After the earthquake on the Noto Peninsula in Japan on New Year’s Day, a Coast Guard plane was expected to go to provide disaster relief. It was preparing to take off at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. However, it misunderstood the air traffic control instructions and entered the runway too early. The Japan Airlines Airbus A350 flight that was about to land was unable to dodge and collided with it. In the end, 6 of the Coast Guard aircraft’s crew members and 5 died, but fortunately, the entire A350 aircraft, including 379 passengers and crew members, escaped safely.
In the end, the cabin part of the JAL A350 was completely burned to ashes, which was shocking. 379 people were able to evacuate the aircraft in an orderly and fast manner, which made the world admire JAL’s well-trained and orderly Japanese people. This air crash also proved that the A350 The safety of the carbon fiber fuselage, on the other hand, reminds all old airports of the importance of upgrading warning systems as soon as possible.
Both the Airbus A350 and Boeing’s 787 originally chose to use carbon fiber composite fuselages. Although they are lighter and more fuel-efficient, can avoid metal fatigue problems and reduce maintenance needs, they have also caused considerable doubts, including in air crashes. Will the carbon fiber material burn to ashes too quickly and fail to protect the safety of passengers?
The 787 has had some minor accidents in the past, but none of them really tested the cabin’s structure and overall fire protection capabilities. This actual plane crash was the first time that the safety of a carbon fiber composite fuselage was verified in an actual plane crash, including its ability to withstand impact and fire prevention. In the end, the carbon fiber fuselage was really burned to ashes, but there was enough The time was delayed until all passengers survived, just like the original test situation.
53% of the total weight of the A350 is made of carbon fiber composite materials, and almost the entire outer structure is made of carbon fiber composite materials, including the fuselage, most of the tail, wings and part of the nose. In comparison, the Boeing 777 has a traditional aluminum fuselage. In 2013, the fuselage of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 caught fire, killing three passengers. Comparing the two crashes, it seems that the safety of carbon fiber composite materials is not Poor. The Haneda plane crash also proved that the carbon fiber composite fuselage can resist impact and maintain the integrity of the fuselage to facilitate escape.
The melting point of aluminum is 600 degrees Celsius. If it exceeds this temperature, it will melt and lose its structural support. Carbon fiber can withstand 6 times the high temperature. Carbon fiber materials will not melt, but will only be charred and burned. Therefore, Airbus tests believe that Carbon fiber materials are more fire-resistant than aluminum, but after being exposed to high temperatures for a certain period of time, the structure of the carbon fiber composite material will still be damaged. The binder resin will burn off first, and then the burning rate will slow down.
Airports should be technologically updated
Although the fire resistance allowed all personnel to survive the evacuation and the safety was confirmed, it may be difficult to put out the fire afterwards. The A350 fuselage of the Haneda crash burned for 6 hours before it was extinguished. In any case, this experience will become an important assessment for the aviation industry on carbon fiber aircraft, and will also provide a better understanding of how to deal with related air crashes in the future.
On the other hand, as for the airport, there may be quite a lot of details that can be reviewed. Japan has issued an order requiring air traffic controllers to change the calls and no longer give standby sequence numbers to avoid this misunderstanding. But the most important thing is that the airport should There are technological updates to avoid human negligence and errors.
On airplanes, there is already a fairly mature mid-air collision avoidance warning system to prevent pilots from accidentally flying in the same air layer due to various errors, resulting in mid-air collision. However, on the airport ground, there is no equivalent level of detection, warning, and warning systems. We manage software and hardware to avoid similar mistakes. As a result, the driver’s vision is still used to avoid accidental collisions. For example, in the Haneda Airport crash, the Coast Guard’s small aircraft was not visible when landing at night. Too late.
Therefore, airports must also fully install radars, dynamic sensors or cameras, etc., and use management software. Once an accidental entry into the runway occurs, a warning will be issued immediately to notify air traffic controllers and drivers. There are 35 airports in the United States equipped with radars, satellites, etc. The ASDE-X system is used with navigation tools to track airport ground movements, but many airports around the world have not yet installed similar systems.
On the other hand, the anti-collision system on the aircraft should also be upgraded to detect ground targets. Airbus revealed in 2018 that it was jointly developing the ground warning system SURF-A with Honeywell, but it has not yet announced when the system will be developed. Online, the cost is unknown.
The detailed cause of the Haneda crash is still under investigation and will serve as an important lesson for improving flight safety. It is expected that various safety systems will become more mature and introduced faster, so that such accidents will be completely prevented from happening in the future.
(Source of the first picture: Dazhi Image)
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2024-01-12 00:12:20
