Air France A330 F-GZCP Flight AF447 GIG-CDG Crashed Into the Atlantic Ocean All 228 POB Killed

[Denny Yen 0]

I checked CNN yesterday and they did not even mention it.

Le Monde was the 1st to break the news...I remember hearing it on Skynews TV...and last night's CNN headlines was dominated by Toyota's grandson taking over as the co's president.

[Denny Yen 0]

http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/cha...flight-447.html

 

June 24, 2009

Suspicions deepen over Air France Flight 447

 

 

Three weeks on from the crash of Air France flight 447, it is clear that the airline and the Airbus company are going to face some hard questions over the worst air disaster since 2001.

 

The latest leaks from the airline and its pilots indicate that Air France and Airbus were aware earlier than they have publicly admitted of serious problems with the speed instruments on the long-range A330 and A340 aircraft. Faulty speed readings were reported automatically by the Air France plane at the start of a series of failures that ended with the plane breaking up at night over the Atlantic with 228 aboard early on June1 .

 

The accident investigators have yet to reach any finding, but the consensus among pilots is that erroneous speed data probably confused the flight computers and left the pilots with a plane that would have been near impossible to fly.

 

As more documents have come out this week, Air France confirmed to us today that a maintenance team had been sent to await the arrival of AF 447 at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport during the night of the crash. They were supposed to correct faulty pitot tubes, the outside sensors that register the speed of the oncoming air.

 

The dispatch of the mechanics was a standard response to the automatic alerts (known as ACARS) that reported the erroneous speed data to Air France's Paris base. At the time, the airline did not yet know that the aircraft had crashed just over four minutes after its satellite transmitter sent the first ACARS alert.

 

The boss of Air France said last Friday that the airline had experienced a series of faulty speed incidents on its long-range Airbuses beginning last August. But last night, company documents reached the internet showing that the problem was known before that. Eurocockpit, a site run by professional pilots, including some from Air France, published an Air France maintenance notice, NT-34-029, dated last August 20. This said that at that time there had already been six cases of malfunctioning pitot probes on the company's A340 aircraft, the bigger brother of the A330 [see extract below]. These were said to be due to water and ice. Eurocockpit, which has been the source of the main leaks from the airline since the crash, said work on the technical notice had started in June last year (see full documents here).

 

Air France 447 was the 36th known occurrence of faulty speed readings on the A330 and A340 series, said the Eurocockpit association. The 35 previous incidents followed the same sequence as those reported by AF447, except that the pilots were able to recover control and return to normal flight.

 

The Eurocockpit pilots voiced amazement that the August 2008 technical note says that the faulty pitot tubes would have "nil operational impact". They called this outrageous. "How can it be imagined that there would be no operational consequence from the loss of so much information and vital systems?" it asked. "We have consulted the pilots who had these pitot problems. All told us that it took a big dose of immediate lucidity to avoid distraction by the stall warnings which came with the incident and face up to the deluge of alarms...." Maintaining control of AF447, at night in a tropical storm with faulty information, would have been a monumental task, the pilots said.

 

The pilots are obviously keen that the crew of AF447 should not be blamed for the crash. The flight recorders still lie on the floor of the Atlantic with only days left before their locator batteries run out. It is early to pronounce on the cause of this rare disaster, but the evidence is building up and it does not look good for Air France and Airbus. The accident investigation bureau, the BEA, is to produce a preliminary report by June 30.

 

Below is an extract from the August 2008 Air France note setting out the pitot problem and remedial action to be taken by engineers. AF447 reported the same auto-pilot disengagement and disconnection of the computerised flight controls as set out here at least 10 months earlier (THT is Air Tahiti Nui, whose aircraft are maintained by Air France).

[Pieter C. 5]

Also KAL007 - Soviets were suspected to have deliberately hidden the BB because the CVR showed that the crew was unaware of straying into Soviet airspace and did not notice warning tracers fired from the MIG.

 

Wasn't it a Sukhoi SU-15 ?

[S V Choong 4]

Wasn't it a Sukhoi SU-15 ?

