AF447 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris has not arrived this morning; contact was lost some four hours into the flight, after the airplane flew through what was described by French officials as stormy weather. The last signal from the airplane, if news reports can be believed, was an indication of some electrical fault. A journalist mentioned lightning. At cruising altitude? Yet if it was lightning, I cannot help but be reminded of the fact that the Airbus 330 uses composite materials, carbon composites in particular, extensively; these have a higher electrical resistance than metal, and thus would be heated greatly by a lightning strike; and that experts I heard interviewed over the years said it’s just a matter of time before this will cause a major accident.
Jun 012009
[…] bet was on lightning, but perhaps I was wrong: it appears that there is good reason to believe that the […]