Page 7 - Flight Level News Today

Routes near them but they do have room to move around and you have room to make a u-turn. if you have a wall of weather that you know will destroy your airplane you can make a u-turn in the air and get away from that. thats another possibility, another out for the pilot. >> and also, to advance on what the colonel is saying, theres no understood caution from that request that theres an urgency about it. hes not said in the request "i have a really massty thunderstorm that could well break up the...

Advisories. it is also with your own carrier. you can get weather updates and information from your own carrier and advisories en route, but youre constantly checking weather. from air traffic control, you would have a very short conversation. you would ask permission to climb to flight level 38 3,800 and they would say, in this case they said no and the reason is so much traffic. not a lot of conversation with them. not much conversation about the conditions and ask and air traffic control resp...

Fly around it or get under it, but that area is notorious for thunderstorms. might be better to turn around and go back. >> also a lot of talk about the pit tubes in which those pit tubes froze up and caused the computer systems to go out of whack. this happened several times with airbus planes. let me read something from flight safety which indicates there were several incidents. the crew of u.s. airplane was using the on board weather radar system to avoid thunderstorms. flying over japan at f...

Of the world, that flight level would be cold enough that icing could be a concern. investigators will have to eventually analyze if icing conditions on the wings came into play along the flight path. as we zoom in, this is the flight and the last known location. you can see the thunderstorms right nearby. obviously weather, if it wasnt the main factor, it was certainly no help along the path of the flight. richard, back to you. >> mark, thank you for that update for us on the weather. here is w...

Mark? >> good afternoon, richard. we continue to follow the weather situation surrounding that air asia flight 8501. on the screen now is the flight path through the java are sea from indonesia up toward singapore was the planned path. it does appear the weather played a big role in what happened with this flight. the colors you see on the screen. this is our enhanced infrared imagery. looking down on the earth at the clouds, the brighter thor colors, yellows and reds indicating the higher cloud...

Stick around so we can come back to you to continue this conversation as more details come in to us. mary, we thank you. we turn now to richard quest, cnns aviation correspondent, who joins us on the phone. richard, its hard to believe that the year is not out yet, were talking about another missing aircraft. we dont know the details here, but an airasia flight has lost contact with air traffic controllers. what jumps out at you right now? >> well, what will jump out at me, aisha, is first of al...

Is dependent on altitude. you also have situations in which very, very heavy weather can attenuate, what we call attenuate the radar signal, interfear with the radar signal from an aircraft. particularly if the air trast loses electrical power or goes below a certain altitude. >> losing contact 42 minutes after take-off, thats quickly, would you say? >> yes, but this aircraft can handle 500 miles per hour. we are talking a considerable distance. from climb-out to flight level altitudes, 28, 32,0...

Transpoppeders. theres a military identification friend or foe. it allows you to identify your friends and then everything else. and they may be foes but also might be a civilian airliner. what happens then is you have to rely on the training and the command structure of the people who collectively have their hands on the trigger to make a decision, well, issing this particular blip. we know its not a friend. but is it just a civilian airliner? well, its at 33,000 feet on a known corridor. we do...

Air space. that shouldnt be a surprise. the transponter is switched off. we know this from flight level 350,000, we know that is where it was at. that was the last air traffic control that we had. and it climbs to 39,000 feet. >> sit coming. here we go. >> all right. so at this point, that point is at vietnamese air space.

Flight plan to skirt radar detection? >> well, they know where radar is. any pilot who has flown these areas will know exactly the limit of the radar. they get handed from one radar zone to the next. anybody certainly would know the limits. i must say, if you look at the map and if we run the animation again, i think its a long shot that it would have skirted radar simply because this is highly sensitive area. its the northern part of indonesia, its near the coast with thailand. there are countr...