Page 11 - Flight Controls News Today

That could override the pilots actual intent. what is your assessment of what could have happened base on the information we have? >> fly by wires, essentially what that means is the pilot puts in control input and those dont go directly to the control surfaces. rather they go to a computer which decides she put in this much input this is how im going flight controls. this aircraft limits what you can do because its a system that limits allowing you to pull too many gs or fly too high, for examp...

Joystick and the flight controls on the aircraft will give what the pilot wants. >> aviation consultant lieutenant ken christianson, thank you so much. >> thank you. coming up on "fox & friends," president obama says race relations are better since he took office but the american people dont agree. and neither does lieutenant colonel allen west who joins us next. and the weather is playing a frantic role despite the search for the missing airplane. well tell you more on what we know about the ...

So theres a lot of information, and many times its not just the words of the pilot and the co-pilot or the radio reception, but its the noises, the sounds, the ambient pieces of information that leave clues, give clues. >> les, let me ask you about human versus machine. these planes are so advanced that they can really fly themselves once theyre up at altitude. so when does the pilot make the decision to override an au autopilot, for example, to take control themselves and is there any push and ...

Disappear. is there any way to obscure the information recorded on those black boxes? >> other than the fact that the cockpit voice recorder only goes back two hours and the plane flew much longer and well only know what happened the last two, no way at all from the flight deck or inside the airplane that im aware of or anyone in the business has ever said you can modify whats on that flight data recorder. there are thousands of bits of information that goes back more than 30 days -- goes back a...

What it is that were going to be finding out if this is indeed the black box to recover, what information are we going to glean from this? >> well, this is really quite an incredible machine. of course, its protected you should the water from harm. as long as the water doesnt get in. but youre going to find all kinds of data there. how fast the airplane was going, youre going to find out the state of the engines, how the pressurization was operating, youll even know which direction the pilots ma...

Effort. >> okay. les, this is for you. unless you want to weigh in. m.j. asks, the angle of the plane when it turned looks like it should have went west. or should have gone west. how did it start flying south? >> thats a great question. its something that i think is confusing a lot of people. to me, i think what may have happened is if, indeed, there was a mechanical issue, it may have done something to begin the airplanes turn and may affect the flight controls. its hard to see. thats part of ...

>> reporter: if and when pieces of the plane are recovered, investigators will piece it together. this was done to the remnants of twa flight 800 in the late 90s, analyzing the fuselage, flight controls and wings would help investigators pinpoint a cause. many crucial parts of an aircraft like engine components are made of magnesium and one expert told us that in salt water magnesium can dissolve like an al a celt al a seltzer . theres also the grim task of recovering the bodies of passengers. t...

>> the pilots knew they had a serious problem. they knew the engine had failed, but they didnt know it had come off the airplane. theres no indication for that. >> look at this, look at this. blew up an engine. equipment. equipment. he blew an engine. [ bleep ] >> the leading edge slats which give the wing better lift during slow speeds during takeoff and landing are controlled hydraulically. now with no hydraulic power on the left side, the left slats retract back into the wing. >> which means ...

Happens. >> we managed to come up with a wire bundle that was in fact involved in the lead event. >> the investigators identify microscopic points on two wires and determined that they were the first to experience a fault. but its still unclear why they malfunctioned and how they caused the crash. >> the md-11 was one of the very earlier planes to have personal in-flight entertainment and so in the first class cabin area, this system drew a lot of power and on this type of airplane, it has indiv...

What would have happened? would it glide to a calm stop or when it runs out of fuel, did it end up crashing into the sea in a violent way? >> we know that aircrafts glide. we saw that in the miracle on the hudson with sully sullenberger. that could be on the co-pilot. if a progressive failure of all the electrical systems occurred. thats not unprecedented. in 1996, a value jet out of miami took off. they had a fire on board down in the cargo hold. that in the ntsb report showed a progressive fai...