Air France incidents - not good.

[harvyk]

AF have a knack of always blaming others, in fact it seems to be a policy. Erasing data should be a €1m fine and/or invoke a rule of nil bonuses to directors. That's appalling.

Erasing data should equal mandatory grounding, in my mind that is one of those "tip of the iceberg" things.

 

[The Rok]

Erasing data should equal mandatory grounding, in my mind that is one of those "tip of the iceberg" things.

Just another reason not to fly AF, not that I ever would of anyway. From disastrous baggage stories, to endless crashes, to the roof falling in on an terminal building, I have no desire to ever set foot on an AF plane ever again.

 

[BAM1748]

Erasing data should equal mandatory grounding, in my mind that is one of those "tip of the iceberg" things.

As some of you know I'm in the railway business, all of our locomotives are fitted with what we call 'data loggers'. they record speed, throttle settings, brake applications, wheel slip, crew vigilance control systems and a few other things. The failure of being able to down load data from one gets a visit from the rail safety regulator and a check of every locomotive to test they are working. And that's even if its double heading as second loco on a freight and simply stopped working because of a power supply interruption.

I cant understand why the French are so blasé about it all, I guess the culture of the airline just hasn't movedon from the 1960s. Their high speed train operation would seem, and just my opinion, to have a different safety culture altogether which is why I don't understand the French.

perhaps they still think they are a world player. :mrgreen:

M

 

[drewbles]

Wouldn't that make it amongst the most dangerous? After all, if one in fourteen production 747s had suffered a hull loss that would imply 105 747 hull losses, a bit over twice the actual rate.

Factoring in the actual air-frame hours, no. The Concorde fleet was not old in hours, just years.

Once again, fudge figures to suit the reports. This is why statistics are so useless 95% of the time

 

[petercr]

Factoring in the actual air-frame hours, no. The Concorde fleet was not old in hours, just years.

Once again, fudge figures to suit the reports. This is why statistics are so useless 95% of the time

What was that famous quote from Benjamin Disraeli again ??? (yes, I know what it was)

 

[Fruitcake]

Factoring in the actual air-frame hours, no. The Concorde fleet was not old in hours, just years.

But the 747 is running at a rate of one fatal accident every 17.4 million hours, whilst the entire Concorde fleet accrued 243,845 hours and one fatal accident. That makes the 747 seventy times safer?

However, I fully agree that stats can be (and usually are) cherry picked. From a statistical science perspective comparing Concorde with the 747 in such a simple way is extremely flawed.

 

[anat0l]

So... how do you erase the data from the flight recorder? I guess it will eventually have a 'limit' to what it can record, so the oldest data gets overwritten.

I guess they never had the discipline to keep that data handy in case they needed to study it, so to speak. Instead, they seem to be using it to hide potential mistakes and disavow accountability for safety.

This all said, I think it does very little to the reputation of AF (i.e. neither good or bad). If it had an impact (notwithstanding AFF or other flying forums), surely AF would be silly and viciously arrogant to think they can do nothing and expect it to go away. After all, they still keep advertising those dirt cheap Euro fares here (with first leg on CZ usually)...

The report is for an incident which is 1-2 years old. If this wasn't a wake-up call for AF to do something (let alone the equivalent French aviation authority), then I don't know what would be - another crash? Until the report came out, no one really would've started making noises that the accountability trail needs to be checked (including recording of flight data). It could, however, imply that there have been other systematic failures (not necessarily resulting in significant incidents) resulting from such procedural deficiency.

 

[Boris spatsky]

Ok let's look at how the CVR works (coughpit voice recorder). It is basically a 30 minute digital loop in most newish aircraft, which keeps running whilst the aircraft is powered (by it's own generators, APU or external power). This is different to the Flight Data Recorder, which generally records the last 24 hours of flight parameters.

So if you have an incident such as this AF one where the aircraft subsequently lands normally, it is very feasible that 30 minutes have elapsed by the time you land, deboard and remove power, unless the crew or procedures require power to be turned off because there has been an incident.

So i doubt they did it deliberately.

 

[elbarto]

Just another reason not to fly AF, not that I ever would of anyway. From disastrous baggage stories, to endless crashes, to the roof falling in on an terminal building, I have no desire to ever set foot on an AF plane ever again.

I don't think it's quite fair to blame the CDG 2E collapse on AF as they weren't involved.

 

[Happy Trails]

But the 747 is running at a rate of one fatal accident every 17.4 million hours, whilst the entire Concorde fleet accrued 243,845 hours and one fatal accident. That makes the 747 seventy times safer?

No, only 35 times - Concorde was twice as fast, so you were only on it half as long.

 

[RooFlyer]

So... how do you erase the data from the flight recorder? I guess it will eventually have a 'limit' to what it can record, so the oldest data gets overwritten.

<snip>

Maybe a question for JB747? I think the data from a previous flight is over-written by the next flight. IF so, then the mal practice would be in either the pilots not self-reporting an incident and/or the airline not 'impounding' the aircraft pending data download (at least).

We know from QF32 that the A380s at least are also monitored live on the ground so presumably with them, if there was a similar incident it would be more widely obvious. Of course if AF management actually cares, is a different story.