Egyptair MS804 drops off radar

[cncpc]

The Wall Street Journal, quoting the lead investigator, is saying they have detected a signal from the wreckage. Here's the lead, you need to subscribe for the wreckage.

I think that the PPRuners are saying that the ship known to be doing a tight pattern there left Alexandria almost immediately after it went down and went directly to that spot and has stayed there.

I'm looking for input form those more knowledgeable than I on this, but with all of the military vessels in that water, and the contentious nature of it, is it fair to say that an aircraft so abnormally departing from its flight path would be seen as a threat, and followed as at least a primary target down to impact or minimum reception height?

[Nark]

Does the A-320 come with ADS-B as an option now? I remember some of the MH370 discussion centred around it being available on the 777 but not used or disabled?

Our brand new ones don't, however there are 300 different software versions *(slight exaggeration, slight) running systems in the aircraft.

It's interesting to read the speculation about an accident overseas. First train of thought is foreign pilots don't have the skills to fly. Yet we easily forget that domestic Airbus pilots couldn't fly a localizer approach.

[Siddley Hawker]

Posted on another board by an expat Brit living in PEI.

My 5c (Canada no longer has pennies)
Probable fire in the avionics bay under the right side of the cockpit.
Crew lost control, somewhere between 'idiot failure to manage drill cards' and 'perfectly understandable in a smoke-filled cockpit at night with most instruments gone and some flight controls'.
One awaits the boxes.

This happened to an Egyptair A320 on the ground in 2011. Hard not to draw parallels.

In a following post he had this to say:

From what Airbus techies have been saying elsewhere, the ACARS messages aren't necessarily in the order the warnings activated, and there can be delays up to nearly 2 minutes after warning activation. And airflow is a capricious thing. I understand fans draw the air from the cockpit(and avionics bay) into the forward toilet (well, you wouldn't want it the other way, now would you? )
If you set the criteria for bay extinguishing based on what's in a typical avionics bay, then you need extinguishers pretty much all over the aircraft - cost/weight/risk.
A huge issue is working out where the fire is from the warnings and associated failures. I looked at this in detail when setting up battle damage for war simulator missions on the Tornado. The training and procedures are all developed around systems, not locations. It's very difficult for Captain Average to work out that the 5 seemingly random warnings in different systems are in fact due to one cause in one location, and the emergency drills rarely take fault-finding in that direction. On the Tornado, of course, we were looking at cannon shells from flak or fighters impacting in particular locations, but point fires can have a similar effect. Huge problem. It is spectacularly easy to get "lost in the cards". I recall one accident investigation I was involved in where we worked out the nav would have had to have 7 sets of drills running concurrently. Five fingers,7 places in the cards. Problem. Doesn't get any better with onscreen drills.
I designed a rearrangement of the Tornado Central Warning Panel so that common multiple failures would put up warnings in particular patterns rather than speckled all over. The RAF put in forward but it disappeared into the bowels of Panavia and was never seen again.
Another massive issue is basic airmanship. Sometimes one might be better off simply turning every f#cking thing off, then just trying to reboot the minimum to complete the flight. But, I suspect this approach is never even suggested in modern civilian training (it wasn't by every other airline school I knew about when training in the '90s, but our school was all ex-mil or test pilot instructors, so we did). and the drills certainly aren't set up this way, and the aircraft aren't designed to help this. It was a nice night. Look out the window! I'll bet they could have made a safe landing at Cairo with nothing but an ASI or the power gauges. Instead they may have lost an entire aircraft from a sparking window heater.

[Antique Pilot]

Burned out pics of the right side cockpit area are of a B777 not A320.

AP

[Oscar]

As AP mentioned, those pics are NOT FROM MS804, but from:

Accident: Egyptair B772 at Cairo on Jul 29th 2011, cockpit fire


http://avherald.com/h?article=44078aa7/0000

[CAL]

thats scary looking

[Siddley Hawker]

Burned out pics of the right side cockpit area are of a B777 not A320.

As AP mentioned, those pics are NOT FROM MS804, but from:

Accident: Egyptair B772 at Cairo on Jul 29th 2011, cockpit fire


http://avherald.com/h?article=44078aa7/0000

When I pointed that out to him, my friend on the other board replied

Thanks.
I don't think that changes anything about the possible cause, or possible effect on a 'Bus, or does it..?

[cncpc]

Now reports that major pieces of wreckage have been located in the search zone. No more pings.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... ge-spotted

[cncpc]

CVR found. Damaged but likely readable.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... s804-found

[boeingboy]

On Jun 29th 2016 Egypt's CAA reported that the flight data recorder has been successfully downloaded, more than 1200 parameters are being decoded and validated. Data are present from departure at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris until the aircraft was at FL370 just after the ACARS messages were transmitted, the data are consistent with the ACARS messages of lavatory and avionics bay smoke. Recovered wreckage parts from the forward section of the aircraft show severe heat damage and evidence of thick black smoke (soot). The investigation is going to undertake comprehensive analysis to try to determine the source and cause of the fire.

[mbav8r]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt ... SKCN11M2B8
TNT traces on EgyptAir plane debris split investigators: Le Figaro

French investigators who found trace levels of the explosive material TNT on debris of an EgyptAir plane that crashed in May were prevented from further examining it, Le Figaro reported on Friday, a charge Egyptian officials denied.

The origin of the traces remains unclear and Egyptian judicial authorities did not allow French investigators to examine the debris in detail, Le Figaro said, citing a source close to the investigation.

[digits_]

Well, here you go: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... laims.html

Don't smoke in a cockpit. Who would have guessed?




Combination of oxygen mask on EMER setting + smoking in the cockpit (which was allowed by the company) = boom.