Page 73 - Flight Path News Today

So theyll want to examine and reconstruct the aircraft on land. but the black boxes are the prime resource of data in any aircraft accident. and in fact its so sophisticated now, theyll be able to reproduce the actual flight the last minutes of the flight in a simulator, so that investigators can see precisely the flight path that this aircraft took in his last few minutes. >> my colleague richard quest and i were commenting yet, in light of the airline accidents this year with so much mystery, ...

All the factors at play in this investigation. one of the big focuses here is going to be the flight path, tom. >> absolutely. they want to find out if anything unusual happened in that little bit less than an hour that the plane was flying. and then critically what led to this plane disappearing from radar there and then showing up here in the red area where they found the debris? 60 to 120 miles is now the estimate of where this debris is from there. thats a big range even though a lot of wild...

And its victims. here to discuss the challenges ahead is cnn safety analyst and former faa safety inspector david soucie. theyve called off the search because the weather is too bad. the weather has been bad for several days now. thats why were talking about this missing plane. this is the zone were talking about. i want it talk about the debris location. when you look at the flight path and then where the debris location is. what does it tell bus what may have happened in the last moments of th...

Can change so radically and so rapidly that they really have to be on their toes. now, with regard to your question about where were most of the airplane flight aware and these other databases that track aircraft seem to be reasonably accurate. and we find that there were scores and scores of air traffic to the south of the thunderstorm line. in other words, circumventing the distal end of it. only four to six aircraft were attempting to fly along the flight path during the time frame that air a...

Actual site where the pilots requested deviation in the flight path to get around that storm. it is off the coast of the western end of borneo island. that is close to the flight path of the plane. all of the pieces coming together with the tragic but many say unsurprising conclusion john. >> what now, andrew for the investigators? >> reporter: well they have to get on-site and get to the sea and find out where the main bulk of the fuselage is. there are obviously 162 souls on board of plane. th...

And particularly during the monsoonal season. aircraft fly there all of the time. this particular captain had 20,000 hours of experience. and the first officer, 2,500 hours, just with airasia. so its likely even more experienced than that. they know this weather pattern, and they know whats safe and whats not safe. and its traversed all of the time. the radar plot of the air traffic in that area shows three other aircraft following the same exact flight path ahead of 8501. they successfully trav...

And right now were wait for the arrival of the indonesian president to meet both the families and were expecting him also to speak to the press. a very very sad, sad day for this country. a tragic end to the mystery of flight 8501. christine? >> thanks andrew stevens for that in surabaya indonesia i want to keep the focus on the area where the debris was found, only six miles from the where the plane was last seen on radar and at the southeastern end of the expanded search grid so did expanding ...

Thunderstorms popped up. and if they actually -- the director could let me an meat on the screen i can point out what im talking about here. its right in the middle. that line of storms that goes east to west above the letters there with the java sea. that is where we are looking at this line right there. that is the line of storms that they had to fry through. that is where they found the debris during the last 12 hours. so there was a pilot who saw it those storms were exploding quickly right ...

Into airasia? i think its too early to say but clearly that will be a question on peoples minds. >> but, scott, youre only as strong as your weakest link right? lets say the air traffic controllers were not the best right? thats possible. should that be part of the investigation? >> im sure it will be part of the investigation, but the thing that we have to keep in mind is for good or ill the pilots are ultimately responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft. and in the united states if i ...

Cloud tops here the deeper oranges and reds meaning that we have colder cloud tops higher up and thats where we have the particularly dangerous thunderstorms. this is monsoon season where they see the worst of the weather in terms of heavy rain fall certainly thunderstorms and strong winds. so, this is the area of concern and as you can see when we lost contact, a lot of these very strong cloud tops in the area, these purples, these oranges and reds which would indicate very strong thunderstorms...