Yes indeed it was according to this:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

[S V Choong 4]

Bodies of Air France captain, steward found

 

(CNN) -- Search crews have recovered the bodies of the flight captain and a steward from the Air France flight that crashed off the coast of Brazil.

 

The two flight members are among the victims that have been identified, Air France said in a statement Thursday.

 

About a dozen victims have been identified among roughly 50 bodies recovered from the crash of Flight 447, which killed 228 people on June 1, authorities in Brazil said this week.

 

Crews continue to search for bodies, wreckage and flight-data recorders that apparently rest deep on the ocean floor. Data from the recorders may be crucial in helping investigators determine what caused the plane to crash.

 

Autopsies conducted on some of the 50 bodies found so far show they suffered broken bones, including arms, legs and hips, Brazilian authorities have told French investigators, according to Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the French accident investigation board.

 

Such injuries suggest that the plane broke apart in midair, experts have said.

 

Asked about that theory, Air France Chief Executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told France's RTL radio this week that he would not go that far.

 

Air France plans to pay relatives of the victims an initial compensation equivalent to about $24,500, or 17,500 euros, for each victim, Gourgeon has said.

 

The company is also providing families with counseling, he said.

 

The were 32 different nationalities present on Flight 447.

 

The airliner said this week that it has been in touch with about 1,800 relatives of the people who died when the Airbus A330 crashed, but that it has been difficult tracing the relatives of all 228 victims.

 

"The modern world is different and we often have only a cell phone, and as you can imagine, this cell phone is unfortunately in the aircraft," Gourgeon said. "So we probably (will put in) more hours to access all the relatives."

 

"What I know is that the investigators would like to know the causes of death," Gourgeon said. "That knowledge of causes of death will better clarify what exactly happened. Were the victims killed before the impact, or during impact?"

 

Searchers have found dozens of pieces of debris in the water and think they know the general location of the wreck, but Arslanian said this week that there is a chance the entire aircraft may never be found.

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/0...rash/index.html

Edited June 26, 2009 by S V Choong

[iwan 3]

if the plane slammed into the seas..it must have completely disintegrated right?

[Yusoff 1]

if the plane slammed into the seas..it must have completely disintegrated right?

From autopsies conducted on the recovered bodies, investigators believed that the plane had broken up in the air before hitting the water...

 

....

Autopsies conducted on some of the 50 bodies found so far show they suffered broken bones, including arms, legs and hips, Brazilian authorities have told French investigators, according to Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the French accident investigation board.

 

Such injuries suggest that the plane broke apart in midair, experts have said.

....

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/0...rash/index.html

 

 

More developing news...

 

Brazil calls off search for Air France crash victims

(June 27, 2009 -- Updated 0910 GMT (1710 HKT))

 

(CNN) -- The Brazilian military said late Friday it is calling off the search for bodies of passengers and crew from the Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic earlier this month.

 

It was unlikely that any more bodies would be found, the military said.

 

So far, search teams have found 51 of the 228 people who died when Air France Flight 447 plunged into the sea June 1, according to the military.

 

They have also found more than 600 parts and structural components of the plane, along with luggage, the military said.

 

The bodies were handed to Brazilian authorities for identification while the debris and luggage were given to French aviation investigators, the military said.

 

In the 26 days of the search operation, the Brazilian air force used 12 planes along with aircraft from France, the United States and Spain, the military said. The Brazilian navy used 11 ships.

 

Ships remain in the search area hundreds of miles northeast of Brazil in an effort to find the flight data recorders, the Brazilian military said.

 

Last week investigators said they were running out of time to find the recorders which could prove crucial to working out what caused the disaster.

 

Officials remain in the dark about what caused the airliner to plunge into the sea off the coast of Brazil. The wreckage is believed to be about 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash.

 

A French submarine and other vessels are searching for black boxes by attempting to trace their locator beacons, which send out acoustic pulses, or "pings," to searchers.

 

The U.S. Navy has contributed two high-tech acoustic devices -- known as towed pinger locators -- which have been attached to French tug boats and can search to a maximum depth of 20,000ft (6,100 meters).

 

The firm which makes the recorders, Honeywell Aerospace, has told CNN it has a 100 percent recovery record from air accidents.

