AF447: A Bad Omen

When we first heard about the AF447 accident, reports said it was an Airbus, in an area of heavy turbulence. There was one thought that ran through my head: Did the tail snap off?

Remember American Airlines 587? This was the Airbus 300 that, shortly after “9/11” crashed on departure and not far from Kennedy Airport in New York City. The accident was attributed to “wake turbulence” from a heavy-747 that had departed ahead of the Airbus. But something very disturbing came out of that investigation.

The Airbus is a “fly-by-wire” airplane. In other words, there are no mechanical linkages between the pilot’s joystick controller and the actual ailerons, elevator or rudder. No pushrods, no cables, no nuthin. Just electrical wires that run through a computer.

This computer is programmed so that the pilots cannot break the airplane. It will not allow the pilots to make a control input so fast or severe that it would overstress the things. On the surface, you might say, “This is good!” Yeah, well…but there’s always an exception, right? And there is one here, too. It’s the rudder.

Investigators discovered that below certain speeds, the Airbus computer allows the pilot much more rudder authority than would be expected or assumed. In fact, without knowing it, an Airbus pilot could push on his rudder pedal with sufficient force to snap the rudder clean off. Which is exactly what happened with American 586.

Okay, to clarify, not the rudder but the fin. Most people would probably call the whole vertical tailpiece the “rudder.” But it’s not. The rudder is just the part that wiggles back and forth to actually yaw the nose of the plane (or keep the nose from yawing, as the case may be). It is attached to what we call the “vertical fin,” which is the big immovable part. As the rudder wags back and forth, it imparts it’s aerodynamic loads on the fin, which is attached to the fuselage.

On the Airbus, the vertical fin is composite, not metal like on your basic Boeing airplane. The whole fin slides into a slot and is bonded to the fuselage, much like a big model airplane. I kid you not. In the crash of AA587, the whole damn fin snapped clean off as the pilot tap-danced on the pedals in response to the rockin’ and rollin’ his plane was doing as it reacted to the wake turbulence of the 747 ahead.

As it fin tore away, the aircraft yawed violently from side to side, generating enough force to snap the engines off and send them flying in two different directions. (This is why reporters were confused at first. There were three “crash sites” in Rockaway Beach, Queens. Turned out that one was the airplane and two were just fires created by the engines slamming into buildings on the ground, away from the main wreckage.)

The vertical fin of AA587 as it was lifted out of Jamaica Bay.

Ever since this trait of the Airbus line came to light, I’ve never really liked riding in them (and I haven’t). I know it’s silly and irrational. I mean, how often do tails just snap off of airplanes in flight? I’m sure that Airbus has modified the algorithms in their computers so that it’s more difficult if not impossible for a pilot to stomp on the rudder pedal hard enough to damage the plane. Right?

But then I saw this picture.

What you're looking at there is the entire vertical fin *and* rudder from AF447. It does not look like it hit the water with the rest of the airplane. Rather, it looks like it snapped clean off and fell separately.

The question will be: Did it happen as a result of the crash? Or was it part of the events that caused the crash?

I had a bad feeling about this before, and it's not getting any better.

Airplane Shopping

“You’re an idiot,” Matt said. It was not the first time he’d said something like that to me, and probably won’t be the last. In fact, our conversations are often peppered with such pithy “observations” by him. The occasion of this one was me bitching, as usual.

I should start at the beginning.

The Boss wants to buy an airplane to supplement the helicopter. Our business has expanded to the point where he and his employees need to range out further (and faster) than the helicopter can take them.

Airplanes are different from helicopters. They go places. We don’t ever go anywhere in our helicopter; we pretty much stay within a 100-mile radius of home base. So the idea of getting an airplane is kind of neat. I'll get to fly it. I'm what they call "dual-rated" in that I fly both airplanes (land and sea!) and helicopters. Helicopters are fun, but airplanes are fun in a different way. Airplane pilots can change their climate. We helicopter pilots are always stuck in whichever one we took off. If you asked me which one I prefer more, I'd have a hard time answering.

“I’m going to Dallas this Thursday,” the Boss told me last week. “Set up some airplanes I can look at.” Luckily Dallas, Texas is, like, the airplane sales capital of the country. So, no prob.

