Air France A330 Down

[J.O.]

Well, the GTAA sure didn't learn anything, no runaway arrestor system was installed and the runway is still ungrooved.

Actually, the GTAA is currently doing their due diligence on proposed RESA installations. Runway grooving is another matter, as it has many implications for airports in winter conditions. It's not quite as simple as just doing it.

[Homerun]

If you look at accident statistics, the majority of the time the Captain is flying.

Give the f/o and RP some respect. At a major airline everyone is well trained and experienced. They would certainly be more than capable of taking whatever action neccesary to avoid a line of CB's. Suggesting that the Captain being on break could have somehow caused this accident is ridiculous.

[DEFCON]

Homerun

"Suggesting that the Captain being on break could have somehow caused this accident is ridiculous."

Perhaps it’s not nice to hear and maybe it’s even a little insulting, but the concept isn't so beyond the scope of reality as to be “ridiculous”?

On another note and it's only a guess, but could not the cascading failures be an indicator of an onboard fire?

[Moon The Loon]

On another note and it's only a guess, but could not the cascading failures be an indicator of an onboard fire?

One of the real mysteries is why there was no call from the aircraft, no ATC, no 123.45, no 121.5

I think whatever caused this inflight breakup, scattering debris for nearly 60 miles, happened very suddenly and without warning. Some have suggested the loss of the empennage, some or all of it.

I have been leaning towards a more sinister scenario, and hope I am very, very wrong.

[UpperDeck]

Recently reported---there was a bomb threat May 27th against AF on a Buenos Aires to CDG flight.

Thee was resulting tightened security but an inflight explosion would certainly explain all of the auto signals, wouldn't it?

The meterological analysis referenced above is excellent and suggests that the CB's in the area, while significant, were not unusual in character.

[Homerun]

I've operated more than 100 augmented flights. Nobody is hesitant to wake a sleeping crewmember in order to get more F/D time.

Defcon, I was referring to the speculation that 2 professional aviators would not be able to navigate an area of CB's without the presence of the Capt, who may or may not have more experience than the other 2, is ridiculous.

[Fido]

One of the real mysteries is why there was no call from the aircraft, no ATC, no 123.45, no 121.5

I think whatever caused this inflight breakup, scattering debris for nearly 60 miles, happened very suddenly and without warning. Some have suggested the loss of the empennage, some or all of it.

I have been leaning towards a more sinister scenario, and hope I am very, very wrong.

You have detailed the real troubling points. I share your view on a more sinister scenario.

[SimBoy]

Please excuse my complete ignorance, but does France have an equivalent to Canada's SMS?

[dagger]

Some interesting details:

As the first Brazilian military ships neared the search area, investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms. They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time saying he was flying through an area of "CBs" — black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning. Satellite data has shown that towering thunderheads were sending 100 mph (160 kph) updraft winds into the jet's flight path at the time.

Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.

The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure — catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.

[ChicoChico]

AF447 WXX map

Doesn't look good from a flight-planning standpoint!

[dagger]

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (Reuters) - Search crews flying over the Atlantic found debris from a crashed Air France jet spread over more than 55 miles of ocean on Wednesday, reinforcing the possibility it broke up in the air.

Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said the existence of large fuel stains in the water likely ruled out an explosion, undercutting speculation about a bomb attack.

"The existence of oil stains could exclude the possibility of a fire or explosion," he said at a news conference in Brasilia. "If we have oil stains, it means it wasn't burned."

[AME]

Marc Dubois had 11,000 hours of flying time for Air France, and in February 2007 he became qualified to fly the Airbus A330, the same kind of aircraft as the one that crashed on the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Since then, he'd accumulated 1,700 hours flying the wide-body, twin engine aircraft, according to Air France.

Dubois' co-pilots on Flight 447 were David Robert and Pierre-Cedric Bonin.

Robert, 37, joined Air France in 1999 and had 6,600 flight hours with the airline, becoming qualified to fly A330s seven years ago, in April 2002.

Bonin, 32, joined Air France in 2004. He had 3,300 flight hours and had qualified to fly A330s last June.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9060301797.html

[Moon The Loon]

Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said the existence of large fuel stains in the water likely ruled out an explosion, undercutting speculation about a bomb attack.

"...ruled out an explosion..."

Not necessarily true. This aircraft was carrying a lot of fuel for its 11 hour flight plus reserves and contingencies. And in many different locations within the airframe.

