Oh my god. An eyewitness says the plane was hit by lightning, not sure if that's credible though. Severe thunderstorms were occuring in the area, though. There are survivors, they're incredibly lucky. No word on deaths, yet.
Holy shit. The lightning thing isn't credible enough for me to believe, so I wondered what happened. This is horrible. Damn.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050802/ts_nm/...crash_canada_dc This site says that everybody survived. Still must have been very frightening for the passengers.
I first saw the reports at work...arrived early for a shift, went to the break room, and saw a burning plane on TV..."Shit"...took a closer look, and saw an Air France A340-313X. Double shit - the capacity of one of those is approx. 252 in winter, 295 in summer. Glad to hear that everyone got off safely The plane involved was F-GLZQ (cn 289)...I saw this exact plane in Toronto about a month ago while returning from Germany...now that I think of it, it's creepy to think that I saw that sucker a month before it crashed just a mile or so from where I last saw it. Scary. Anyways, I've been trying to put down the cause of the crash myself, and I've come to two conclusions: 1: The airplane was reported to have been the victim of a possible lightning strike, and that this strike may have hit the center gear. Above the center gear is the antiskid controller - like a fancy ABS system that cycles the brakes when the wheels skid. Without this system, the wheels would have locked up on touchdown (occuring after a float caused by a high Vref, or approach speed, which is necessary in high winds). This would have sent the airplane hydroplaning down the runway and off the end. 2: The airplane encountered increased performance windshear (IPW) during the landing flare, which adds airspeed (and lift). Adding airspeed causes the plane to reduce descent speed, and during the flare, the plane would just float a few feet above the ground, eating up runway length for stopping. Touching down halfway down the runway, the airplane hydroplanes, and off the runway it goes. Either case being the truth, the reverse thrust blocker doors DID open (and reverse was applied), and the spoilers (they dump lift to put all the weight on the wheels) DID deploy (despite reports that they didn't, they appear to not have deployed because when the engines stopped, hydraulic pressure was lost and they fell back into the wing). From what I can tell, Theory 2 is more likely. The airplane landed on Rwy 24L, which is 9000 feet llong. YYZ's longest runway is 05-23, 11120 feet long. ATC likes to land "heavies" (widebody planes) on 05-23 as much as possible...why they landed on 24L I can't explain, and I've never seen a heavy land on 24L there ever. Most takeoffs by widebodied airplanes are on either 24R (10000 feet) or 23 (or 05, or 06R if winds dictate). So...they used the shortest runway at the airport. Just my two and a half cents... :chemist:
How the fuck did everyone survive? The plane was at it's maximum occupancy of 300 passengers (according to that Yahoo link) and not a single casualty. The accident's outcome is just surreal...
So what you're telling me, Tom, is that they landed the airplane on an airstrip that wasn't long enough for the plane to stop without trouble?
One of the passengers was interviewed on Today, and she mentioned how that when the plane was about to land on the runway, it was a bit too high off, so when they landed the plane probably took a lot of pressure, skidded off of the track and into the field and burst into flames. The passengers got off safe because of quick-thinking by the staff and the passengers themselves. I'm glad everyone made it out safe, but it's unbelievable.
It's Joe And they had plenty of room to stop, just less margin for error. The A340-300 is certified for 7500 feet of runway minimum for landing, and this has a very large fudge factor built in - - the airplane can, in an emergency, stop in under 5000 feet. What I was saying is that they selected the shortest runway (which is still far beyond the required minimum), when they had another runway (longer) to use, which also runs parallel to the incident runway, negating the winds excuse. However, if this WAS a total brake failure, the airplane wouldn't have hit the Etobicoke River...it would have continued on, going over Derry Rd., and hit the industrial buildings there, resulting in a few hundred charred corpes. From this point of view, runway selection was good...and this may have been the factor in deciding which one to use. For the record, all runways at YYZ are certified for widebody use, and we have a runway here in Winnipeg (Rwy 13-31) that's slightly shorter than the one in question here at Pearson, and I've seen a 777 use it (larger than the plane that crashed) for takeoff...so it's entirely within limits. Just a series of events that caused this, not runway length alone. Edit: Slight correction - - the A340 is certified for 7500 feet landing run (fudge factor included), but not for the length of the landing runway for takeoff. It's well known that the A340 (especially the -300 series) has a climb rate of about four feet per year...they almost always, always use 24R or 23...or 33R...
It's Joe And they had plenty of room to stop, just less margin for error. The A340-300 is certified for 7500 feet of runway minimum for landing, and this has a very large fudge factor built in - - the airplane can, in an emergency, stop in under 5000 feet. What I was saying is that they selected the shortest runway (which is still far beyond the required minimum), when they had another runway (longer) to use, which also runs parallel to the incident runway, negating the winds excuse. However, if this WAS a total brake failure, the airplane wouldn't have hit the Etobicoke River...it would have continued on, going over Derry Rd., and hit the industrial buildings there, resulting in a few hundred charred corpes. From this point of view, runway selection was good...and this may have been the factor in deciding which one to use. For the record, all runways at YYZ are certified for widebody use, and we have a runway here in Winnipeg (Rwy 13-31) that's slightly shorter than the one in question here at Pearson, and I've seen a 777 use it (larger than the plane that crashed) for takeoff...so it's entirely within limits. Just a series of events that caused this, not runway length alone. Edit: Slight correction - - the A340 is certified for 7500 feet landing run (fudge factor included), but not for the length of the landing runway for takeoff. It's well known that the A340 (especially the -300 series) has a climb rate of about four feet per year...they almost always, always use 24R or 23...or 33R... [/b][/quote] Haha, sorry about that, I thought Tomi posted that. That's very interesting.
There's another article about it, as well as a picture of the plane wreck here. What's the deal with my homepage actually posting interesting news the past few days?
Photos A big round of applause for the cabin crew From these pictures, it looks totally unsurvivable....but of course, there were no fatalities. ...the aftermath From the looks of it, the slides deployed right into the fire...
Haha 4ft/year climb rate . Well, I prefer a long takeoff to a tailstrike! Back on topic, usually, don't they have any kind of windshear warning, on the ATIS at least?
ATIS would've been full of "Thunderstorms in the area" and "Cumulonimbus" alerts, as well as ATC notifying all aircraft of the RA being called at the time. That alone would deter me... Stupid me didn't save the METARs from NavCan/AWWS. Dammit. That woulda proven it...although I remember there being "+TSRA" in there (heavy thunderstorm with rain) Edit: Hear about the birdstrike on the A340 the other day? It was hit by the bird from behind :chemist: