean the other way.

....or....

Don't jump the gun on the ACARS messages, either.

What exactly are the faults and messages you would get if a small bomb put a hole in the airplane, and things went downhill?

Wires cut to sensors; fogging due to decompression....

Point is, no one knows.

The US government leans towards terrorism, according to one report.

It could be either...or neither.

Usually some psychopathic terrorist group almost immediately (and generally accurately) claims responsibility for their handiwork. Not one group has boasted about this one.

If I had to put money down, I'd wager on a MX failure.

Within hours Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Miles O'Brien and Richard Quest all said terrorism.

Must be terrorism.

It's not really that long of a time period. It will take a while. I would have thought about 5 minutes, but I guess they are saying 3.

Any explosive device will yield some varying results depending on the net explosive weight of the device, amount of flammable materials as opposed to blast, and the amount and type of smoke produced. Also, the various normal routes of airflow and abnormal routes due to aircraft damage and system degradation will make certain compartments more smokey than others.

The device, If it was one could have been small enough to produce critical system damage and an ever widening hole in the fuselage. While not big enough to blow it out of the sky, it may have been big enough to cripple it and the sustained aerodynamic loads and sheer speed of the plane in flight could have ripped it apart over a period of a few minutes.

the smoke produced would have likely been both localized initially and spread via ventilation, but dissipated quickly after depressurization.

I still lean towards a device. Small, yet powerful. Something plastique perhaps. These blasts essentially yield two blasts in one. One outward blast of explosive gasses and one inward.

My biggest fear is that the bad guys will start smuggling this stuff in small amounts within their body cavity, IE, their butt-hole and remove it in the lav and assemble it in there during the flight. it's malleable, flexible, and stable. Probably all you need is enough to fit inside a good sized cigar to do the job.

We are all guessing, of course, but what do you make of the ACARS messages about the copilot`s window?

ICould be a failed window from blast pressure. Could be a bogus reading if a wire bundle was on fire or shorted.

Could be someone's hoverboard (I think only US carriers ban them), that caught on fire in the forward cargo area, that eventually caused a wire failure, giving a false reading.

Or, they hit something. I passed within an estimated 3-400 feet of a weather balloon at FL390. If the transmitter hit a window, who knows what might happen?

Or none of these.

I lean towards Baseball's analysis..

They wouldn't just flap their jaws about terrorism if they didn't have some insight into the issue...

Well, since its a fixed window it sounds symptomatic of a cascading electrical failure.

most of the electrical emergencies I have had I also had time to let ATC know. The buses that power the radios are on opposite sides. At least one radio should work.

Cascading indicates complexity and that indicates a higher degree of time.

Yes it's all just hypothesis, but until the black boxes are discovered that's really all we can do. It doesn't hurt anything in a sterile environment really. It's the internet equivalent of kicking tin.

Although that same site is now suggesting UFO's may have been involved: EgyptAir 804: Pilots 'saw UFO with green flashing lights' an HOUR before mystery jet crash - Mirror Online :rolleyes:

Over the ocean at night and a massive electrical failure rendering the flight instruments inop. No attitude info, no airspeed/AOA, no thrust info and maybe even no thrust control. It wouldn't take long to lose control of the airplane in that situation and once control was lost (stall/spiral dive) a back ocean and no flight information makes recovery questionable. A break up is likely.

Just more speculation though.

Just shine that flashlight on the 'peanut gyro' and steer the plane towards the nearest glow of a city. With no flight instruments +/- 50 kts is close enough.

Just offering up a procedure for loss of all electrics in the above post.

Hopefully the data recorder with be retrieved before long.

The Med bottom in that area is mountainous and volcanic (who knew) with depths in the 10,000' range.
It's not going to be easy retrieving that box.

Maybe, but how has the international (non US) airline pilot community handled abnormal (and even normal a'la the SFO 777 ricochet) situations over the last few years ?

A LOT of pilot error out there. Of course, if the cockpit was filled with smoke and even possibly the O2 was compromised, it could have been just a bleak situation like Swissair or Valuejet.

I'm thinking this.

Regardless of differences in training, culture, politics, etc., spare a moment's thought for the presumably competent and professional crew who were just overwhelmed by fate.

I'm sure their last moments were spent exactly as ours would be: doing everything they could to live.

Sure, it could very well be a catastrophic situation, but my assertions about the International non U.S. carriers issues are valid. European carriers are well established, but many other global markets are in a state of rapid expansion and that means less experienced crews. The Egypt crew included a 6500 captain and a 2100 hour F/O and that's more akin to a regional crew here in the U.S. Add to that some of the cultural issues and already questionable operating practices like the Rostov crew's schedule and its managements scheduling philosophies or recent Indonesia operating practices as examples and the accident rate among these segments of global commercial aviation is presently unacceptable IMO, not unlike the accident rate here in the U.S. in past decades. This crew too was also operating deep in the circadian low at the time on an all-nighter.

Way, way too much wire control for me.

How can you certify an airplane if a fire in the electronics bay makes it uncontrollable?

:confused: So, an airplane is supposed to be certified to fly around with a fire in the electronics bay? If a fire is uncontrollable anywhere on the airplane, all the certification regulations in the world aren't going to keep it flying. ValuJet 592, Swissair 111, UPS 6, Asiana 991 come to mind.

Obviously if you have a mechanical flight control system you could shut off all electrical, depressurize, and head lower. Depressurizing at altitude with the electronics shut down might be enough to extinguish the fire. Hard to shut down the electronics, thought, if they ARE the flight control system.

A designer/engineer cannot reasonably account for every possibility. There is always an Achilles heal in any design, many times multiple weak links. Additionally it is not always as simple as shutting down some systems and doing the high dive. Also, plenty of catastrophic events that have brought down plenty of aircraft with mechanical flight controls. In the big picture, airframe manufacturers, insurance underwriters, Etc. all know there will be X amount of incidents and hull losses before an aircraft is even built. However unfortunate, for the most part, it is all expected and designed into the "system". At some point everything comes down to money...

and physics / current physical imitations. I'm always surprised that people think there will be any materials that can survive most combustion temperatures and energies. Even the steel that forms buildings can at best give you survival times until collapse, e.g. WTC in 2001.

I fear that another (obvious) attack vector was exploited, but we will find out quite soon. But, keep scanning our shoes, TSA. I hope there is no domestic over-reaction if it was intentional.

Terrorism seems less likely now with no plausible bad actors taking credit. Also the "main stream" terror groups have shifted away from targeting, or appearing to target, fellow muslims. There are certainly people who have axes to grind with Egypt (including AQ #1), but targeting random citizens of a muslim nation seems unlikely. If they got through security at CDG, they might have been able to take a different carrier, although they may have been trying to avoid certain no-fly lists or watch lists.

Although this could have been a full-mission-profile proof of concept, and they're waiting to take credit until they go "mass production".