 

Honeywell said it was hard to estimate how much battery life the locator beacon on the recorders had, as it depended on the conditions, but it is typically around 30 days.

 

One recorder taped radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit, such as the pilot's voices and engine noises.

 

Sounds of interest could be engine noise, stall warnings, landing gear extension and retraction, and other clicks and pops. From these sounds engine revs per minute, system failures, speed and the time at which certain events occurred could often be determined, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

 

CNN's Claudia Dominguez in Atlanta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

Edited June 27, 2009 by Yusoff

[LeeCH 0]

Exactly 30 day on and no signs of recorders. This accident may go unresolved forever. Very sad.

[Fizree Helmi 0]

Exactly 30 day on and no signs of recorders. This accident may go unresolved forever. Very sad.

 

Hope that this accident will never happen to other Airbus A330 and A340 or any other airplanes even though the 2 black boxes will never been found. This exact cause of accident will always be a mystery to all of us.

[flee 5]

Airbus crash: finger points at flight computers

 

Too much technology for pilots?

 

BOFFINS examining the Air France crash off Brazil are focusing on the possibility that it was caused by a series of computer failures.

 

If the findings are confirmed it could have big implications for computer-controlled flight.

 

The plane which crashed was an A330, equipped with fly-by-wire controls. With no direct mechanical links between the pilot's controls and the flaps, ailerons and rudder, everything was computer driven.

 

Fly-by-wire systems relieve pilots of interpreting and responding to the avalanche of data available in a modern aircraft, constantly fine-tuning the aircraft's control surfaces and engines accordingly. But like any computer, these flight-control systems rely on accurate input.

 

In May a Russian Sukhoi 30 MKI military jet crashed following a malfunction in the fly-by-wire system which could have sent the advanced fighter into an uncontrollable spin. In this case the system had quadruple redundancy which was supposed to stop all systems failing at once.

 

The international team of boffins looking at the Air France crash believe it may have been caused by a cascade of system failures. This began with malfunctioning airspeed sensors, causing the flight computer to think the plane was about to stall thus speeding up the plane to the point where it was starting to break up. The pilots tried to reboot the computer but would have been left with less-sophisticated backup systems.

 

If fly-by-wire systems are found to be the cause of the crash then there could be ramifications for the the entire airline industry. Boeing and Airbus are churning out fly-by-wire aircraft, including the upcoming generation of superliners.

 

If the crash is found to be a philosophical fault with the system there could be calls to modify the technology significantly. This could send the new generation of aircraft back to the drawing board, not to mention existing aircraft back to the workshop.

 

What is now being considered is how much technical knowledge is required by pilots. Clearly it has to extend beyond switching the system off and turning it on again while trying to control the plane.

 

Airbus has a long history working with fly-by-wire systems. Its 320 aircraft was the first to fly with the technology. According to briefings we obtained, the Airbus has two dissimilar computer systems PRM and SEC to operate as a backup.

 

The SEC system is apparently simpler than the PRM version. There are four different types of controlling software which is also used as a backup. Three of these dual computers are stored in different parts of the plane.

 

According to the briefing papers, the system is supposed to provide the pilots with stability while they restore the computers from back-up. Again they can only do this if the instruments are giving accurate readings in the first place.

 

If the investigation finds that computer failures caused the crash, then in future at least one of the pilots will need the skills of a geek to make sure everything is working ok.

 

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1431911/airbus-crash-finger-flight-computers

[flee 5]

Air France plane crashed intact - report

 

(CNN) -- The Air France plane that crashed last month with 228 people aboard "did not break up or become destroyed in flight," the French air investigation agency announced Thursday.

 

"The plane went straight down, almost vertically, towards the surface of the water, very very fast."

 

The Airbus A330 was unable to fly on autopilot at the time of the crash, air accident investigator Alain Bouillard told reporters in Paris.

 

That was because the autopilot was not receiving speed, wind or direction information, he said.

 

"These tell us that the plane has to be, in this case, directed by the pilot," he said. He did not immediately say if the pilots were in control of Air France 447.

