Classic British Flight Sim

An interesting article about the Air France crash. If they don't find the blackbox this could be the best guess as to what happened.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking ... operators/

I don't imagine they are using FS!

Nigel²

I have no idea who Ben Sandilands is, but much of what is written is carelessly compiled drivel. I have yet to see the standby altimeter which will give either a Mach No or IAS/CAS readout! In any event, anyone who has encountered really severe turbulence will tell you that in such circumstances the ASI even if it remains working is usually completely useless with grossly aberrant readings, and indeed if you can read any of the instruments you are very lucky , and about the only thing to be done is to try and prevent the aircraft entering what is euphemistically described as an unusual attitude. It is interesting that nearly all the instrument failure accidents of recent years that I can recall ( Bandeirante at Leeds, B747 at Stansted ) have involved Horizon failure . A much more sinister aspect of certainly the A320 family , and it may apply to the A 330 although I am unfamiliar with A 330 systems, is that if a total electrical failure occurs , the standby instruments themselves only operate for a limited period of about 30 minutes - see the very serious BA incident involving a Budapest bound A 319

Thanks for that info. I suppose I naively believed the author had some degree of expertise in the field. On reflection, the article is mere speculation again but I suppose at the present, that is all we have.

Nigel²

you should not be so quick to scoff, i have seen airspeed readouts on standby altimeters before, boeing 737-300's sport them as do some other types

below the kollsmann windows is an airspeed readout

http://www.b737.org.uk/images/fltinsts_standby.jpg

Hi,

Looking at cockpit photos on A.net it would appear early cn*** aircraft have an analoge sby horizon and seperate ASI. Later cn*** pics show a 'glass' sby horizon with what look like altitude and airspeed readouts. The AF a/c was a fairly new a/c which seems to fit into the latter category but no flight deck pics of said a/c are on a.net. Here is a pic of a late cn a/c of Qantas.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Qantas/A ... 0510465/L/

Regards

John

Gosh, Tombs, I stand corrected . I have never seen one of those composite standby instruments

More depressingly I have seen a couple of pictures being circulated by email purporting to be from inside the aircraft as it broke up. I'm sure one of them shows Guy Gibson's dog looking decidedly peeky.

(Edit) My son reckons from my description to him that some jerk has used stills from "Lost". Means stuff all to me, but then I thought that was a crassly stupid prog after watching the first episode. ( IIRC The aircraft was in bits all over the island but an engine was still running at full power on a beach.....)