Breaking News Thread

[Colorado700R]

also mode 3 IFF is UHF, there fore line of sight to an ATC reciever.  It's a big damn ocean, with no transponders to relay to the Aircontrol centers.  The curvature of the eaerth plays a massive part in this, since even at 30,000', line of sight is only ~300nm.

Satellites are capable to support tracking, but it cost mega $$$$ for that to maintain, so I doubt it's constant.


Aaron

[Krandall]

Gotcha, thanks for the info. I just figured, they were always tracked.... I didn't know there were so many factors. Makes sense now that I think about it. sad thing, hopefully it was a quick death for everyone aboard.

[Flynbyu]

There are waypoints on flights over water that aircraft fly toward. When the aircraft is getting ready to depart, a flight plan is loaded and it will fly to the designated points along the route. When autopilot is engaged, you would select "NAV" and the airplane is virtually a worry free other than checking fuel burn, etc..  Now if weather pops up along the flight path, the crew can request higher altitudes to escape turbulence, or ATC may devert you around or "thread the needle" in between storms. You can't fly over storms usually because storm tops can be much higher than your service ceiling, so you must fly around them. Over open water, ATC should have diverted them or turned them around if it was that bad. The flight was previously delayed due to bad weather.

~Brian

[Krandall]

I would bet there's going to be some big lawsuits when it's all said and done.

[Flynbyu]

EW YORK (AP) -- General Motors Corp. has a tentative deal to sell its Saturn brand to former race car driver and dealership group owner Roger Penske, both companies said Friday.

Penske has signed a memorandum of understanding that would give his dealership chain, Penske Automotive Group, Saturn's 350 dealerships, the companies said. Penske said that he expects to offer all the dealers new franchise agreements and will retain all 13,000 Saturn employees for the immediate term.

"I would expect that the model that we're putting together, the distribution model, will be profitable day one," Penske said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We'll have less costs. We'll not be in the manufacturing side."

Neither Penske nor GM would say how much Penske is paying for the brand. Penske said he expects the deal to close in the third quarter.

Penske Automotive Group also distributes Daimler AG's Smart subcompacts in the U.S., but Smart has its own dealership network and Saturn dealers will continue to exclusively distribute Saturn vehicles, Penske said.

Initially, GM will continue to produce on a contract basis the Saturn Aura sedan as well as the Vue and Outlook SUVs, the companies said. But Penske said he is in talks with manufacturers around the world about building Saturn cars in the future.

"We will be selling as many GM cars -- a many GM-produced cars -- under the Saturn brand as possible," Penske told reporters in a conference call Friday.

GM had announced plans earlier this year to sell the Saturn brand. The car maker launched Saturn in 1990 with the tagline "a different kind of car company." GM's hope was that Saturn would attract younger buyers with smaller, hipper cars to better compete with Japanese imports. It built a new plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., devoted to Saturn production.

The factory had more flexible work rules than traditional GM plants for the employees who built the cars.

Despite a cult-like following that drew thousands to annual reunions in Spring Hill, the brand never made money for GM. The factory stopped making Saturns in 2007 and currently builds only the Chevrolet Traverse.

As GM focused more on high-profit pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, Saturn began to languish in the late 1990s. Then in 2006, car buyers began to find Saturn's new models more appealing. But after a good year in 2007, sales dropped 22 percent last year as the U.S. car market withered.

Today, Saturn production is scattered at plants across the U.S. The Aura is built at GM's factory at Kansas City, Kansas. The Outlook is built in Lansing, Mich., while the Vue is built in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico.

The Saturn Sky roadster is built in Wilmington, Del., but that plant is scheduled to close in July and the model will be discontinued. The Saturn Astra was imported from GM's plant in Antwerp, Belgium, and was discontinued last year.

Penske Automotive will take over the separate Saturn parts factory in Spring Hill, which will continue to make Saturn components.

Penske Automotive owns the second-largest U.S. automobile retail chain by sales and consistently scores high in customer satisfaction surveys. the company also has race teams in the IndyCar, NASCAR and Grand-Am series. Penske received wide acclaim for heading Detroit's successful effort to host the 2006 Super Bowl.

Carl F. Galeana, who owns two Saturn dealerships north of Detroit, said Friday he was thrilled that Penske would be the Saturn buyer.

"Roger Penske is an icon in the business world," Galeana said. "I've worked with him personally. Nobody works harder than Roger Penske."

Galeana said the fact that Penske is interested in Saturn means the brand has value.

"It allows Saturn to get back to its original roots, which is to be an independent car company," he said.

GM, which filed for bankruptcy court protection on Monday, has said it plans to shed its Saturn, Hummer, Pontiac and Saab brands. Earlier this week, GM said it found a buyer for Hummer in China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co.

However, any such deal would require Chinese Commerce Ministry approval, and reports in state-run newspapers Friday said Sichuan Tengzhong had not yet obtained such an approval.

I bet you'll see Hertz rental cars go to all Saturn......Hertz car dealerships selling new Saturns too. Good news for Springhill, TN.

~Brian

[Krandall]

Awesome news!!!! I hope it works out for Saturn, they make a solid car!!! Drove one for 2 years, sold it to my friend who's still driving it, has just over 200k on the clock!

[Colorado700R]

I wish he woulda got GMC like he wanted in the first place

[Peelz]

Still surprised about Hummer. Can't wait for the next Douche in a gm who talks $hit about my truck being Unamerican.

[Flynbyu]

I wish he woulda got GMC like he wanted in the first place

That would have been REALLY expensive.

~Brian

[Flynbyu]

Still surprised about Hummer. Can't wait for the next Douche in a gm who talks $hit about my truck being Unamerican.