 

Investigators will continue searching for the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder -- commonly known as "black boxes" -- until July 10, he said.

 

"They normally give a signal for 30 days. We will keep listening another 10 days," he said.

 

Flight 447 went down in stormy weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

 

Brazil called off the search for bodies on June 27, having found 51 of the 228 people who died when the plunged into the sea June 1, according to the military.

 

Investigators have also found more than 600 parts and structural components of the plane, along with luggage, Bouillard said.

 

The wreckage is believed to be about 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash.

 

A French nuclear submarine and other vessels are searching for the data recorders by attempting to trace their locator beacons, which send out acoustic pulses, or "pings," to searchers.

 

The U.S. Navy has contributed two high-tech acoustic devices -- known as towed pinger locators -- which have been attached to French tug boats and can search to a maximum depth of 20,000ft (6,100 meters).

 

The firm which makes the recorders, Honeywell Aerospace, has told CNN it has a 100 percent recovery record from air accidents.

 

Honeywell said it was hard to estimate how much battery life the locator beacon on the recorders had, as it depended on the conditions, but it is typically around 30 days.

 

The American National Transportation and Safety Board says on its Web site that large commercial aircraft and some smaller commercial, corporate, and private aircraft were typically fitted with data recorders.

 

One recorder taped radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit, such as the pilot's voices and engine noises, the NTSB said.

 

Sounds of interest could be engine noise, stall warnings, landing gear extension and retraction, and other clicks and pops. From these sounds engine revs per minute, system failures, speed and the time at which certain events occurred could often be determined, the NTSB said.

 

Communications with air traffic control, automated radio weather briefings and conversations between the pilots and ground or cabin crew were also recorded.

 

The other recorder monitored at least 88 important parameters such as time, altitude, airspeed, heading and aircraft attitude, the NTSB said.

 

In addition, some could record the status of more than 1,000 other in-flight characteristics ranging from flap position to smoke alarms.

 

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/02/air.france.report/index.html

[Fizree Helmi 0]

Straight down!!! How can this be? Forgive me if I'm wrong but if the plane went straight down to the sea, can the 51 bodies be recover intact?

 

One of the episode of air crash investigation (which episode I can't remember) a plane crash straight down to the sea, and a tin was found crush flat at the sea bed near the wreckage of the plane. The investigator of that crash said that the plane hit the sea like hitting a concrete wall making the tin become crush like that.

 

I'm a bit shocked that the French air investigation announced like that.

[Ja Singh 2]

Straight down!!! How can this be? Forgive me if I'm wrong but if the plane went straight down to the sea, can the 51 bodies be recover intact?

 

One of the episode of air crash investigation (which episode I can't remember) a plane crash straight down to the sea, and a tin was found crush flat at the sea bed near the wreckage of the plane. The investigator of that crash said that the plane hit the sea like hitting a concrete wall making the tin become crush like that.

 

I'm a bit shocked that the French air investigation announced like that.

quite true eh, non of the wreckage pieces seemed to be crushed like cans. Even the galley was fairly intach with SU's still in place.

[Ja Singh 2]

French: Air France plane hit the sea belly first

 

LE BOURGET, France (AP) — An intact Air France Flight 447 slammed belly first into the Atlantic Ocean at a very high speed, a top French investigator said Thursday, adding that problems with the plane's speed sensors were not the direct cause of the crash.

 

Alain Bouillard, who is leading the investigation into the June 1 crash for the French accident agency BEA, says the speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, were "a factor but not the only one."

 

"It is an element but not the cause," Bouillard told a news conference in Le Bourget outside Paris. "Today we are very far from establishing the causes of the accident."

 

The Airbus A330-200 plane was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it went down just after midnight in a remote area of the Atlantic, 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) off Brazil's mainland and far from radar coverage.

 

The BEA released its first preliminary findings on the crash Thursday, calling it one of history's most challenging plane crash investigations. Yet the probe, which has operated without access to the plane's flight data and voice recorders, appears to have unveiled little about what really caused the accident.

 

"Between the surface of the water and 35,000 feet, we don't know what happened," Bouillard admitted. "In the absence of the flight recorders, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions."

