{"id":26570,"date":"2009-06-01T08:56:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T08:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2009\/06\/01\/a-passenger-plane-is-missing-o\/"},"modified":"2009-06-01T08:56:11","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T08:56:11","slug":"a-passenger-plane-is-missing-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/01\/a-passenger-plane-is-missing-o\/","title":{"rendered":"A passenger plane is missing over the Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"

.. this is being reported by the BBC<\/a>. The plane has 226 people flying out of Rio de Janeiro to france. An automatic mesage was received from the plan regarding a “short circuit” following turbulence, suggesting that the aircraft was struck by lightning.<\/p>\n

Since this is a disappearance of an aircraft over the ocean, it is reminiscent of the Comet maneno, which you may know about.<\/p>\n

Regarding the analysis of a Comet air liner near Elba in the 1950s …<\/p>\n

The Attorney General, Sir Lionel Heald QC, told the first day of the inquiry that initial suspicions of sabotage were unfounded.<\/p>\n

He said the painstaking analysis of thousands of fragments of the Comet involved in the Elba crash had revealed that the damage was caused by a fault in the plane itself.<\/p>\n

In what Sir Lionel called “one of the most remarkable pieces of scientific detective work ever done”, a team led by Sir Arnold Hall, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, subjected models, full-size aircraft and replicas to the most elaborate and searching tests ever carried out on an airliner.<\/p>\n

One fragment collected from the scene of the crash showed that a crack had developed due to metal fatigue near the radio direction finding aerial window, situated in the front of the cabin roof.<\/p>\n

The investigators found that a small weakness such as this would quickly deteriorate under pressure, and would rapidly lead to a sudden and general break-up of the fuselage.<\/p>\n

In tests on another Comet aircraft, Sir Lionel added, the investigators had found that up to 70% of the aircraft’s ultimate stress under pressure was concentrated on the corners of the aircraft’s windows.<\/p>\n

Sir Lionel said the findings of the investigation would lead to a general improvement in the safety of passenger air travel. <\/p>\n

bbc<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

.. this is being reported by the BBC. The plane has 226 people flying out of Rio de Janeiro to france. An automatic mesage was received from the plan regarding a “short circuit” following turbulence, suggesting that the aircraft was struck by lightning. Since this is a disappearance of an aircraft over the ocean, it … Continue reading A passenger plane is missing over the Atlantic<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6Uy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}