EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo has vanished from Radar

i recall a plane was halted on paris airport not long ago there was a fire starting because of lithium batteries.

a reply to: TheMasterOne

According to EgpytAir there was no hazardous cargo on board.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Lot easier to start a fire than make a bomb . In addition been number of fires on aircraft which had nothing to do
with terrorism. Plenty of ignition sources on aircraft

Witness Swiss Air 111 that crashed off Halifax or Air Canada DC 9 which had fire in bathroom

Anything from electrical short to some clown sneaking a smoke in bathroom and throwing burning cigarette in trash....

a reply to: firerescue

At one point Airbus was using Kapton wiring in their aircraft. It's light weight, fairly strong, and the coating is pretty durable when held in place properly, which the manufacturers like. But it's so dangerous that the US Navy permanently grounded almost every aircraft they had in service that used Kapton wiring in them, because they couldn't rewire them.

Although the United States Navy has banned Kapton and the insulation is no longer used by Boeing since 1992, the world's largest planemaker Airbus Industrie continue to use a version of it in their new planes. Even though the British CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) has forbidden the use of Kapton insulation in new aircraft designs, a loophole allows it to be used in current designs.

Despite ample warning about its dangers, the Royal Air Force took delivery of Kapton-wired Harrier GR5s. Two crashed because of the wire before the RAF embarked on a program to modify the use of Kapton in all the vulnerable parts of their planes.

British Airways admit they use Kapton widely in their aircraft, but that its use meets the requirements of regulatory authorities. Panorama understands, however, that British Airways was warned of the dangers of Kapton insulation and did make its concerns known to Boeing, its principal supplier. BA has declined to confirm or deny this.

Kapton insulation (a DuPont trade name, although their patent has now expired and they are no longer the sole manufacturers) seemed to be the dream wire insulation for commercial and military fleets in the 1970s and '80s. Wiring is like a plane's blood vessels, and the average big jet carries up to 250 kilometres of it. When the giant aircraft manufacturers were looking for something extremely light, tough and flame resistant they settled for Dupont's Kapton. Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed and later Airbus Industrie all installed it in good faith in their models during the '70s and '80s. Today, 40 per cent of all planes still carry Kapton-insulated wiring.

But in the early eighties, a US naval captain discovered an obscure Soviet technical publication, 10 years old, which analysed Kapton (technically an aromatic polyimide). The publication noted that the insulation decomposed when in contact with concentrated alkali but, more chillingly, the insulation was hydrolitic - it absorbed water. The report also mentioned Kapton's tendency to arc.

The US Navy, already alarmed at a rash of wire failures and unexplained flash fires in its fighter planes commissioned detailed tests of Kapton. These were conducted by Bob Dunham, its top civilian expert on aircraft wiring. Dunham's tests revealed a terrible truth about the now widely installed insulation. Kapton's positive aspects were heavily outweighed by its uniquely negative qualities. Its strength was negated by the fact that it had "straight line memory". It always wanted to return to its original position when on a wire drum. This meant that unless it was properly and frequently imprisoned in clamps it had a tendency to "roam" and subsequently chafe. Its ultra-light weight (only three and a half human hairs thick) was a huge commercial advantage, saving precious weight on the plane. But when the insulation wore through and the naked wire touched metal, it arced at 6000 degrees, and before short circuiting it flashed like a tiny banger firework.

Dunham's experiments then discovered that when the short circuit tripped the circuit breaker (fuse box) in the plane, once the breaker was re-set and the power restored to the wire, a new flame ran along the Kapton insulation, turning it into a charred flame conductor. In this way, fire spread along the path of the plane's wires.

www.vision.net.au...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Case in late 1980's where someone was shipping high concentration hydrogen peroxide to be used for creating
stone washed jeans

Drum leaked in cargo hold of Southern Airway DC 9 starting a fire - fortunately was caught early and plane
grounded before fire able to damage aircraft......

Lot of nasty stuff being shipped on aircraft which should not be.....

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

In my not so humble opinion, MS 804 was lost to terrorism.

When looking at what is known at this point, it certainly is a great possibility that some kind of explosive device caused the crash.

Whatever happened was fairly sudden when looking at the data.
Simultanious ACARS warnings at 00:26, WHC anti ice r window, r sliding window, smoke in the lavatory.
A 'minute' later 00:27 smoke in the avionics bay which would make sence to me when considering the airflow system inside the aircraft.
Was it really smoke? it seems that fog/mist or particles can also trigger a smoke detector alarm.
At 00:28 r fixed window sensor, followed by 00:29 FCU, SEC3 and than the loss of both ADS-B and ACARS (signal lost at 00:29.33)
Primary radar contact lost at 00:33.
This is also why i have a problem with the notion that this aircraft made a 90 degrees left turn and a full 360, as if pilots were in control of the aircraft.
It seems more like that this aircraft was uncontrollable and crashed from cruise altitude into the mediteranian sea.

If the plane's sensors notified mission control that smoke was present in the cockpit and lavatory, why didn't ground crews at least attempt to get in touch with the pilot ASAP? Isn't that the point of real-time inflight sensors?

a reply to: carewemust

Because they have a lot of aircraft flying, and it was three minutes from the first warning to the aircraft being down.

a reply to: earthling42

The initial left was probably under control, but when the SEC warning popped, they lost the ability to control the aircraft and that's when they did the 360 and continued to dive into the water.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: earthling42

The initial left was probably under control, but when the SEC warning popped, they lost the ability to control the aircraft and that's when they did the 360 and continued to dive into the water.

Doesn't a 360 degree dive indicate a "death spiral"?

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

And if there was no Intel that they should have been prior to that, or it wasn't shared, then how was it the TSAs fault? Reid managed to get through Israeli security, which is usually considered the best in the world. In 2009, before the attack, Intel services were still trying to determine if Abdulmutallab was a threat.

There's more than enough to blame them for, like I said, without trying to find more.

Very difficult to winnow the facts in this story can't even find things with the ATS search engine although that could be a spelling translation error.

Is a Padova an Italian spelling of the more common map name Padua?

a reply to: Krakatoa

It depends. A tight 360 spiral does, a simple 360 degree turn doesn't.

The turns and loss of altitude sounds like an out of control dive or death spiral. No one has claimed responsibility so far for a terrorist attack so could be a bad fire. At this stage fire or bomb sounds most likely. Although if there was a fire you'd think the pilots would radio smoke or fire and declare an emergency.

a reply to: JimTSpock

If it was in the windscreen, the shock and reaction of trying to control the aircraft would probably have kept them from trying to radio anyone until they were already out of control.

a reply to: Zaphod58

It must've all happened fast. Contact was lost at 15,000ft aircraft break up in midair? Which could be caused by overspeed in the dive.

a reply to: Zaphod58

And we could get actual discussions if the CVR can be found, recovered, and the recordings extracted successfully....still lots of IF's in this scenario.

a reply to: JimTSpock

Yeah, especially if there was a fire, or blown out windscreen that weakened the structure somewhat.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Wasnt there case of British Airways plane where cockpit window blew following faulty repair

Pilot was sucked halfway out of the plane = other crew members held on to him while copilot flew plane

a reply to: firerescue

BA 5390, it was a BAC 1-11. The mechanic the night before visually matched the screws instead of going by the checklist, and they were a quarter inch too short, or less.

I don't know if this is true, or will be confirmed but a report has come out that the pilot talked to Cairo ATC for several minutes and reported that there was heavy smoke in the cockpit and he was going to make an emergency descent and depressurize to try to clear it.

Independent