Page 24 - Engine Performance News Today

Way. and those black boxes that we know so well, what will tell us about what happened early this morning? will that tell us better data than what were getting right now? >> we may not have the complete picture here, in fact we know its not. when we get the cockpit voice recorder, we will find all the date too, the air speed, heading, what was the flap speed, what was the configuration of the flaps, engine performance, what was the problem with the engine, did it degrade at all, what about the t...

Reporting would suggest that maybe this crew was in fact trying to maintain control of this plane as it descended. we know theres some reporting out there that perhaps the pilot had said hed try to make it to the nearest airfield. if they managed to get this down in an orderly descent down to the sinai desert, we dont kno. so the issue is for investigators to try to piece it back together again. >> speaking about that, tom, we know that the airplane was going at about 400 knots and it slowed dow...

In what were the exact parameters of the engine performance, inputs into the pilot system. all of those different pieces of information are going to be critical to figuring out, why did this plane descend from 38,000 feet down to 6,000 feet? why was there no -- at all, no deviation on that path? it flew straight into a mountain. why was the crew not responding to air traffic controllers asking why are you suddenly descending? were they incapacitated? was there a catastrophic event on board that ...

Cockpit. giving them hundreds of pieces data parameters how this plane was performing. were talking about alt, altitude, speed, vertical acceleration, head, pitch, roll. looking at engine performance, autopilot. whether there was, in fact a cabin pressure issue. all should be included in the flight data recorder. black boxes, there are various forms of black boxes. they dont all look like this come in various shapes and sizes. so i cant tell you exactly what that one looked like on that particul...

Be looking at what would have caused the engine to fail. unfortunately right after takeoff is the most dangerous time for engine performance. its not been running for a i while, so it could be anything. you dont know whether it was a fuel issue an engine issue or mechanical issue. >> i know you have had your own -- im sorry. go ahead. i didnt mean to interrupt you. >> what we do know is that harrison did a wonderful job of putting it down safely and away from any populating areas. and that itsel...

Its not fractured it would not appear. you have no sign of fire people coming off in a very orderly fashion, escorted by as you can see firefighters. to your point about the investigation now, this will clearly be an investigation led by the ntsb and faa to determine what happened. this may be a really easy one to figure out. if the pilot says listen we suddenly were skidding right off the end of the runway then the other dynamics will play into this. what was your speed? were you coming in at a...

Is hampering the search for flight 8501s flight data recorders. we know they contain valuable information. >> here are a few things you need to know about black boxes. first of all, as we said about 10,000 types they are not black, they are orange. they are located in the tail section of an airbus a-320. they store about 25 hours of information about the planes altitude air speed, engine performance, other data. then theres the cockpit voice recorder. it has two hours of interaction with air tra...

Another set of altitude data coming out. making sure i had this correct this time of around. in the course of a typical crash investigation, does altitude and these kind of basic facts, it seems, does it change this much? >> no, it does not. and the reason it doesnt, in most investigations you do have a couple things that apparently are missing here. one is you have reliable air traffic control data. and at a minimum, you have the air traffic controllers voices on a air traffic control transcrip...

Pinging, correct? >> that is correct. you can do that. it did take them, i think, two years. i dont believe they ever found the cockpit voice recorder on that particular accident. what they did find was the flight data recorder. >> okay. >> so it is going to be extremely difficult, even if you do find the location, to retrieve the boxes. >> so that brings up a really important question. what would be the different information that one would garner from each of those two different devices? >> oka...

Rehearsed in cyber space. >> i think law enforcement officials are looking at those pilots homes to understand their broader relationships, their e-mails, their computer files. >> reporter: what remains unanswered is what route the plane followed as it went west. to track the path, officials are now relying heavily on a technology that was never designed to locate an aircraft. the 777 has an antenna that automatically sends bursts of data. routinely that data is by design mechanical, like how mu...