FlightMan

Have a look at this:

Cactus Flight 1549 Accident Reconstruction (US Airways)

The 3D flight reconstruction video is superb.

Snazy

Holy crap thats detailed

billyray911

iTrader: (4)

Quite scary-sends shivers up the spine!
However,a quick question and apologies if its a bit of a bone one-Am reading an article on the AF447 crash in the sunday times and they offer a few scenarios on the cause of this incident.
Is there not technology on the plane that can visually record what is recording on the plane through cctv onto a hard drive held in the 'blackbox'-which would explain the thought processes of the pilot and to a lesser extent record incidents of disorder on the plane to produce at court?
Now that some flights are now allowing mobile phone use on planes-why doesnt this technology exist?
Dont flame me as i know i'm probably showing my stupidity

FlightMan

Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorders do exactly that. They show what was going on in the cockpit. With AF447 though that info is 4,000m down in the Atlantic. The CCTV you describe would be in the same place. BTW the A380 already has 2 external cameras, one in the tail, one under the aircraft, that relay pictures back to the cockpit flight displays.

Mobile phone usage is coming, but still fairly new. The pilot wouldn't need a mobile phone anyway, he's in touch with ATC throughout the flight.

Foofighter

Stunning.Everyone seemed so calm on the radios

hodgy0_2

wow

TopBanana

It probably wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to stream this data in realtime to a satellite.

FlightMan

To what end. For the 1 in a 1,000,000 chance that a plane goes down and the FDR's are lost?

Who pays for the hardware involved in making this work? The airlines are broke.

Coffin Dodger

At the moment I would say it is. There is simply not the capacity available on the satellite systems used by aeronautical users. The main carrier would be Inmarsat and the current generation of "broadband" systems can carry 432kbps of data maximum. While this is adequate for what you suggest it is a shared bearer type system so if every plane flying around were using it the available bandwidth would soon drop to a point whereby it would be unusable for pretty much everything.

What is already in place, and carried via satellite when out of VHF reach is the ACARS system. This sends little bursts of data whenever the aircraft's avionics detect anything unusual going on. This goes back to air traffic control and can be used to alert them to any potential situations. If the pilot needs to he can also bring up a voice channel for may-day or general communication via satellite.

Several of these data bursts were sent when AF447 got into difficulties thus shedding some light on what happened but the pilot was most likely unable to establish voice comms due to the sudden and catastrophic nature of whatever happened to that flight

scoobyster

Cool vid. Shame they don't have the cockpit conversation on the voice tape too. I'm surprised the same ATCer was still dealing with other traffic at the same time! Surely it would be worthwhile to put out an "all traffic except Cactus 549 go to xxx.xx" so the controller and radio chennel could be dedicated to the mayday? Must say the ATCer was cool as anything even so, top job all round :up:

Devildog

That is seriously impressive

paulwrxboro

vid

billyray911

iTrader: (4)

Did wonder,thankyou

astraboy

The both of them are absolute heroes. No emotion, no flapping, just a checklist and their only available option.
And they pulled it off.

astraboy.

mart360

Wow,

respect to Captain Sullenberber & Co-pilot Skiles

Superb Quote from his CBS 60 minutes interview,

Sullenberger said, "One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I've been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal."[


one very brave and professional pilot


Mart

jjones

how calm and collected the crew were, amazing.

also the ATC guy was pretty impressive, sorting alternative landings and headings in seconds.

Clarebabes

That is chuffing amazing. They are real-life heros and I hope they are/were rewarded sufficiently. Absolutely brilliant, I am in total awe

Clarebabes

Too bloody right you are!

renny

iTrader: (2)

That was fantastic - cheers

DaveD

iTrader: (2)

Regarding cameras in the cockpit - this would be very easy to achieve with current technology, but isn't mandated because the most important information on the DFDR is what the plane / engines are doing and what the pilot input is. I think cameras have long been a talking point, but have generally been disliked by pilots because of a percieved invasion of privicy and in all but a handful of cases, would do very little to help explain what happened in the event of an accident. Listening to voices on a doomed flight deck is probably harrowing enough.....

Many planes currently stream maintenance messages to airline / manufacturer control centres to 'call ahead' in the event of a system failure en route. These maintenance messages are purely for convenience and allow time to sort out logistics of having a replacement part ready at the receiving airport. Talk is being made of streaming live data, but other than sending very basic parameters, I think this is probably some time away. In the case of the Air France flight - the aircraft sent a series of maintenance messages for pitot probes. However, what bearing these had on the aircraft systems is not known and, without the flight data recorder's data, can only be guessed at.

Leslie

Quite a fascinating account and it demonstrates not only the outstanding performance of both pilots but also the abilities of the air traffic controllers and their fast thinking in doing their best to find a runway for them to land on.
The ditching in the Hudson was by far the best action as long as the touchdown was down skilfully as it was in this case. Trying to make a runway somewhere would be far more dangerous as it it is by no means easy to do an engine out landing on a runway unless you are very accurately positioned in order to make the landing on the runway. That would largely be a matter of luck. The river landing meant that he had stacks of room to set the touchdown up and is exactly what I would have done too.

It was a pleasure to see the professional competence of all concerned.

Birdstrikes are a constant and very real hazard. It is very difficult to see a bird in time to avoid it and they often change direction at the last minute straight towards the aircraft! We were always worried about that since most of our flying was done at low level and to illustrate the danger, I once had a bullet proof windscreen shattered when we hit a German eagle of some kind in the Hartz Mountains. I was very lucky that it hit the edge and did not come through into my face!

Les

Account deleted by request

Amazing to see. Thanks for posting.

Chop