Air France Flight 447

The Airbus A330-203 airliner which apparently came apart at 35,000 feet in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was one of the newer fly-by-wire airplanes. What this means is that in the event of complete computer malfunction, the pilots’ control sticks are not connected mechanically or hydraulically to the vital control surfaces like the ailerons or the elevators.

When these fly-by-wire airplanes were first suggested there was a lot of conversation about the need for a redundant mechanical back up system. But since this would have been somewhat costly, greed eventually won the argument.

Over the years I have owned several very expensive Japanese and German SUVs which had drive-by-wire systems. The gas pedal was not actually connected mechanically to the fuel injection system of the engine. A computer did all the work. Except that the computer occasionally malfunctioned. When this happened the solution was just like with your computer at home. Reboot. In the case of these cars that meant stopping the car, shutting off the ignition key, and then starting back up.

I am an early adopter, so my life is surrounded by all sorts of neat digital toys. Cameras, GPSs, computers, large screen TVs, etc. And this has taught me that even the best of these digital toys sometimes malfunction. I have had a wide variety of failures, and in most cases they were not the result of obvious abuse. It just quit. Period.

For 25 years I was in charge of production for various food processing plants around the United States and in Europe. These factories have a lot of noise and vibration, heat, static electricity, salt, and water all over the place. Over the years some of my colleagues balked at my ideas of requiring that we continue to use old conventional non-digital technology (at least as a redundant back-up) because of its much higher reliability. Excuse my language, but I refer to this problem with the latest new technology as Chip-Shit. It is fine in my personal life say in a DVD player, but not in a life critical mission like an airliner.

Airplanes have many stress factors in common with a food processing plant. I have been a pilot for more than 30 years, and I can assure you that I would not choose to fly any aircraft which uses fly-by-wire but doesn’t also have a redundant back up mechanical/hydraulic control system.

The debris field of Flight 447 has now grown to many miles in length. If you have Google Earth on your computer get it up. Then click on Ocean and also click on Terrain. Enabling these two features will let you see the depth of the ocean where this airplane broke up. Then go to 2,-30.3333 ---This location is just about the center of the debris field.
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