I called around and found some of what we’re looking for. One dealer even offered to send a jet over to fetch us. This, we agreed to right away. Sure enough, at the appointed hour on Thursday morning a Cessna Citation landed, taxied-in, scooped up the boss, his girlfriend and me and, as they say, “whisked” us off to Texas, where we landed two hours later. There were already two pilots up front, so it was a treat to get to sit in the back for a change. Riding in the cabin of a business jet can make you never want to set foot in one of those crappy "regional jets" ever again.

In Dallas, we looked at airplane after airplane. Some at this airport, some at that airport. Lots of airplanes. Tons of airplanes. Problem was, I was recovering from a nagging flu that just didn’t want to go away. I don’t get sick much, but when I do I become a big, whiny baby. By, ohhhh, the eleventh of twelfth airplane, I was pretty much airplaned-out.

Not to mention this other screwup. The Boss was staying for the whole weekend, but I had just planned on staying overnight and leaving out of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport next morning to come home. However, things changed and there was yet another plane to see on Friday before my flight. Great. So now I needed a car. After the Boss got to where he was staying for the weekend, the aircraft salesman that had been chauffeuring us around got tasked to drop me off at a rental car place at D/FW, only “a little” out of his way. We pulled into what looked like the right place, he kicked me out and left. As it was pushing seven PM, I didn’t blame him for not hanging around.

I walked around and around, looking for the rental office. None was to be found in any of the three big buildings. It was merely a maintenance place where they wash and work on the cars. Nobody paid any attention to me, either. Finally I cornered some worker who (I swear) spoke only two words of English, maybe three. When he understood that I wanted to rent a car, he pointed in a far off direction. “Afuera,” he said. (Outside?) “I take you,” and he motioned for me to get into a nearby car. See, at D/FW there is a whole separate building where all the rental car counters are. You cannot just go to the remote facility like you can at most any other airport in the country. Damn you, Texas!

Anyway, by the time I got to my hotel room I was feeling poorly, dehydrated, hungry, frustrated, and aggravated. So I called Matt, naturally, and bitched, naturally, about my day.

“You’re an idiot,” he said. “You should be like a kid in a candy store. Instead, you’re complaining about having to look at airplanes. You love this stuff.”

And he’s right, of course. I do. I should be excited. Which just goes to show you how jaded a person can get. We probably will get a plane of some sort, probably soon. My life is fixing to change, hopefully for the better. Hey, who doesn't like a new challenge? I might even have to change the name of the blog from "Helicopter Pilot" to...ohhh..."Corporate Pilot" or something like that.

I really can be an idiot sometimes. And I can always count on Matt to point it out. I’m glad I have friends who are honest enough with me to tell me the truth. If I'd only listen more...

AF447: Grasping At Straws

And now, five days after Air France 447 disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean, "authorities" are saying that debris recovered from the water is not from that Airbus. None of it. None of it?? Makes me wonder, have they even found the crash site?

They're also crawfishing on the terrorism angle. The French Foreign Minister has now said, "Nothing leads us to believe there was an explosion, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one." Uh-huh. In other words, despite their initial denials, "terrorism" has not been ruled out. Well, fricken duh!

There is no doubt that there was a lot of severe weather around that night in the Intertropical Convergence Zone. I've now seen the weather reports and satellite imagery for the area (thanks, Mike B.!). Lots of big, tall thunderstorms. And it would be challenging for pilots to avoid all of the "weather" along the way. However, I did read one pilot comment that the night did not seem unusual "on paper" - in other words, no storm-of-the-century conditions, just your typical late-Spring night in the ITCZ. On paper.

There was one pilot who reported seeing an explosion and a white streak of light heading straight down to the water. If he is being truthful, and if that white streak was Air France 447, then it exploded and descended in clear air, not in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Now, here on Friday morning the "authorities" are saying is that the probe that senses the plane's airspeed may have been faulty, which caused the crew to fly too fast or too slow in the turbulence. And of course the media is running wide open with this, in their quest to give you The Cause of this crash before their competition. But there's a tiny problem with this Inoperative Airspeed Probe Theory. See, all airliners have at least two airspeed probes. Could both of them have failed?

If the event were not so horribly tragic, I would sit back and laugh as I watched everyone running around like headless chickens, trying to figure out what went wrong in an event for which we have no - or at least very scant - evidence.

Which brings up my biggest question. A huge airliner breaks apart and crashes down into the ocean from high altitude. So where is the wreckage? It did not slip gracefully into the water like Michael Phelps off the high-dive.

Believe me when I tell you this, people. The "authorities" know more than they're telling us.