[Moon The Loon]

I was referring to the speculation that 2 professional aviators would not be able to navigate an area of CB's without the presence of the Capt, who may or may not have more experience than the other 2, is ridiculous.

I don't doubt your sincerity and faith in the crewmembers you've done your 100+ flights. I will assume they were all with the same company? Congratulations for picking a winner as your theory is admirable. I also assume you are just as familiar with the extreme weather of the tropics and that navigating around or through 100+ nm wide cells topping in the 70's is routine.

My experiences are different, hence my speculation.

[Seeker]

AF447 WXX map

Doesn't look good from a flight-planning standpoint!

Isn't that pretty much what the weather map looks like every day? It seems to me that their intended route would have taken them between the two areas of OCNL EMBD CB 480 and throught the area of ISOL EMBD CB 480. The actual weather of course could have been significantly different from the forecast.

[Guest rattler]

Diving Robots Could Recover Air France 447's Black Box

As details of the telemetry sent by Air France 447 in its final minutes become known, deep-sea technology experts are saying that the recovery of the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder—the black boxes—will be difficult, but not impossible, with the help of deep-sea-diving robots.

By Mark Huber

Published on: June 4, 2009

After officials pinpointed the location of Air France's Airbus A330 crash site, they turned to the difficult task of recovering the black boxes, which hold the official recordings of events that happened before the plane went down. Black boxes, which are actually painted orange, can give investigators the missing bits and pieces of data needed to determine an accident's probable cause. To help officials find the boxes, embedded technology sends sonar like signals out that can be detected for up to 30 days, provided listening equipment can get within approximately 1 mile of the box, according to a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board. In the case of Flight 447, the crash area in the Atlantic Ocean is too deep for divers to reach.

In instances such as this, where the site is not accessible, side-scan sonar can be used to locate the boxes underwater and map the wreckage to guide remotely-operated deep-sea vehicles (ROV) for recovery. The Brazilian navy, now on the scene, does not possess the equipment necessary to take on recovery, but sonar and robots are available through several other governments, oil companies, independent service contractors, and non governmental organizations, according to Al Bradley at the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. On Sunday, Woods Hole's latest ROV, the $8 million Nereus, dove down 35,768 feet at the deepest surveyed point in the oceans, Challenger Deep in the Pacific's Mariana Trench. With this dive, the ROV became the world's deepest-diving robot. The highly maneuverable Nereus can be controlled by a fiber optic connection or can swim autonomously when switched to a "free swimming" mode. Last night the French Navy said it was dispatching a pair of submersible ROVs to the crash site.

The vehicle Nereus, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, can operate either as an autonomous robot for wide-area surveys, or as a tethered vehicle for close up investigation. (Photo by Robert Elder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Flight 447's wreckage is likely to be "fairly open," resting on the ocean bottom, Bradley says, making the extraction of the black boxes a relatively straightforward task once the main structures have been located.

Still, because of the presumed depth, location, and distribution of the wreckage— nearly 20,000 feet down in the pitching seas of the Tropical Convergence Zone across a miles-long debris field—recovery will be difficult:

"It comes down to how much money the French government wants to spend," Bradley says. Recovering and investigating a submerged wide-body airliner is expensive. The NTSB and the FBI spent $31.4 million on TWA Flight 800 in 1996—crashed off Long Island within sight of shore. The determination not to spend the tens of millions of euros required to recover the recorders may already have been made. France's counterpart to the U.S. NTSB, the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA), is the lead investigating agency for the crash. At a news conference yesterday, BEA head Paul-Louis Arslanian said he was not optimistic that the black boxes would be recovered. Last night the NTSB announced that it had accepted an invitation from the BEA to assist in the investigation. The U.S. team will also include technical advisors from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), General Electric and Honeywell.

