Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 Missing

Peace said:
I understand that but some people were found with life jackets on. This implies time make a mayday call.

In this kind of situation can the head steward make that call ?

Please excuse my ignorance because I don't fly.
Click to expand...

Neither do I. I'm just repeating what I read in the broadsheets.

Anyone can put on a lifejacket, no? Aren't they under the seat? I supposed if the plane was deceasing rapidly some passengers grab their jackets with or without instructions from the attendants.
 
So far, 30 bodies have been recovered, an evacuation slide, a life jacket, an emergency side door and some luggage have been recovered. The water is less than 100 feet deep in the area where the objects were found and the other American ship is deploying to the scene.
 
Last edited:
Peace said:
I understand that but some people were found with life jackets on. This implies time make a mayday call.

In this kind of situation can the head steward make that call ?

Please excuse my ignorance because I don't fly.
Click to expand...

For certain emergency situations, like evacuations, flight attendants are trained to take the bull by the horns and take steps on their own. However, if passengers are wearing life jackets, it's likely a crew member made an announcement about emergency landing, or ditch, and they would have prepared the cabin. This is speculation, but if I was fighting severe turbulence, the seatbelt sign might be all that happens. If and when the situation is under control, a reassuring PA. If both engines flamed out, this would warrant an emergency landing PA, with advisories to the Flight attendants via PA such as time left and imminent landing, the FAs would manage the cabin. If no announcement comes after landing, the FAs are authorized to initiate evacuation if the situation warrants it, such as incapacitated pilots. All of what I described is based on a somewhat controlled landing and an airplane primarily in one piece.

I thought I heard a report about finding dead passengers in the water without blunt force injuries? That might indicate a semi-controlled landing, if that report was accurate.
 
If this is true, it will be a big help in the search.

"We offer our sincerest condolences to the family and friends of those affected by this terrible tragedy," USS Fort Worth Cmdr. Kendall Bridgewater said in a statement. Search crews have spotted four large objects in the Java Sea, the biggest of which is 59 feet long and 18 feet wide, and which is believed to be part of the body of the Airbus A320.
 
Gizmodo :rolleyes:

Meteorologists: Engine Ice Likely the "Triggering Factor" of AirAsia Crash

According to a report from Indonesian meteorological experts, the most likely cause of the tragic crash of AirAsia flight QZ8501 was not turbulence (as was previously believed), but actual chunks of ice inside the Airbus A320's engine.

According to the report—the Indonesian government's first since the crash, while we can't point to this as the definitive cause, it is the most likely. As The Wall Street Journal explains:

Many air-safety experts, including former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Francis, have pointed to possible unreliable airspeed sensors stemming from ice accumulation—or other flight-control difficulties—as problems most likely to have touched off a chain of events ending with the plane disappearing from radar screens at an altitude of more than 30,000 feet.
When thunderstorms occur at these high altitude, freezing bits of rain can get sucked into an engine, melt, and then freeze once again on the actual surface of the engine. Once the pieces accumulate enough ice, they can either "break into chunks that damage turbine blades, or melt and douse the ignition system."

While ice-related engine damage alone supposedly haven't fully brought down large jetliners in the past three decades, The Wall Street Journal does cite that fact that, in the past 10 years, there have been over a dozen incidents of engine shutdowns due to ice in large jets. Though these previous incidents didn't prove fatal.

So why now? Airbus A320's have had issues with malfunctioning airspeed indicators in the past, particularly in heavy rain. Still, that doesn't necessarily mean anything conclusive here—we have yet to find out for sure whether Flight QZ8501 had the latest version of the sensor system.

What's more, this is just the most likely conclusion based on weather reports. Until we find the plane's black box—which rescuers are still searching for—nothing can truly be definitive. [The Wall Street Journal]
Click to expand...
 
Eraserhead said:
It's not as if AirAsia is a dodgy airline generally though.
Click to expand...

No, agreed, I think I flew about 30 times with them, they aren't that bad, but it's a low cost airline, and it shows off.
For instance, i had a flight delayed by almost 9 hours, all you get was a cheap meal, no money back for travellers without optional insurance.
My girlfriend was waiting on the airport, had to go home again, who pays for that?
No food included, while other carriers in Indonesia all have free food.
It's by no means the cheapest airline company in Indonesia.
Nowadays most Indonesian carriers have improved a lot, they had to because plenty of accidents happened just 5 years ago.
 
They may have located the tail section that has the black boxes, which will be a big help in determining what happened.
 
The 40th body has been recovered and the authorities say the located tail section is upside down, and buried in the mud.
 
Pings have been detected in the search for the black box. Reuters - Thu Jan 8, 2015 10:39pm

Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee, said it appeared that the black box was no longer in the tail.

"We received an update from the field that the pinger locator already detected pings," he told Reuters.

"We have our fingers crossed it is the black box. Divers need to confirm. Unfortunately it seems it's off from the tail. But the divers need to confirm the position."
Click to expand...
 
Official says AirAsia Flight 8501 black boxes found

Search teams believe they have located the black boxes from AirAsia Flight 8501, and divers will attempt to bring the boxes to the surface Monday, an Indonesian official said Sunday.

Indonesia's search team coordinator at the Directorate of Sea Transport said Indonesia navy divers from the ship KN Jadayat discovered pings from the black boxes about 100 feet below the surface of the choppy, cloudy waters of the Java Sea.

"The navy divers in Jadayat state boat have succeeded in finding a very important instrument, the black box of AirAsia QZ8501," Tonny Budiono said in a statement.

He said the boxes appear to be lodged beneath wreckage from the AirAsia jet and are about 60 feet apart. Crews will attempt to retrieve them Monday by moving pieces of the jet below the surface or by raising the wreckage to the surface using balloons, Budiono said. The balloon system was used to raise the tail of the jet Saturday.
Click to expand...
 
ucfgrad93 said:
True, it will take time, but we have a much better chance of figuring out what went wrong now that the authorities have the black boxes.
Click to expand...

Luckily Indonesia is in a much better shape than before.
They will hand over the black boxes, this might have not been the way it was done just 15 years ago.
There is still a lot of corruption, politics do get more democratic, it takes time for a country to recover from being occupied by the dutch for so long, and after that a few decades of misery due to bad politics/presidents.
Strangely though the dutch weren't as bad as many think, they also brought lots of good things.
 
This just underlines how we will probably never know what happened with the Malaysian Air plane.

Good that they found the wreckage as well as the black boxes.
 
decafjava said:
This just underlines how we will probably never know what happened with the Malaysian Air plane.

Good that they found the wreckage as well as the black boxes.
Click to expand...

Well, you know it's not the easiest part of the world to search for a plane.
First of all there are immense depts, before the plane crashed they didn't even know how deep it was, nor did they know it's a mountainous area.
At that depth it's hard to search, the weather is most of the time rough.
One day they will find evidence that Malaysian Airlines planes crashed there, at least, I hope they are searching in the right area.


This search was much easier, still had some bad weather but the waters are so shallow they could even see what was on the bottom, although vaguely.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back