The Disappearance of Air France 447

A big airliner on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappears over the Atlantic Ocean. The plane's avionics system sent a burst of transmissions back to the airline's headquarters indicating, we are told, electrical malfunctions and loss of cabin pressure. Only bits and pieces of the plane are found floating on the surface. Reports are that the "black boxes" may be lying so deep on the seafloor that they may never be found. Such is the case with Air France flight 447, a twin-engine Airbus 330.

So what happened?

Initial reports said something about turbulence and thunderstorms. This raises two immediate questions: 1) Could a bad thunderstorm bring down a jetliner? 2) Would airline pilots deliberately fly into such a destructive thunderstorm?

Taking the second question first, modern airliners like the Airbus 330 have excellent weather avoidance technology - much better than I have in my little helicopter. They have independant onboard weather-radar, and a satellite link to the airline headquarters that can provide additional weather information. Thus, airline pilots can detect thunderstorms well in advance and no, would not deliberately fly into one. But more than that, thunderstorms generate turbulence, and every airline wants their passengers to have a smooth, comfortable ride. Pilots go out of their way (literally) to avoid areas of turbulence if they can.

Can a bad thunderstorm bring down an airliner? Anything is possible. This is why we pilots avoid them. Modern airliners generally fly at altitudes higher than the most violent parts of a thunderstorm.

Needless to say, accidents like this call out the various idiots in the country who throw their two cents in. The former Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, "Scary" Mary Schiavo has already raised the possibility of a lightning strike. Speaking on a CBS morning show she said, "For this plane, the difference is whether the lightning hit a fuel tank or got inside and took out the electrical system. It's like an atom bomb."

Oh for crying out loud. An atom bomb? This just tells us what assholes people like her can be. I've said it before and I'll say it again: You media whores...you fatuous morons who think you know something about something and just HAVE to get your face on camera...SHUT THE HELL UP!

Could it have been a lightning strike? It's possible - but not very likely. Could it have been sabotage or a bomb? Sure. If so, we might not know until some person or group comes out and claims responsibility for the act.

Do I have any idea at all what might have happened? I do not.

As dependable as we like to think air travel is, it's still risky. Planes have been disappearing out over the ocean since planes started flying across the ocean. It doesn't happen often, but it still does. And you know what? Sometimes we have no idea why stuff happens.

Take that TWA 800 flight in 1996 - you remember, the one that blew up after departure from Kennedy Airport in NYC one evening, within sight of people on Long Island. (TWA 800 was also headed, coincidentally, to Paris.) The NTSB came out with a "probable cause," tracing the explosion/breakup of the plane to an event in the center fuel tank area of the big plane. But they never said exactly what caused it. To this day there is speculation about what caused that crash, but nobody knows for sure. Or if they do know, they're not telling.

I'm sure the various governments involved will spare no expense to find the "black boxes." Time is of the essence though. Their little "pingers" that allow them to be found underwater only last about 30 days. Still, I'm confident they will be found. Whether they will reveal the answer to this mystery remains to be seen. Meanwhile, all we can do is shrug our shoulders and chalk it up to the fact that nothing is perfect. Hey, shit happens.

Unless you're Mary Schiavo. Then you go on CBS and talk about lightning strikes and atom bombs.

Things That Make My Life Easier

Back when we were first talking about getting a helicopter, the Boss wanted a device called a Stormscope. This is a little gadget that detects and displays lightning strikes. Where there is lightning there is usually a thunderstorm, and conversely a thunderstorm will always have lightning. You don’t want to go there, especially in an aircraft. Sometimes there will be electrical activity in the area that shows up as lightning on the Stormscope even though no thunderstorm is present…yet. This electrical activity will almost always cause turbulence. So if you just avoid the areas of “lightning strikes” you should have a pretty decent ride. Clever device, this Stormscope.

The little clusters of green dots are lightning strikes.

However, technology has moved on a bit since the Stormscope was invented. Now, any aircraft can have tons of weather information downloaded right to the cockpit, to your portable GPS. These units are so inexpensive that there is NO EXCUSE for any pilot to go flying without one.

Instead of the Stormscope, we opted for the Garmin 496. This wonderful little gizmo sits right up on top of my instrument panel, where the Boss and I can see it clearly. Basically, a GPS utilizes signals from satellites and provides navigation information from here to there. It knows where you are, can tell you how fast you’re moving, how high you are, and how long it’ll take you to get where you’re going. It can display this information in a number of different ways.