The Airbus A330 with 238 aboard went down Sunday night over the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after encountering an area of strong thunderstorms and telemetry suggests that the aircraft broke apart at altitude. A limited amount of floating wreckage was discovered by search-and-rescue aircraft Tuesday and Wednesday morning in an area 400 miles northeast of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha islands. Automatic telemetry sent by the Airbus over its Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) satellite digital datalink to Air France's operations center indicates a cascading accumulation of critical aircraft systems failures that began approximately 3 minutes before the crash, immediately after encountering thunderstorms. The autopilot disengaged, the aircraft's fly-by-wire system was switched to alternate law (giving the pilot more direct control over the aircraft), flight-control alarms sounded; multiple faults were indicated for the Air Data and Inertial Reference Unit, the Integrated Standby Instrument System, Primary Flight Control Computer 1, and Flight Control Secondary Computer 1; and cabin pressure dropped.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/ro...ah_buzz&mag=pop

[dagger]

Here's a new angle, and one AC 330 jockeys may have to note:

Was the AF plane's air speed to low for the weather conditions?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/...article1168337/

[Homerun]

The 330, like every airplane, has a published turbulence penetration speed. I haven't flown the 330 in a couple of years but I believe it was m .78 or .79?Normal cruise speed is anywhere from .79 to .84 depending on cost index and the flight planned fixed mach for the oceanic sector.

[Moon The Loon]

Here's a new angle, and one AC 330 jockeys may have to note:

Was the AF plane's air speed to low for the weather conditions?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/...article1168337/

"The Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean this week was flying too slowly ahead of the disaster, Le Monde newspaper said today, citing sources close to the inquiry.

A literal translation, no doubt. But in a way, they're using apples and oranges to describe bananas. When any aircraft encounters an extreme horizontal or vertical windshear, a couple of things can happen - it's airspeed may rise or fall outside safe limits or it's structural loading may be exceeded, or both. If someone has received electronic info about the aircraft's indicated speed/mach, that in itself is very interesting. What else have we not been told?

(CONSPIRACY!)

"Spanish newspaper El Mundo said a transatlantic airline pilot reported seeing a bright flash of white light at the same time the Air France flight disappeared."

Where did THAT come from? I thought the time window was nearly an hour wide. Are they interviewing flights based upon the timeline of the failure data received by Airbus? (That would make some sense) There is a lot of spectacular lightning associated with this kind of weather.

Has that just been released to counter the rush-to-judgment of the Brazilian authorities who are now saying the aircraft did not break up in flight but crashed into the water in one piece? Afterall, they wouldn't want the world to think whatever might have caused this accident could possibly have originated on their soil, would they?

[UpperDeck]

I thought that the report from an LH pilot flying the same route without excess turbulence was the report that was an hour behind.

This latest report of a sudden very bright and descending flash of light was a result of a multiple witness sighting the relevance of which might not have been appreciated until correlated with the time stamp of aircraft auto reports.

[Lakelad]

Sea "Trash," Not Air France Debris Recovered - Brazil

Thursday, June 04, 2009 - Dow Jones Newswires

BRASILIA (AFP)--Brazilian officials said late Thursday they have so far only recovered sea "trash" from a zone in the Atlantic where an Air France jet came down, and not aircraft debris as originally thought.

"Up to now, no material from the plane has been recovered," Brigadier Ramon Cardoso, director of Brazilian air traffic control, told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.

He said items pulled from the ocean Thursday and originally thought to come from downed Air France flight AF 477 actually came from another source, likely a ship.

He also said a big oil slick originally thought to come from the plane probably also came from a ship, though fuel slicks detected were likely from the jet because the fuel was of a type not used by seagoing vessels.

Earlier Thursday, Cardoso had told reporters that navy ships 1,000 kilometers off Brazil's shore had pulled aboard debris from the Air France plane that vanished Monday, including a pallet from its cargo hold and two buoys.

But after inspection it was determined the pallet couldn't have come from the plane.

"We confirm that the pallet found is not part of the debris of the plane. It's a pallet that was in the area, but considered more to be trash," he said.

He added that the Brazilian navy crews were pulling any item out of the water and inspecting it. Anything not belonging to the Air France plane was being put aside.

[Moon The Loon]

Given the Brazilian resistance to the idea of an inflight breakup, one wonders how they will treat materials recovered from the high seas.

[Maverick]

Given the Brazilian resistance to the idea of an inflight breakup, one wonders how they will treat materials recovered from the high seas.

After that fiasco of an investigation on the Gol midair I'm not taking anything the Brazilians say at face value.

[DEFCON]

If the sources above are accurate, an in-flight breakup remains purely speculative based on the fact the authorities have yet to recover any evidence of a downed ac?

[Don Hudson]

DEFCON;

Re "evidence", here's a re-typed listing of the ACARS ECAM messages. They may not be in strict chronological order. WRN is "Warning", (red) and FLR is essentially "Caution", (amber). The ATA numbers can readily be seen.

Don