Will Moving Water Freeze?

[dickiej]

Super cooled water is what brought down Air France 447. The liquid hit the plane, and iced over the pitot tubes that measure air speed. Even the auto pilot couldn’t determine air speed. It became disabled, and when the pilots took over trying to fly manually, they had no “feel” for flying. Young pilots trained on flight simulators. Couldn’t fly by the seat of their pants.

[geordie]

Originally Posted by dickiej

Super cooled water is what brought down Air France 447. The liquid hit the plane, and iced over the pitot tubes that measure air speed. Even the auto pilot couldn’t determine air speed. It became disabled, and when the pilots took over trying to fly manually, they had no “feel” for flying. Young pilots trained on flight simulators. Couldn’t fly by the seat of their pants.

Super cooled water caused the incident. The idiot flying caused the crash. The book says to pitch to a few degrees nose up and set a specific engine pressure ratio (thrust, effectively) when the sensors are iced up. He pulled back the stick and had low power set. The lack of sensors caused the aircraft to be in reversion mode, so the alpha floor protection was off and he stalled the aircraft. From there he held it stalled until the aircraft captain told him to stop pulling back on the stick. He let go, the aircraft started to accelerate, at 80 knots the warnings became valid again and the started sounding. He grabbed the stick again and pulled the nose up again and held it there until the end of his life.