Parts = Japan

Assembly = US

What's so difficult about that? No big deal.

~Brian

[Peelz]

Still surprised about Hummer. Can't wait for the next Douche in a gm who talks $hit about my truck being Unamerican.

Parts = Japan

Assembly = US

What's so difficult about that? No big deal.

~Brian

It's not. But others think it is.

GM

parts: Japan, CHina, Cambodia

assembly:10% USA
90% canada/mexico.

LOL, those numbers are nowhere near exact. Just an estimate, from seeing an origin sticker on window. And slightly fudging the numbers.

[Flynbyu]

10% USA = A guy adding the MSRP when it gets off the boat from JAPAN.



~Brian

[Peelz]

10% USA = A guy adding the MSRP when it gets off the boat from JAPAN.



~Brian

quote O' the day!

[Krandall]

Think how much more cars would cost if they were built/assembled 100% in the US.

[Flynbyu]

PARIS – Air France had not acted on a recommendation to change airspeed-detecting instruments on Flight 447 before the plane crashed in turbulent weather, the French agency investigating the disaster said Saturday.

The French accident investigation agency, BEA, found the doomed plane received inconsistent airspeed readings by different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm on its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard.

No debris from the aircraft has been found and without the aircraft's black box recorders, aviation investigators have little information to help them determine what caused the crash.

Airbus had recommended to all its airline customers that they replace speed-measuring instruments known as Pitot tubes on the A330, the model that crashed, said Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the agency.

"They hadn't yet been replaced" on the plane that crashed, said Alain Bouillard, head of the French investigation. Air France declined immediate comment.

Arslanian cautioned that it is too early to draw conclusions about the role of Pitot tubes in the crash, saying Airbus had made the recommendation for "a number of reasons."

Investigators are relying on 24 messages the plane sent automatically during the last minutes of the flight to try to locate the wreckage.

The signals show the plane's autopilot was not on, officials said, but it was not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings.

In Brazil, visibility and weather conditions improved Saturday in the area searchers are focusing on but debris earlier spotted on the ocean's surface may have sunk by now.

"Debris doesn't indefinitely float, and when it sinks we will not have the means of finding them," Air Force Brig. Gen. Ramon Cardoso told reporters late Friday.

Earlier, Cardoso insisted that the debris spotted — an airplane seat, a slick of kerosene and other pieces — was from the plane. But he confirmed that Brazilian searchers had yet to recovered any of the material.

He said searchers did not pursue the reports of debris — the first sighting was reported on Tuesday — because priority was given to the hunt for survivors or the remains of victims.

Meanwhile, a German government-owned satellite spotted debris in the Atlantic on Wednesday, a German Aerospace Center spokesman said, but he added it was unclear whether the material came from the plane.

BEA chief Arslanian said the crash of Flight 447 does not mean similar plane models are unsafe, he said, adding that he told family members not to worry about flying.

"My sister and her son are going to take an A330 next week," he told a news conference at the agency's headquarters, near Paris.

He says planes can be flown safely "with damaged systems."

The flight disappeared nearly four hours after takeoff, killing all on board. It was Air France's deadliest plane crash and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001.

The investigation is increasingly focused on whether external instruments may have iced over, confusing speed sensors and leading computers to set the plane's speed too fast or slow — a potentially deadly mistake in severe turbulence.

An Air France memo to its pilots Friday about the crash said the airline is replacing the Pitot tubes on all its medium- and long-haul Airbus jets.

Pitot tubes protrude from the wing or fuselage of a plane and help measure the speed and angle of the flight, along with less vital information like outside air temperature.

They feed airspeed sensors and are heated to prevent icing.

A blocked or malfunctioning Pitot tube could cause an airspeed sensor to work incorrectly and cause the computer controlling the plane to accelerate or decelerate in a potentially dangerous fashion.

On Thursday, European plane maker Airbus sent an advisory to all operators of the A330 reminding them of how to handle the plane in conditions similar to those experienced by Flight 447.

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that advisory and the Air France memo about replacing flight-speed instruments "certainly raises questions about whether the Pitot tubes, which are critical to the pilot's understanding of what's going on, were operating effectively."

But questions about speed sensors are only one of many factors investigators are considering. Automatic transmissions from the plane showed a chain of computer system failures that indicate the plane broke apart in midair.

President Barack Obama said at a news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy Saturday that the United States had authorized all of the U.S. government's resources to help investigate the crash.

Arslanian said investigators are searching a zone of several hundred square miles (square kilometers) for the debris.

An intensive international effort so far has failed to recover any confirmed wreckage, and concern has grown about whether searchers were even looking in the right place.

It is vital to locate a beacon called a "pinger" that should be attached to the cockpit voice and data recorders, now presumed to be deep in the Atlantic, Arslanian said.

"We have no guarantee that the pinger is attached to the recorders," he said.

Holding up a pinger in the palm of his hand, he said: "This is what we are looking for in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."

Investigators are trying to determine the location of the debris in the ocean based on the height and speed of the plane at the time the last message was received. Currents could also have scattered debris far along the ocean floor, he said.

"You see the complexity of the problem," he said.

Laurent Kerleguer, an engineer specialized in the ocean floor working with the investigation team, said the zone seen as the most likely site of the debris was 15,112 feet (4,606 meters) at its deepest point and 2,835 feet (864 meters) at its shallowest.

France is sending a submarine to the area to try to detect signals from the black boxes, said military spokesman Christophe Prazuck. The Emeraude will arrive next week, he said.



I smell a HUGE lawsuit.

~Brian