How in the hell does a plane just go missing?
- Thread starter Ti28
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The other thing I'll point out is that you're talking about a plane at 36,000 feet and travelling at ~360mph. That tranlates to roughly 528 FPS. The speed of gravity is around 32 FPS, and that excludes any kind of drag that the plane may have which means it's likely that the plane will take longer than 36,000/32=1,125 seconds (almost 19 minutes.) This means that you can be talking about 1125*528/5280=112.5 miles that pieces of the plane could be dispersed PROVIDED the ocean currents don't do anything to it, there's not any drag on the pieces that slow their movement down, the plane lost power 100% in the mean time etc. I'm probably botching the math on this a horrid amount but the point is if they just dropped out of the sky 19 minutes is a long damn time for something to happen when you're moving at 360 mph.
I mean look at how long they took to dig stuff up from Flight 800 and it was fairly close to shore and wasn't fully up to speed either.
I mean look at how long they took to dig stuff up from Flight 800 and it was fairly close to shore and wasn't fully up to speed either.
The only thing I find weird on the matter is the loss of communication and position. The actual talking loss of communication happens on all flights over the ocean due to the curve of the earth and the land based communications that we have. However these planes communicate data to air traffic control all the time. That's how they found out about the air France flight mentioned earlier
WARNING!!! Boring physics content below!!!
I had a somewhat challenging time understanding part of your post, but I think it alludes to the potential for the debris to be spread across a large area. That assumes that the plane was breaking up in mid-air. Your physics math is pretty far off though. I can see where you were going, but you made an error with the unit of measure of your 32fps gravitational free-fall figure. Remember that earth's gravity accelerates objects falling at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared (-9.8m/s^2) or 32 feet per second squared. So, in the initial second of falling towards earth, assuming zero drag, it would fall roughly 32 feet. However, that's just the first second of falling, it will continue to accelerate to a velocity beyond what the initial first second exhibited, and so on until it reaches terminal velocity due to aerodynamics. Remember that there is a large difference between acceleration and velocity. This also doesn't take into account that the plane's direction of natural aerodynamic travel will point from the tail and towards the nose (aka, the plane would fly like a dart). Because of this tendency for it to fly like this, you would also have to take into account the plane's starting forward X axis velocity of somewhere around 600-700mph (international flights usually travel that fast in my experience). So, this initial velocity would propel the plane even faster towards the ocean if the engines suddenly lost power and the pilot could not pull out of a dive.
So, physics math below!
V^2 = Vo^2+2ay, when V=final y axis velocity, Vo=initial y axis velocity, a=gravity, and y=total fall height
The final velocity right when an object that falls from 36,000'(10,972m) is actually right at 464m/s (1,522fps), assuming zero drag, which is obviously not the case in the real world, but we will keep this simple for the sake of argument.
The total fall time would be computed using:
V = Vo+at, when V=final y axis velocity, Vo=initial y axis velocity a=gravity, and t=elapsed time.
Using that formula, the total fall time for an object free-falling from 36,000feet, assuming no drag, would be only 47.3 seconds. That's a lot quicker than your estimation of 1,125 seconds. Yes, this doesn't factor in drag coefficients, which would be immense, but it also doesn't factor in the "dart flight" tendencies of the plane coupled with its initial forward velocity either. So, for simplicity sake, we will call that a wash between the two.
In short, if a plane lost power, and somehow could not glide for a while/otherwise just sort of plunged in a parabolic downward dive, theoretically it could fall to Earth within less than a minute. That means that there may not be a large area across which debris could be initially spread. Still, since junk likes to float, I would think there should be all sort of cushions, plastics, etc floating in the ocean afterwards.
Maybe there was a 300mph headwind that he forgot to mention?
I thought it was so cool a few months back when I was flying between Paris and Chicago. The monitor said our speed was something like 710 or 720mph. So close to supersonic; not that I would want to break the sound barrier in a passenger liner, but still...
Maybe there was a 300mph headwind that he forgot to mention?
I thought it was so cool a few months back when I was flying between Paris and Chicago. The monitor said our speed was something like 710 or 720mph. So close to supersonic; not that I would want to break the sound barrier in a passenger liner, but still...
Yeah, definitely not 700, 600 is the cruising speed for most commercial airliners that fly overseas these days. I believe the 777 has a cruising speed of around Mach .83
I beg to differ. I know what I saw bud; and pay close attention to detail. There have been many times while flying international where my plane has been at speeds creeping up on 700, though not quite breaching that barrier. Middle and higher 600's has happened on my flights on a few occasions. In this particular case it broke that 700 barrier which I took particular notice to. While a figure closer to 600mph flat may be more typical when speaking on averages, I am here to tell you that it does get exceeded. Keep in mind that this is ground speed, so with a tail wind, which are typically very significant at altitude, it is easily possible to exceed 700mph ground speed.
I have been hearing about a possible Hijack because of the 2 stolen passports used. I can't see the terrorist angle yet. First of all, 40 million passports stolen. People use stolen passports all the time. Secondly, terrorists take credit. So far, nobody is taking credit. Thirdly, the people using the stolen passports were Asian. I don't follow South Eastern politics. I know there are Asian extremist, but this doesn't see like their M.O. Not that I would know what their M.O. is. It just doesn't add up. Could be just a couple of Chinese looking for a way to travel and they are as unlucky as everyone else on that plane. I know one thing for sure, the Airline and Boeing would be pulling for the terrorist story to stick. The terror angle is better than getting scrutinized about your quality control and workmanship
You are correct but he's referring to ground speed. Indicated air speed and ground speed are two very different things. It all depends on if you're flying into a headwind or if you have a hell of a tail wind.
For instance in his scenario his plane was probably FLYING at lets say 550 mph with a tail wind of 150 mph (to make numbers easy). Technically aircraft fly in relative to the air around them, not in reference to the ground. Current commercial aircraft are not safe nor could most overcome the aerodynamics to break the speed of sound at that altitude.
I've been following this some and it all does seem weird. From what I remember there was a over lap of contact from one country to another so constant contact was kept but that wasn't the case here. I heard reports of an oil slick found now. I heard that it could have just disintegrated but like mentioned above, you would eventually find parts after 3 days.
I still have very little doubt that something fishy happened. It will turn up at the bottom of the ocean.
I still have very little doubt that something fishy happened. It will turn up at the bottom of the ocean.
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