The disaster called AF447

Not a day has gone by since 31^st of May where I have not checked for news about the recent air disaster near the islands of Noronha, north-east of Brazil. In fact, on the night of 1st June, I had nightmares of being desolated in the middle of Atlantic ocean, with no sight of land and thunderstorms all around me. The accident sent a chill down my spine, what mighty nature is against the miniscule advancements we have made in several thousand years.

Like all accidents, this will also soon be forgotten – with planes going over the same route and people all over the world taking to flights for pleasure and business, like nothing ever happened.

Anyways, what the heck happened to AF447?

I am not here to recap what media and investigators alike have been speculating for the 16^th day today. Neither am I here to disbelieve everything everybody has had to say.

The most plausible theory we have so far is this could not have happened as a result of one bad thing. It must have been a combination of several bad things. Right? Of course, you couldn’t be surer. Couldn’t you?

Thunderstorm and lightning – with hundred years of flying and supersonics and air palaces to several thousand flights making trips all over the world, I wonder – was this the deadliest storm ever? Less than likely. And if that was to be, what were the weathermen doing? What happened to the Luft that was passing this route 30 mins before and 30 mins after?

Pitot tubes – we have managed to make people who don’t understand how planes fly to talk in length about what Pitot tubes are used for. Honestly, I had no idea what this is. Again, are we saying these gadgets – the Pitot tubes – never known to have become dysfunctional on some of the icy/snowy routes in the world, did become so? Really?

Evaluations in hindsight part I – It is sad that people died. It is sad there were 228 of them. But I feel weird when people talk about the flight-hours of the 3 pilots in that aircraft. One had 11000 hours and another had 8000 and another had how-much-ever. I would expect somebody like Air France, flying a trans-continental plane, to hire experienced staff. If they did not, shame on them. More than shame, I would expect the regulatory to find these types of things and prevent them from flying in the first place. On the other hand, at the same time this plane dove into the ocean, there are perhaps 1000 planes mid-air flown by pilots who have far less than 8000 flight-hours. May be it was somebody’s first flight. Somebody’s first A330. Somebody’s first 747. We accept these things in our normal life, but evaluate them in 20/20 when something bad happens.

Evaluations in hindsight part II – Not only we, at some point anyways, blame Pitot-tube for the death of 228 people, but also went and replaced these parts across their entire fleet. Genuine and reasoned as it may be, the timing of this move seems to me like it is a knee-jerk reaction to all the commotion around the failed part. Now what about that other part called Tipop Tube? Did they replace that? What about the million other parts that makes the few-100 passenger aircraft?

None of this is to say these theories are false or fictitious – just that these theories could be entirely false.

Of all the news and articles I read after this accident, one opinion struck me as particularly telling. It is that, it is statistically established that there are very few air disasters, where the ultimately confirmed reason for disaster had anything to do with what they first thought.

Whether it is what we know or what we don’t know – I just hope we will find the reason. For not finding it puts a permanent degree of doubt in the things impossible for us to do, without the help of technology.