Jun 202009
Spotted in a Bloomberg report after the recent Air France crash:
The plane maker (Airbus) recommended in September 2007 that airlines replace the Thales SA speed sensors, known as Pitot tubes, on single-aisle A320-series planes as well as the A330 and A340. Air France said June 6 it waited until April to begin installing the new sensors because it wasn’t until the beginning of this year that their high-altitude effectiveness for the A330 was demonstrated in lab tests.
I just want to know if the airline companies operating in Malaysia and in the rest of the region have made all the necessary replacements to the speed sensors on their Airbus planes.
Even our cars don’t come with airbags, you want our planes to be with speed sensors?
In the whole world, airbags in cars are compulsory. But in Malaysia, it is not.
And they say the Waja is Malaysia’s answer to BMW.
What a joke.
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The speed sensors were categorized as speed accessories and not mandatory safety equipment, so it was not compulsory that all existing speed sensors must be replaced at once. Only when there was confirmed total loss of passengers on the unfortunate Air Franch crash and deep suspicions on the contribution of the old model speed sensors to the crash was the replacement speeded up. How fast the replacement for all affecting planes will depend on airlines and the government priorities.
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I was told this story, don’t know whether its true. Once upon a time there was a plane heading towards Heathrow. As Heathrow was busy, the control tower told the plane to circle until the runaway was clear.
But the Pilot told the control tower, “Alamak, minyak sudah habislah bang,”.
The plane was allowed to land, bypassing the normal queue.
Investigations were carried out as to why the plane was so low in fuel and against aviation regulations.
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You are right Ganesh.
I was also just wondering about the proposal of installing a device that will limit the speed of our inter-city express buses. I guess they are just waiting for another major accident to happen before they resume the talks.
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The difference between a bus and an aircraft breaking down is that the bus can stop at the roadside.
It’s not funny to hear how short turn around times for aircraft have become. It’s similar to the commission based how many times you can ply the route for minibus drivers.
Some of the shortcomings of the airline industry have been shown on Nat Geo’s air crash investigation. One galling story was how one airline stretched its maintenance schedule to the point that you might as well not service your planes at all.
It’s been readily admitted that loss of lives is part of the cost of doing business.
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From some free-time research into the crash of Flight 447, my gratuitius/non-expert view is that the problem is likely to have been with the plane’s ADIRU (Air Data Inertial referencing Unit) and auto-pilot online computer.
The auto-pilot probably responded incorrectly by opting to ignore the healthy signals from the non-faulty ADIRUs and acting instead on the faulty data received from one or more of the faulty ADIRUs and then, maybe, like the Quantas flight 72, went into a pitch-down manoeuvre, which because of the notorious heavy downdrafts known in that area that Flight 447 was flying in, caused the plane’s nose to pitch down at too steep an angle of descent for any manual recovery by the pilots to be possible.
Refer to what happened to the Quantas Airlines Flight 72 last October (which was described in an article as an absolute “worst case scenario” of such potential incidents) and also to earlier incidents all the way back to 2000 rleating to both Boeing and Airbus aeroplanes.
Air France is being very economical with the Truth when it said that it was not aware of the seriousness of the issue to aircraft and passenger safety from faulty ADIRUs on its Airbus 330s when it decided to delay their replacement.
Because of that negligence, there is going to be, IMO, a HUGE class action legal suit against Air France for this (unnecessary) tragedy where 228 human beings, including one baby and seven children, died.
And on that incident with the MAS plane at Heathrow Airport in 1999 where it was carrying too little fuel (perhaps from cost saving measures in place at that time) to meet the normal operating safety standards set, I believe MAS was allegedly slapped with a big fine for that deliberate/reckless lapse in aviation security protocol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Data_Inertial_Reference_Unit#Failures_and_directives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
“Imagine Power To The People” John Lennon.
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Dont know but wont be surprised if they havent!!
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Yes, all the Airbus planes in Air Asia and MAS had these sensors
replaced. It was clarified and I read this in Malaysiakini too.
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pitot tubes are acutually used for speed instruments and for autopilot to control the plane without it, the autopilot will not work.
If I am not mistaken, there are pitot tubes for the pilot’s speed indicatior instrument and the co-pilot’s speed indicator instrument.
If both do not match, the wiould be a warning and alarm to alert the crew of this.
It is not like airbags.
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right on Julian, the newer ones are supposed to be better and not iced up, causing failure in in the speed info in the former
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Hi Anil,
Would appreciate if you can allow me to highlight this important forum.
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The speed sensors were categorized as speed accessories and not mandatory safety equipment, so it was not compulsory that all existing speed sensors must be replaced at once. Only when there was confirmed total loss of passengers on the unfortunate Air Franch crash and deep suspicions on the contribution of the old model speed sensors to the crash was the replacement speeded up. How fast the replacement for all affecting planes will depend on airlines and the government priorities.
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