The Garmin 496 is much like the Garmin Nuvi, Magellen, Tom Tom, or built-in GPS in your car, but the aviation model does "a bit" more. I can access the weather at any reporting station by either looking it up or scrolling the “mouse” pointer to it on the map. Early one morning I had taken off and headed northbound out of Home Base. The weather was generally good, but on the moving map an airport up ahead had a little red flag sticking off to one side. Curious, I scrolled over to it. A window automatically opened up that showed the weather: Visibility ½ mile, ceiling 100 feet. Fog! Glad I hadn’t planned using that airport as a fuel stop.

The Garmin 496 also comes equipped with a super-accurate terrain and obstruction database. It knows where all the hills and towers are – handy for low-flying helicopters! When it alerts me that there’s a tower or some other obstacle nearby, there is one and I better be looking out the windows. (In the daytime some of this is superfluous, but at night or in bad weather this information is invaluable.)

We have a subscription to XM Radio, and all of their channels are available to us through the Garmin. In addition, XM provides weather information in nearly real-time. It can display an overall satellite cloud image, a radar image, lightning strikes, or any combination thereof. The weather-radar display takes some getting used to. In the beginning I was not confident that it was very accurate. I have since changed my mind.

Recently, I had to make a flight from Gulf Shores, Alabama back to home base. As I took off and headed to the northeast, I immediately could see a bad line of storms ahead. Pensacola Approach Control warned me of their presence. They were also clearly depicted on the Garmin. I could see they were moving to the northwest. It appeared that I could scoot around the east side of the line. Which is exactly what I did.

As you can see in the above image, the pink line is my intended course. The little icon of the helicopter, which is me, is displaced somewhat to the right (east). I am at 2,071 feet, about ten miles northeast of Pensacola Regional Airport (KPNS), making 101 knots across the ground. Thirty miles and a little under 18 minutes to go. Off to my left is some very bad weather, represented by the orange and dark red colors. Had I not deviated, I would’ve flown into a thunderstorm. As it turned out, we got a few sprinkles on the bubble, but that was all. (By the way, the big green blob just inside the compass rose would appear to be light precipitation/rain, but in reality is just a bunch of wet clouds from which no rain was falling.)

Could I have gotten home without the Garmin? Sure, but I would have been “hunting and pecking.” And I may have made the wrong choice and gone around the west side of that line, which would have been a BIG mistake. Having the “big picture” made the flight so much more comfortable and easy. And safe.

I also purchased a small collision-avoidance device, a ZAON XRS, which also sits up on the dash. It detects other aircraft and displays their relative position to me.
In the example above, the plane is headed northeastbound (060 degrees) at an altitude of 700 feet ("FL007"). There is one aircraft 2.5 miles ahead to the front-right, 600 higher in level flight, and another aircraft three miles off the left wing, 700 feet above, climbing. This unit is designed to play through the Garmin GPS. When an aircraft gets close, a little window opens up on my main map with a dot representing the other traffic’s position and altitude.

I think back to when I first started flying in the 1970’s, and how “blind” we were in the sky. We had the most basic electronic navigational aids that told you very little about your exact position…there were no moving maps…no satellite radio/weather…no way of knowing if there were other aircraft in your vicinity. We were pretty dependent upon air traffic control to warn us of unseen traffic and the worst weather ahead – if they even could: the information they had was crude and incomplete.

We’ve made so many incredible advances since then. The amazing Garmin 496 combined with XM Weather and the XAON collision-avoidance device gives me unbelievable capability in a small, inexpensive package. I would never want to leave the ground without them.

Star Trekkin'

Okay, I have seen the new "Star Trek" movie twice. Enjoyed it immensely both times. This, despite the fact that I’m really not a big fan of science-fiction. But I was a fan of the original TV series, and wanted to see how this prequel would handle this...this...this institution we've all come to know and love. Well, some of us.

The thing to remember about this version is that the story exists in an alternate universe. This allowed the writers quite a bit of latitude and flexibility, because the canon of the legendary franchise is well known. Loyal purists don’t like it messed with.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun, funny, exciting movie that took liberties with the past while staying true to the characters’, well…character. The actors cast who play these sci-fi icons are terrific. Karl Urban, the guy who plays Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy is especially good. And not to worry, all of the familiar catch-phrases and trademarks are present and accounted for. Young Spock arches an eyebrow and says, "Fascinating," Scotty says, "I'm given it all she's got, Captain!" and Dr. McCoy says, "Dammit, I'm a doctor, not a physicist."