 

Bouillard said the plane "was not destroyed in flight" and appeared to have hit "belly first," gathering speed as it dropped thousands of feet through the air.

 

He said investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."

 

One of the automatic messages emitted by the Air France plane indicates it was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilize the plane's control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over.

 

The Pitots have not been "excluded form the chain that led to the accident," he said.

 

Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said although investigators seem to know very little about what happened due to "a horrendous lack of evidence" it was significant that the plane landed the right way up.

 

"It suggests they were in some kind of flight attitude," he said.

 

But he warned that "without finding the black boxes it's going to be phenomenally difficult, maybe impossible, to determine what happened."

 

Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting that passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water. The pilots apparently also did not send any mayday calls.

 

He said there was "no information" suggesting a need to ground the world's fleet of more than 600 A330 planes as a result of the crash.

 

"As far as I'm concerned there's no problem flying these aircraft," he said.

 

A burst of automated messages emitted by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search, which has failed to locate the plane's black boxes in the vast ocean expanse. The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling daily as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the tragic accident may never be known.

 

The black boxes — which are in reality bright orange — are resting somewhere on an underwater mountain range filled with crevasses and rough, uneven terrain. Bouillard said the search for the plane's black boxes has been extended by 10 days through July 10.

 

The remote location, combined with the mystery of what happened to the plane — the pilots had either no time or no radio frequency to make a mayday call — makes the inquiry exceptionally challenging.

 

Bouillard said French investigators have yet to receive any information from Brazilian authorities about the results of the autopsies on the 51 bodies recovered from the site.

 

Families of the victims met with officials from BEA, Air France and the French transport ministry before the report was released Thursday. An association of families addressed a letter to the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, demanding answers to several questions about the plane.

 

Investigators should have an easier time recovering debris and black boxes in the crash of a Yemeni Airbus 310 with 153 people on board that went down Tuesday just nine miles (14.5 kilometers) north of the Indian Ocean island-nation of Comoros.

 

Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting that passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water.

 

i am a bit confused with tha statement. As far as I know you are not supposed to inflate your life jacket in the plane but only once you step out of it. This is to prevent drowning in a metal tube as if your jacket was inflated inside the metal tube, you will be pinned against the ceiling and cannot swim underwater, as in the case of many drownings in the ethopian crash where they were tols not to inflate their jackets but those who did ended up drowning.

 

Any light?

Edited July 2, 2009 by jadivindra

[Denny Yen 0]

Prelim crash report

http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/library/f-cp090601e1.en.pdf

 

Air France Flight 447 struck sea surface on belly in one piece

French investigators have released an interim report providing details on the crash of Air France Flight 447, which plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1 killing 228 people.

 

The report does not give a definite reason for the crash of the Airbus A330, and investigators issued a disclaimer: "This document has been prepared on the basis of the initial information gathered during the investigation, without any analysis and - given the continuing absence of wreckage, the flight recorders, radar tracks and direct testimony - without any description of the circumstances of the accident. Some of the points covered may evolve with time."

 

The report does say that the plane struck the ocean intact.

 

"Visual examination showed that the airplane was not destroyed in flight; it appears to have struck the surface of the sea in a straight line with high vertical acceleration," the report says.

 

Investigator Alain Bouillard described it this way: "The plane went straight down ... towards the surface of the water, very very fast. ... We were able to see that the plane hit the surface of the water flat. Therefore everything was pushed upwards -- everthing was pushed from the bottom to the top."

 

AFP explains it this way: "The plane appears to have hit the surface of the water in flying position with a strong vertical acceleration," he added, explaining that the plane hit the water belly-first.

 

Details leaked to the media about the autopsies of the victims showed that they had broken bones in their legs and hips, suggesting an impact while they were seated. French investigators say they have not seen the autopsy reports.

 

The report also confirms that the plane had speed problems, which was already known, and it adds this new detail: The crew tried to contact a control tower in Dakar, Senegal, three times without success.

 

The crew's attempts to connect to the Dakar control system were refused because the control system detected the absence of a flight plan for the aircraft or because "there was a mismatch between the flight plan filed for this registration number, the flight number and the reported position."

