Airbus A320 Down

Fearless Tower said:
Well, it doesn't look like this one had a whole lot of forward speed when it touched down....

Germanwings_zpsqzgpot9g.jpg
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Yea, pretty bad.

The connotation "falling out of the sky" is a bit misleading since there are so many factors involved. Kinda like saying "Why do those little GA airplanes keep falling out of the sky?"
 
Matthew said:
Wow is right. Doesn't look line any indication of fire either.

It should be easy to find all the parts, and to see if any parts are missing that might have fallen off earlier.
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No indication of fire makes me think the engines had already cooled down, I sure as hell hope this wasn't another fueling metric f-up. Wouldn't be the first time, that's what happened to the Gimli Glider, fueled it with xxxx pounds of fuel instead of kilograms.
 
Clark1961 said:
yup, how far away is the empennage and the cockpit?
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The empennage/tail appears to have fallen below the tree line to the right, and the cockpit appears to have broken off at the ridge and dropped below line of sight. IOW, I think they're there.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Well, it doesn't look like this one had a whole lot of forward speed when it touched down....

Germanwings_zpsqzgpot9g.jpg
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News channels are reporting that the airplane broke apart into small pieces and that the largest piece was the size of a car. I'm not sure this is the same airplane.
 
Fox just mentioned the alpha protection mode WRT the AoA sensors not reporting accurately. Judging the flight profile with a pretty well controlled descent, this kinda looks like the alpha protection mode. Apparently there's an AD out on the AoA sensors regarding freedom of movement, or inaccurate reporting.

If anyone knows the alpha protection mode profile, and can match it with the flight profile, might be interesting.

Also, now reporting that there was no distress call. A very fluid situation.
 
Henning said:
No indication of fire makes me think the engines had already cooled down, I sure as hell hope this wasn't another fueling metric f-up. Wouldn't be the first time, that's what happened to the Gimli Glider, fueled it with xxxx pounds of fuel instead of kilograms.
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Even then, an impact can create enough energy to ignite the fuel, and it does not look like that happened. High enough Gs to be fatal, not enough for a fire.

Almost looks like what you'd expect to see with a falling leaf stall into the ground.
 
Henning said:
The empennage/tail appears to have fallen below the tree line to the right, and the cockpit appears to have broken off at the ridge and dropped below line of sight. IOW, I think they're there.
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I didn't ask "where do you think they are" I asked how far away...
 
Henning said:
No indication of fire makes me think the engines had already cooled down, I sure as hell hope this wasn't another fueling metric f-up. Wouldn't be the first time, that's what happened to the Gimli Glider, fueled it with xxxx pounds of fuel instead of kilograms.
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since they originated in spain, I doubt it.
 
Henning said:
No indication of fire makes me think the engines had already cooled down, I sure as hell hope this wasn't another fueling metric f-up. Wouldn't be the first time, that's what happened to the Gimli Glider, fueled it with xxxx pounds of fuel instead of kilograms.
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This being a European operation I doubt that's the case. The FMS has the fuel values in the flight plan or it alerts, and the checklist covers verifying fuel quantity.
 
JasonM said:
News channels are reporting that the airplane broke apart into small pieces and that the largest piece was the size of a car. I'm not sure this is the same airplane.
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Dunno. I will say that the airplane in that crash photo looks like it was painted in Lufthansa colors rather than German Wings.
 
bflynn said:
since they originated in spain, I doubt it.
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Yeah, and with all the other protections I would think that it couldn't happen again, unfortunately many things we think 'can't possibly happen' do. I agree it would be the long shot.
 
Matthew said:
Even then, an impact can create enough energy to ignite the fuel, and it does not look like that happened. High enough Gs to be fatal, not enough for a fire.

Almost looks like what you'd expect to see with a falling leaf stall into the ground.
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It does, and if those fuel tanks didn't rupture in that pic, I will be even more impressed with Airbus's build.
 
Henning said:
Yep, looks a lot like the same scene. Was the above picture published to represent the current crash by the media?
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The first place I saw it was on this thread. Apparently it's been floating around for a few hours - maybe no way to tell anymore who posted it first.

Also, I tried to post the matching photo from a slightly different angle, but it appears it's showing some kind of animation now. Will try to fix it (nevermind, it's working fine for me now.)
 
This may be dumb, but how would decompression cause drag on the aircraft and the engines not being able to operate normally? I thought in decompression cases the aircraft just makes a emergency decent as it looks here but otherwise is still able to fly normally to make a safe landing?
 
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Henning said:
Yeah, keeps failing and reloading for me at the moment.
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I managed to get on. Looks like what you'd expect of a high speed impact into the face of a mountain.
 

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Ryanb said:
This may be dumb, but how would decompression cause drag on the aircraft and the engines not being able to operate normally? I thought in decompression cases the aircraft just makes a emergency decent as it looks here but otherwise is still able to fly normally to land safety?
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Open the sunroof on your modern aerodynamic car, if you have a real time fuel mileage display, you can watch it drop a couple miles a gallon. The thing is, the decompression event is typically caused by a structural failure that handicaps other things as well. Sometimes it remains manageable like the 737 in Hawaii, sometimes it doesn't. Many variables in these things.
 
Talk about sweeping up the mess...sigh.
 
With that kind of energy, it might be a test of the FDR and CVR. I know those things are tough, but we'll see if they are that tough. I presume they are near the tail, so some of the energy will be dissipated by the time it comes to the mountain, so that helps but gosh, that was a Big Bang.
 
Henning said:
I'd be interested to hear the Mayday call to hear his voice.
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Latest news reports are saying no mayday was sent. Typical news hysteria....I think we need to let the dust settle before any truth can be sorted out.
 
reports they found one of the black boxes.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
What Mayday call? Has it been made clear one way or another that there was one?
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No, just mentioned one in the articles. If no call was made, it will be interesting to get the CVR transcript and see how close it comes to AF447 in having two pilots in the cockpit that just disconnected from an emergency.
 
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