Crashing Bore

An Air France aircraft has recently crashed in the Atlantic and, while the victim's relatives try to come to terms with the tragedy, they will almost certainly learn nothing from the (UK) media.

Is there something about being a journalist which prevents even a basic understanding of the laws of aerodynamics, engineering or....just about anything?

This particular crash was well out of sight of any eye witnesses, and we can be thankful for that because it means that we are spared the inevitable stories of the "hero pilot" fighting the controls, not to save himself, or his passengers - but to steer the stricken craft away from a school.

A couple of things are certain in air crashes overland - aircraft are magnetically drawn towards schools and, irrespective of what has caused the accident, there is always just enough freedom of control available to the pilot to steer the aircraft away from those pesky children. Oh...and there is always an eyewitness with such phenomenal eyesight that he can somehow see (through aluminium) the pilot "wrestling" with the controls.

It is always enlightening to read the NTSB or AAIB accident reports because they often record these eyewitness statements and the fact is that two eyewitness to a crash can, and will, give completely opposing accounts of what happened. Later when the facts emerge, many of those witness accounts turn out to be utter bollocks.

In fact when you read the quotes from these witnesses, they are full of the uninformed hyperbole of a typical air crash report in The Sun or The Times. I think that the media inadvertently brain wash the public into reacting in certain way to certain events and the man in the street (or near the school) dutifully spouts his tabloid friendly description of events "The engines stalled..." etc. Talking of which, every journalist should be made to take an examination to show that they understand what an aerodynamic stall is and why that is nothing to do with the engines.

In the case of the Air France accident, about the only thing anyone has to go on is the automatic status reports from the aircraft. Unfortunately it is all a bit complicated for a pissed up journo to understand but there is enough there for some fantastically wild and uninformed speculation. Of course, Airbus aircraft have fly by wire, controlled by evil computers, rather than "hero" pilots - so the passengers were doomed anyway. The millions of safe flight hours in the A330 are instantly forgotten and, suddenly, it turns out that flying in an A330 is about as safe as flying the Icarus way, on an exceptionally sunny day.

An then, being the Internet age, we have the comments section. Inevitably the comments fall into two unevenly divided categories - incredibly stupid, and stupid. Usually split about 90-10 in favour of the incredibly stupid. As this was an Airbus, there have been a large number of comments from Yanks (usually in Seattle) proclaiming that this would have never happened to a Boeing, due to superior "strength", "traditional" engineering etc. Given that there have been one or two accidents to Boeing aircraft over the years, and that both makes of aircraft are certified by the same authorities to the same set of standards, I think that we can put those comments in the former category.

Then there are the armchair technical experts - I saw a comment from a bloke with an authoritarian tone who informed us that "big aircraft can't glide". His conclusion was that the engines had stopped, therefore pitching the aircraft into an uncontrollable dive. Really? So a big aircraft flies using different laws of physics to all other fixed wing aircraft? A quick look on Google for the glide ratio of the A330 reveals the following (after a total power loss due to fuel exhaustion) "The A330 referenced below went from 34500 and 85nm out to 13000 feet and 8nm out from Lajes. So 90 statue miles dropping 21500 feet or a glide ratio of 22:1 ..." Flying 22 metres for 1 metre loss of altitude doesn't exactly sound like a screaming death dive to me, mate.

The really frightening thing for me is not flying, it is the knowledge that, statistically, no matter where I sit, I am likely to be surrounded by complete fucking morons.