George’s Point of View

Yet another theory:

Problems with airspeed indicators led to excessive speed for the Air France A330, triggering the sequence of events leading to the crash. Blame it on pitot tubes. If the pitot tubes froze up during the storm, pilots would get mis-readings on their speed, accelerate, and subject the plane to stresses the structure was unable to withstand.

One thing I feel is that someone out there in aviation (and I don’t know who it is)-the pilot in general, ATC, or the airline-does not respect Mother Nature. Weather happens. Sometimes very BIG weather happens. And people will just not be dissuaded by a little common sense. No matter what, if we want to go, we’re going to jump on our magical Boeing-Airbus-Embraer-McDonnell Douglas Sleigh like Santa Clause, the Postal Service or Fed Ex, and we will go. People want it, so the airlines are going to provide it, like the inscription on the James Farley post office in New York “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Or to more-or-less paraphrase David Farragut, “Damn the lightning, full speed ahead!”

So my first point is that we should respect nature a little more. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

We commonly make assumptions here in all of our posts, because we’re using a who/what/where/when format. The “What” usually ends up as a synopsis of events, with just a little bit of why thrown in. But “why” is not a question we can take lightly. “Why” an incident happens is just too big for us to cover, especially since we try to get our posts up within hours of the event. Between you and me, if it takes a year for the whole NTSB research team made up of a federal building full of highly educated and experienced experts, thousands of pages of recorded documentation, video and concrete evidence, and the nation’s keenest analytical minds juggling all the permutations to figure out “why” a crash happened, then we don’t really think we can come up with the perfect “why” off the top of our heads fifteen minutes after the crash.

That said, there’s an expert in Jamaica–Lt. Col. Oscar Derby, director general of the Jamaica Civil Aviation — who says that the aircraft touched down at 4,100 feet (assuming this is fact, since one can assume the director general of Jamaican aviation has access to all the facts) and that number isn’t referring to altitude, it’s referring to the plane’s wheels contacting mother tarmac halfway down the runway. I’m not going to talk about his decisions, or his inquiry because it is simply too soon.

But if the plane landed halfway down the runway (if it is not internet gossip, but a fact that the plane did land halfway down the runway)…that is significant. It probably wouldn’t matter if the plane hadn’t bounced. Or if it hadn’t been raining. Or if the plane hadn’t hydroplaned. But ALL of those things happened too.

I don’t know why the pilot landed halfway down the runway; but I do know there is always some point of no return where the pilot must commit to either fly by or land. I don’t know the factors that came into play with this pilot, on this day, on this runway, during this storm that affected the decision. Experts will be spending years looking at this pilot’s split second decision.

The fact remains that in a harrowing rainstorm, after a turbulent flight, a bounce on landing, and hydroplaning, the American AIrlines crew still managed to come out of it with everyone aboard alive, and that is a job well done.

A plane wreckage is not simply trash. The wreckage is the story of the crash transcribed in twisted metal and broken gears, legible to experts who can read from it details that the layman can not determine. The wreckage is concrete evidence. Because damaged mechanics reflect forces that have acted on the plane, its legal and historical value is in its very tangibility: it is an actual record that can reveal the course of events, as well as being an important factor in determining the culpability of those involved.

Imagine, if you will, what would happen to paper records left to the mercy of passersby, out in the sun and wind and rain for fifty days. If the paper survives, anything written on it will be degraded by exposure to the elements. If anyone attempts to read it, their task will be 50 times more difficult. This is true whether the record is written on paper–or on crushed metal.

So why is it that the evidence in the Mangelore crash–the wreckage–was left to the elements for 50 days? Whose responsibility is it to maintain the evidence at its most accurate condition? What can be said about leaving evidence on the scene, in an area where the public has access, and/or allowing it to sit exposed to the elements for 50 days following the event?

This is not a crash like Air France Flight 447 where the greater mass of the wreckage is lost at sea, and if and when any evidence is found, it will have been inadvertently degraded by exposure that is beyond anyone’s control. In the causal relationship between conduct and result, in the Mangalore crash, who is responsible for maintaining the quality of the evidence so that it maintains its forensic value, especially in a crash within meters of the runway in a known and navigable area? Is there a chain of responsibility? Is that responsibility safeguarded from possible intrusion, alteration or negligence by vested parties? Is safeguarding the forensics the responsibility of the airline or its insurers? Because, while the airline has hardly any experience dealing with such details, its insurers have a long history of dealing with evidence in aviation cases. Is there not an obligation in the vested parties to maintain the forensic value of the evidence?