Air France flight disappears

By grounding, you're creating a circuit. Birds perch on electrical wires without frying because they aren't grounded. That's what I mean.

 

Unless the electrical current came inside the hull of the lane via a sheer in it's mainframe? Then it would be moving from rubber to carpet to plastic to people and creating all sorts of havoc.

I think the above link said the plane itself becomes a mini power plant in the air, but it does not cause a problem.

 

I'm as dumb as a rock, when it comes to electricity and currents and circuits, and such. So I can't really comment on the ins-and-outs of it, but here's what Sikorski (makers of the aircraft I fly) says about it.

8.43.1 Thunderstorm Operation.

CAUTION
Avoid flight in or near thunderstorms, especially in areas of observed or anticipated lightning discharges.

a. Tests have shown that lightning strikes may result in loss of automatic flight controls (including stabilator), engine controls or electrical power. The high currents passing through the aircraft structure are expected to produce secondary effects whereby damaging voltage surges are coupled into aircraft wiring.

b. If a lightning strike occurs whereby all aircraft electrical power and electronics subsystems and controls are lost (including the engine 700 ECU/ 701C DEC and the engine-driven alternator), both engines go immediately to maximum power with no temperature limiter or overspeed protection. In addition, the 701C engine overspeed may result in single or dual-engine shutdown without automatic relight.


9.21 LIGHTNING STRIKE.

WARNING
Lightning strikes may result in loss of automatic flight control functions, engine controls, and/or electric power.

Lightning strike may cause one or both engines to immediately produce maximum power with no TGT limiting or overspeed protection. Systems instruments may also be inoperative. If this occurs, the flight crew would have to adjust to the malfunctioning engine(s) power-control lever(s) as required to control RPM by sound and feel. If practical, the pilot should reduce speed to 80KIAS. This will reduce criticality of having exactly correct rotor speed at 100%.

1. ENG POWER CONT levers-Adjust as required to control RPM.
2. LAND AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

 

228 people dead. I don't see the humor.

RIP. Tragic.

 

3Bags --
Aren't helicopters unique in that the motion of the rotors set off static charges when the climactic conditions are right?

 

Static forms around the helicopter when our rotors are turning. It is also generated around any airfoil moving through the air.

 

Two things strike me in CNN's latest update online:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/01/air.france.brazil/index.html

So, whatever happened, it seems lightning alone is dwindling in probability. The loss of pressure is a little unclear, to me. Loss of cabin pressure? Hydraulic? If it's hyrdaulic, sounds like catastrophic engine failure cases I've heard of in which engine parts blow into the fuselage, severing hydraulic lines.

Of course, it's all speculation at this point.

 

Absolutely it is. Was for a specific post and not the overall situation.
There's no worse feeling for me than flying over a long stretch of water. It's helpless, thinking that IF something happened and IF you landed safely, help is hours not minutes away.

 

Lightning-strikes are always the first thing people bring up in these situations, but has a modern passenger jet ever been brought down by lightning? Maybe somewhere, but I can't think of a US incident.

 

William Langewiesche had an article in a recent Vanity Fair about the US Air flight that landed in the Hudson. It's got a lot of stuff about the Airbus 320 and how it revolutionized passenger planes. The Air France plane is a 330, and this story doesn't talk about lightning strikes, but it's a great read:

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906

 

Well, I wondered and looked it up. My thought: How hard is it going to be to find key parts of the wreckage that will tell us what happened?

Turns out, the ocean depth around where they lost contact, the Brazil Basin, is pretty friggin deep... and there's a deeper trench to the NE of last contact. Scatter wreckage around in either area, and I wonder how much of the wreckage will actually be recovered.

 

Trust me, our military can find it if they really want to find it. Getting it? Not so easy.