 

Airbus does not have to ground its fleet, an official told Reuters. "The information available today does not indicate any such need," Philip Swan, an adviser to France's BEA air accident board, said at a news conference. "They have flown tens of million of hours, and there are 660 of them flying."

 

The hunt for the aircraft's black boxes will go on until June 10.

 

(Read the full report. PDF.)

 

Following are facts established in the report:

 

 

• The crew possessed the licenses and ratings required to undertake the flight,
  
• The airplane possessed a valid Certificate of Airworthiness, and had been maintained in accordance with the regulations,
  
• the airplane had taken off from Rio de Janeiro without any known technical problems, except on one of the three radio handling panels,
  
• no problems were indicated by the crew to Air France or during contacts with the Brazilian controllers,
  
• no distress messages were received by the control centers or by other airplanes,
  
• there were no satellite telephone communications between the airplane and the ground,
  
• the last radio exchange between the crew and Brazilian ATC occurred at 1 h 35 min 15 s. The airplane arrived at the edge of radar range of the Brazilian control centers,
  
• at 2 h 01, the crew tried, without success for the third time, to connect to the Dakar ATC ADS-C system,
  
• up to the last automatic position point, received at 2 h 10 min 35 s, the flight had followed the route indicated in the flight plan,
  
• the meteorological situation was typical of that encountered in the month of June in the inter-tropical convergence zone,
  
• there were powerful cumulonimbus clusters on the route of AF447. Some of them could have been the center of some notable turbulence,
  
• several airplanes that were flying before and after AF 447, at about the same altitude, altered their routes in order to avoid cloud masses,
  
• twenty-four automatic maintenance messages were received between 2 h 10 and 2 h 15 via the ACARS system. These messages show inconsistency between the measured speeds as well as the associated consequences,
  
• before 2 h 10, no maintenance messages had been received from AF 447, with the exception of two messages relating to the configuration of the toilets,
  
• the operator's and the manufacturer's procedures mention actions to be undertaken by the crew when they have doubts as to the speed indications,
  
• the last ACARS message was received towards 2 h 14 min 28 s,
  
• the flight was not transferred between the Brazilian and Senegalese control centres, between 8 h and 8 h 30, the first emergency alert messages were sent by the Madrid and Brest control centers,
  
• the first bodies and airplane parts were found on June 6,
  
• the elements identified came from all areas of the airplane,
  
• visual examination showed that the airplane was not destroyed in flight ; it appears to have struck the surface of the sea in a straight line with high vertical acceleration.
  

 

 

Doomed Air France plane was not destroyed in flight

Thu Jul 2, 2009 10:03am EDT

 

PARIS, July 2 (Reuters) - The Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic last month with 228 people on board was not destroyed in mid-air but hit the water intact and at high speed, French investigators said on Thursday.

 

Flight AF 447 went missing during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1. The exact cause of the disaster is not yet known.

 

"The plane was not destroyed while it was in flight. It seems to have hit the surface of the water in the direction of flight and with a strong vertical acceleration," said Alain Bouillard, who is leading the investigation on behalf of France's BEA air accident board.

 

Bouillard said control of the flight was supposed to have passed from air traffic controllers in Brazil to their counterparts in Senegal, but that never happened.

 

He said the pilots of flight AF 447 had tried three times to connect to a data system in the Senegalese capital Dakar, but had failed, apparently because Dakar had never received the flight plan.

 

"This is not normal," he said, adding that investigators were also trying to find out why it took six hours after the plane disappeared before an emergency was declared.

 

He said the search for the flight recorders, or black boxes, from the Airbus A330 aircraft would continue until July 10. The recorders emit a signal for a limited time.

 

He also reiterated that France had not yet been granted access to autopsy reports on bodies taken to Brazil. (Reporting by Tim Hepher, editing by Tim Pearce)

Edited July 3, 2009 by Denny Yen

[Fizree Helmi 0]

Correct me if I'm wrong but the earlier message send by the on board computer of flight AF 447 to Air France Maintenance show that the aircraft indicating failure in the electric circuit and loss of pressurization. Then the French investigator are saying that the plane do not break apart in mid air and the plane struck sea surface on belly?

