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Plane lost in the Atlantic

arg-fallbackName="COMMUNIST FLISK"/>
ok but why? when planes have never been downed by lightning alone before? (not to my knowlege anyway)
 
arg-fallbackName="Shapeshifter"/>
Lighting usually ain't a problem for airplanes. There's plenty of youtube videos with planes being struck by lightning. Here's two of them:




And Here's a scientific american article about lighting striking airplanes.
It is estimated that on average, each airplane in the U.S. commercial fleet is struck lightly by lightning more than once each year.
(...)
Although passengers and crew may see a flash and hear a loud noise if lightning strikes their plane, nothing serious should happen because of the careful lightning protection engineered into the aircraft and its sensitive components. Initially, the lightning will attach to an extremity such as the nose or wing tip. The airplane then flies through the lightning flash, which reattaches itself to the fuselage at other locations while the airplane is in the electric "circuit" between the cloud regions of opposite polarity. The current will travel through the conductive exterior skin and structures of the aircraft and exit off some other extremity, such as the tail. Pilots occasionally report temporary flickering of lights or short-lived interference with instruments.
Most aircraft skins consist primarily of aluminum, which conducts electricity very well. By making sure that no gaps exist in this conductive path, the engineer can assure that most of the lightning current will remain on the exterior of the aircraft.
Click to expand...
 
arg-fallbackName="Moky"/>
Doesn't have to be lighting, it could also be faulty wiring. I'm thinking that's more likely.
 
arg-fallbackName="Shapeshifter"/>
Once again I can't think but help how random and pointless the news media are in their reporting of stuff. And the people. The French government had a minute's silence to commemorate the deaths. Of course it's a tragedy, every life lost is (that's what many people forget), but these 228 deaths are nothing compared to the thousands starving to death each day. I mean no disrespect to the families of the deceased, as I said, every life lost is sad, but the media is just too glad to report things out of the ordinary.

And the Swiss media of course: "Flight of death AF 447 - 6 Swiss were on board". Oh whatever... Do you even realize that in 2007 alone 384 people died in car accidents (there are only 7'700'200 people living here) with 5235 deeply injured? That's a "flight of death" every week, with just as much tragedy. Imagine all the children losing their parents, young people dying in car crashes with their lives ahead of them taken away...

This makes me wonder, how this even works? I guess the media usually prints, what people like to read, else, the paper wouldn't sell. So do the people really want to read this kind of thing, and more importantly, do they not want to be reminded of the everyday tragic that happens anywhere on this planet? I gave up on watching TV 5 years ago and reading the paper has no more than just an entertaining value. No wonder are they people fearing all kinds of absurd things while not realizing what really matters...
 
arg-fallbackName="COMMUNIST FLISK"/>
dont forget, that statistically planes are the safest method of travel and thus it is very unusual to lose an entire plane, and something very serious as if there is a fault with every other plane of the same model, you could have a lot of deaths on your hands
 
arg-fallbackName="Shapeshifter"/>
COMMUNIST FLISK said:
if there is a fault with every other plane of the same model, you could have a lot of deaths on your hands
Click to expand...
Fact is, there are 600 of these A330-300 in use at the moment, and it's been used since 1995. It is regarded to be extremely reliable. This was indeed a catastrophic incident, and I have no problem with it being reported and people being sad. It just strikes me that everyone gets upset by this, while just shrugging when being told that every day 24'000 people die of starvation. 24'000 people! Yeah. Not that we should panic about it, but this is of major concern, and the media should have some perspective.
 
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