I can’t wait for the sequels. Or maybe I can.

The boss and I were flying…somewhere…the other day, listening to the 70’s channel on the XM radio. The d.j. came on and mentioned that the new “Star Trek” movie was still breaking box-office records in its second weekend of release. “What’s strange about this,” he cracked,” “…is that so many people have seen the movie..." (pause) "and none of them brought a date!”

Ouch! I laughed because it’s true. Thinking back, I remember not noticing a whole bunch of couples. Even I had gone with my buddy Matt, an unrepentant trekkie. It is definitely a guy’s movie, not a chick-flick.

Christ and Killing

I’ve been kind of depressed lately. Not as in, “I’m gunna kill mahself,” depressed, but just not happy with the way things are going in the world. Maybe "discouraged" is a better word. It's put me in a perpetual bad mood.

Recently, two sheriff’s deputies were gunned down in a town near here. They thought they were responding to a simple domestic disturbance, but for some reason it turned deadly. The man shot them both, then fled in his pickup truck. Other deputies gave chase, as you can imagine. In the town of Crestview, Florida, the police put those “spike strips” down on the road, intending to puncture the truck’s tires. The man simply drove around them. As he did, the cops opened fire, killing the 28 year-old driver. The cops justified the shooting by claiming that they were only stopping an obviously dangerous killer from possibly killing again.

Many people down here were exultant. They seemed happy that the man died. “He got what he deserved!” they cried, which seemed to be the prevailing sentiment.

Well, wait. Hang on. Yes, it is awful and tragic that the two deputies were killed as they were just doing their job. But that’s no reason to celebrate in the death of the man who killed them. Also, he still should have been afforded the right to a fair trial. If society decided that the death penalty was his punishment, then so be it. But I will not be happy or rejoice over it. And it really disturbs me that people find some pleasure in the death of another man - either locally or globally (as in the case of Saddam Hussein).

We seem to have become a society that enjoys killing…enjoys death. We’ve become a war-loving culture, and we wage it gleefully, as if there were no cost other than a monetary one. We like sending our troops in harm’s way. It makes us feel like we’re tough guys, I guess – The U.S. doesn't take shit from anyone! When it comes to our “Muslim extremist” foes, we still hear the call to, “Bomb them back to the Stone Age!” We’d rather not make peace – we’d rather make war. We sure don't mind hurting or killing one another either if it's "necessary."

And this is what’s got me down lately. I don’t think it’s what we’re meant to be doing. And I’ve been puzzling over how to put these thoughts into words.

Then along comes one Cynthia Tucker. She’s a writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her column often appears in our local Pensacola paper. This past Sunday, May 10, 2009, her subject was torture. You know, the infamous waterboarding. The former Administration actually got some of their lawyers to issue an opinion that waterboarding was not, in fact, “torture” and was, in fact, legal. Ms. Tucker (as well as a great many other Americans including me) disagrees.

Ms. Tucker bemoans the fact that although we as a nation have collectively known about waterboarding for a long time, we who call ourselves spiritual have been curiously silent about it. She writes:

Many evangelical Christians, black, white and brown, are Biblical literalists, insisting that homosexuality is a sin and evolution is heresy because the Bible says so. That same Bible introduces a simple teacher who instructed his followers to turn the other cheek, to repay cruelty with kindness, to disregard their personal safety. Yes, we may be forgiven for being afraid, but fear cannot justify inhumanity to others. How does that jibe with support for barbaric treatment of detainees?

The religious right certainly isn’t responsible for the decisions of the Bush administration, which raised torture to official policy. Nor were conservative Christians alone in their failure to speak out — loud and long — against it. Even as reports leaked out about simulated drownings, chaining prisoners to the ceiling and slamming them against walls, there were few voices raised in protest. Much of America stood by quietly as our ideals were trampled, international law violated and our moral standing eroded.

Amen!

Since the awful events of “9/11,” we’ve become a paranoid, fearful nation…a nation bent on getting revenge. And if we can’t get that, then we want to protect ourselves – and if it means going out and “killing them before they can kill us,” well…that’s okay.

Except it’s not.

Back in the early-1990’s there was a proliferation of “What Would Jesus Do?” bumper stickers. People wore bracelets and things with the intials, “W.W.J.D.”

I think we should update that phrase now. I think it should be, “Who Would Jesus Kill?”

Cynthia Tucker's Torture Column