 

This is weird? 2 different statement. Are they covering up for something?

[Yusoff 1]

Correct me if I'm wrong but the earlier message send by the on board computer of flight AF 447 to Air France Maintenance show that the aircraft indicating failure in the electric circuit and loss of pressurization. Then the French investigator are saying that the plane do not break apart in mid air and the plane struck sea surface on belly?

 

This is weird? 2 different statement. Are they covering up for something?

That's why the recovery of the black boxes is vital since there's no survivor to tell the tale nor major parts of the airplane is recovered. The biggest is only the vertical stabilizer / tail fin, which reveals nothing much.

Investigators can only come out with theories, the best and closes to the evidents found, which is not much and no major indicators, as well as a handful of recovered bodies, some are only parts.

 

It's like a big jigsaw puzzle, where only few pieces are on the table and we could only try to make out and guessing what the picture is.

 

I'm not really sure if cover up effort is involved. That one, 'we' can speculate...

[Pieter C. 5]

Air France Crash Black Box Search Extended

 

July 3, 2009

Investigators have extended the search for the flight recorders of the Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic last month and still hope to find them, France's transport minister said on Friday.

 

Flight AF 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed on June 1, killing all 228 people on board, but investigators have so far failed to pick up any signals emitted by the "black box" recorders. The signals are sent out for at least 30 days.

 

"We could stop around... July 10, but we won't. If we don't find them with the classic means, we will continue through submarine exploration," Transport Minister Dominique Busseareau told French radio.

 

He said the chances of finding the black boxes were fairly weak, but they would nevertheless try.

 

French investigators said on Thursday the plane hit the water intact and at high speed, but was missing for six hours before an emergency was declared.

 

Evidence from wreckage indicates the plane was broken apart by impact with the water, which it struck facing forwards.

 

(Reuters)

[Pieter C. 5]

Air France reviewing 'every factor' that could have caused AF447 crash

 

Monday July 13, 2009

 

Air France will review crew training and the quality of its weather information, CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said last week in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, adding that not being able to detect a severe storm on radar may have played a role in the May 31 A330-200 accident that killed all 228 passengers and crew.

 

He noted that another AF flight entered the area where AF447 was lost shortly after the doomed A330 last relayed information and the pilot of that following aircraft reported that he crossed a turbulent area that had not been picked up by his radar and "he avoided a much worse [area of turbulence] by manually increasing the sensitivity of his radar." He added, "Flight 447 didn't have the good fortune to encounter that first warning," which might have caused its pilots not to adjust their radar and spot the "very active storm" that the A330 encountered.

 

"We are going to review the way we use radar," Gourgeon said. "Whether or not that was the cause of the loss of Flight 447, we have to examine every factor and improve all of our procedures and rules. In air transport, limiting risks works like this: Either something poses a terrible risk for the aircraft and it has to be eliminated by any means, or it poses a noncatastrophic risk and it has to be corrected."

 

He stressed that there is no contradiction between safety and profitability. "When you improve safety, you improve the image of the company and you logically improve its economic performance," he explained. "There is never any arbitration between those two factors. . .It's written down in black and white that when there are storms, you go around them; there is no question of saving on fuel. Pilots are totally free to choose their route."

[Tony 1]

I wonder how "sensitive" the radars are set to, by default. And storm cells don't "just appear", do they?

[Pieter C. 5]

France Seeks Help With Airbus A330 Crash Search

 

August 31, 2009

 

France wants to launch an expanded international effort to find the missing wreckage and flight recorders of the Air France jet which crashed in the Atlantic in June, the country's senior crash investigator said on Monday.

 

Around a thousand fragments of the Airbus A330 which crashed on June 1, killing 228 people, have been examined but most of the aircraft is still missing and it is still too early to say definitely what caused the crash, he said.

 

"We are going to see how we can optimise our search. We are going to expand it to other countries to bring in the maximum international dimension and seize every chance we can to avoid missing new clues," Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of France's BEA air crash investigation board, told journalists.

 

Airbus is expected to help fund the move, which could cost several tens of millions of euros, he said, adding an announcement could be made in the autumn.

 

The United States, Brazil, Britain and Germany are among the nations likely to take part, he said at a specialist briefing.

 

Authorities have been combing an expanse of ocean the size of Switzerland in a fruitless bid to find the voice and data recorders and the bulk of the plane, which plummeted some 30,000 feet (9,000 metres) in four minutes before crashing in an equatorial storm.

 

After failing to pick up radio tracking signals that the recorders were designed to emit for around 30 days, investigators took up the search using a French survey vessel, sonars and submarine but the "black boxes" are still missing.

 

The third phase would involve sending sonars or robots to the relatively unexplored seabed, up to 4,000 metres below the surface.

 

Flight AF447 crashed near the equator while en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro.

 

Authorities have found wreckage including the vertical tail and 51 bodies, but are unsure exactly where the crash happened because winds and currents quickly dispersed the debris.

 

"The work is a bit like crossing Switzerland by foot, trying firstly to listen out for the noise of a cricket and now looking for debris with a pocket torch in the dark," Arslanian said.

 

Speculation on the cause of the crash has focused on the aircraft's speed sensors after error messages suggested inconsistent data readings. But Arslanian said it was still too early to tell if the pitot probes were to blame.

 

The full investigation could last over a year, he said.

 

(Reuters)

[Tamizi Hj Tamby 1]

Wow,looks like the investigation still goes on..wonder how long it will take..

[BC Tam 2]

..wonder how long it will take..

 

Here you are

The full investigation could last over a year, he said.

 

(Reuters)

[wesley 0]

Unless they found the black box else no one can tell the truth.

Edited September 9, 2009 by wesley

[Pieter C. 5]

Airbus, Others Sued In US Over Crash Off Brazil

 

October 20, 2009

 

A US lawyer filed suit against Airbus and many aerospace suppliers on Monday seeking unspecified compensation on behalf of relatives of eight of the 228 passengers who died when an Air France flight crashed off the coast of Brazil in June.

 

The lawsuit said the plaintiffs, relatives of some of the dead from Air France Flight 447, have "suffered a loss of support" and other losses as a result of the deaths. The action was brought under the Illinois Wrongful Death Act and filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.

 

The Airbus A330 plane that crashed was "defective and unreasonably dangerous," the complaint states.

 

Other defendants include aircraft parts makers Honeywell, General Electric, Rockwell Collins, Thales and chip maker Intel.

 

Airbus had no comment. "We are aware of it. We do not comment on lawsuits," an Airbus Americas communications manager, Mary Anne Greczyn, said in an email.

 

Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after it took off from Rio de Janeiro headed for Paris on June 1, killing 228 people. Investigators have said they do not yet know what caused the crash of the Airbus A330 aircraft, and the investigation could take another year.

 

"We're just seeking fair compensation, financial support for their losses," said Floyd Wisner, the aviation accident lawyer who filed the complaint. He said the plaintiffs included parents, spouses and children of victims of the crash who were from Hungary, France, Argentina and other countries.

 

"There is no evidence that any Honeywell product on board Flight 447 was defective or malfunctioned in any way." Honeywell said in a statement.

 

"Because neither the black boxes nor the bulk of the wreckage has been found, the complaint filed in Cook County, Illinois, is only speculation. We will aggressively defend our reputation and products and continue to utilise our technologies to help ensure that such a tragic event can be avoided in the future," the Honeywell statement added.

 

Intel said in a statement that after an initial review, it doesn't believe the complaint has merit as it relates to the chip maker.

 

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said in the statement that the complaint makes no specific allegations against Intel, only general allegations. "Intel has not sold components into the aerospace market for well over a decade," Mulloy said. "So as it relates to Intel, the case is without merit."

 

Among other defendants, Rockwell Collins said it does not comment on pending litigation. Representatives for United Technologies unit Hamilton Sundstrand and GE said their companies hadn't seen the suit and couldn't comment.

 

Motorola, Thales, du Pont, Goodrich and Raychem did not return requests for comment. Judd Wire could not be reached to comment.

 

(Reuters)