Air France Jet disappears from radar

[Richard]

That's really not much for a plane like that. Hurricane Hunter aircraft fly in worse conditions. They may never know for sure without the black boxes. Debris is so spread out though I'd say a midair breakup is a real possibility.

Hurricane Hunters - the C-130s and P-3s - are over-engineered to the point that they can take structural hits and survive far beyond what most other aircraft can sustain. The 'experts' have been talking a lot about the severe turbulence of the type storm the Airbus was flying into - 100+mph winds - but coming from all directions and stressing the aircraft in ways it may not have been designed to overcome - and the issues involved with the automatic flight systems dangerously over-compensating under such conditions. They've also been talking about the potential impact of such storms - including massive electrical strikes - upon both the control systems and the numerous composite structural materials (unlike the traditional materials of the C-130/P-3 type aircraft) used throughout in the newer commercial aircraft like the A330.

Bottom line - they don't know and may never know exactly what happened to this flight.

As for the terrorist threat - authorities reported a threat being made a few weeks ago against an Air France flight from Argentina - not Brazil - to France and - after investigation - it proved to be unfounded. There were no threats made against this flight.

Richard's $.02

[abc_123]

Originally Posted by Utah Bob

That's really not much for a plane like that. Hurricane Hunter aircraft fly in worse conditions. They may never know for sure without the black boxes. Debris is so spread out though I'd say a midair breakup is a real possibility.

The question is what was the trigger for the accident? The plane started falling out of the sky for some reason. If it wasn't a controlled descent from the altitude that they were flying at, at some point it's going to break up in mid air. I'm not a pilot, but that plane isn't made to do acrobatics. At some point the wings are going to rip off, with the rest coming apart shortly thereafter prior to hitting the ocean.

sad.

[Richard]

Something else being considered based upon the on-going data analyses.

Two aviation industry officials told The Associated Press on Thursday that investigators were studying the possibility that an external probe that measures air pressure may have iced over. The probe feeds data used to calculate air speed and altitude to onboard computers. Another possibility is that sensors inside the aircraft reading the data malfunctioned.

If the instruments were not reporting accurate information, the jet could have been traveling too fast or too slow as it hit turbulence from violent thunderstorms, according to the officials.

Jetliners need to be flying at just the right speed when encountering violent weather, experts say — too fast and they run the risk of breaking apart. Too slow, and they could lose control.

Richard's $.02

[Utah Bob]

A friend of mine was an FCC investigator for years. He said there's never just one cause for an air crash. It's always a string of related events. That's why it takes them so long to piece together a particular incident. And that's when they have all the pieces! In this case it may remain a question mark forever.
They are talking about a better data system than the antiquated black boxes now.

[SF_BHT]

Originally Posted by Utah Bob

A friend of mine was an FCC investigator for years. He said there's never just one cause for an air crash. It's always a string of related events. That's why it takes them so long to piece together a particular incident. And that's when they have all the pieces! In this case it may remain a question mark forever.
They are talking about a better data system than the antiquated black boxes now.

Hummmm FCC investigator did he investigate the breaking up of Radio waves?

I bet the FAA Investigators do a lot of AC investigations...

Just bustin on you we all knew which one you were refering to....... Just had to take a jab....

[Ret10Echo]

French, Brazilians still on hunt for downed Airbus
By EMMA VANDORE, Associated Press Writer Emma Vandore, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 44 mins ago

PARIS – French and Brazilian search teams have found no debris confirmed to have come from the Airbus A330 that vanished over the Atlantic, officials said Friday.
Confusion broke out after Brazilian officials said Thursday that a helicopter had plucked from the sea an airplane cargo pallet from the Air France flight — only to retract the claim hours later.
France's Transportation Minister, Dominique Bussereau, suggested Friday that searchers were back to square one in the hunt for Flight 447 bound from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which went down off Brazil late Sunday.
"French authorities have been saying for several days that we have to be extremely prudent," Bussereau told France's RTL radio. "Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing."
A French Defense Ministry official, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said French teams "cannot precisely confirm the zone where the plane went down."
Also Friday, Brazil's Air Force was flying designated relatives of victims Friday from Rio de Janeiro to the military's search command post in the northeastern city of Recife so they could tour the operation and ask questions. Recife has a large air force base where debris and any human remains will be brought after being picked up at sea.
The pallet Brazilian officials initially said came from the plane pallet was made of wood, and the plane was not carrying wooden pallets, Brazilian Air Force Gen. Ramon Cardoso told reporters. He did not say where the pallet might have come from.
"So far, nothing from the plane has been recovered," Cardoso said.
Cardoso said a large oil slick spotted by search plane pilots was not from the Airbus, but that another slick of kerosene found may have been from the downed passenger jet.
"The oil was not from the plane because there wasn't oil of that quantity (on the plane) to cause that slick," he said.
Bussereau called the false finding of debris by the Brazilian teams "bad news ... We would have preferred that it had come from the plane and that we had some information," he said.
Bussereau said the search must continue and stressed that the priority was finding the flight recorders. The plane went down with 228 people on board in the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.
French officials stopped short of criticizing their Brazilian counterparts.
"Brazilian authorities first indeed hoped to have found parts of the plane, then unfortunately, arriving in the area, realized it wasn't the case," said French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier. "Unfortunately that can happen."
French Defense Minister Herve Morin and the Pentagon have said there no signs that terrorism was involved, but Morin declined to rule out the possibility.
From the start of the investigation, "I've said we can't exclude terrorism," Morin told reporters Friday. "We have no element which allows us to corroborate that."
"The inquiry that is taking place has never excluded this thesis," he said.
Brazil's defense minister said the possibility was never considered.
Investigators are looking into whether malfunctions in instruments used to determine airspeed may have led the plane to be traveling at the wrong speed when it encountered turbulence from towering thunderstorms over the Atlantic.
Two aviation industry officials told The Associated Press on Thursday that investigators were studying the possibility that an external probe that measures air pressure may have iced over. The probe feeds data used to calculate air speed and altitude to onboard computers. Another possibility is that sensors inside the aircraft reading the data malfunctioned.
If the instruments were not reporting accurate information, the jet could have been traveling too fast or too slow as it hit turbulence from violent thunderstorms, according to the officials.
Jetliners need to be flying at just the right speed when encountering violent weather, experts say — too fast and they run the risk of breaking apart. Too slow, and they can lose control.
European planemaker Airbus has 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, which was an Airbus A330-200 version.
Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon said the planemaker sent a reminder of A330 operating procedures to airlines late Thursday after the French agency investigating the crash said the doomed flight had faced turbulent weather and inconsistency in the speed readings by different instruments. That meant "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear," Dubon said.
In such circumstances, flight crews should maintain thrust and pitch and — if necessary — level off the plane and start troubleshooting procedures as detailed in operating manuals, Dubon said.
Meteorologists said the Air France jet entered an unusual storm with 100 mph (160 kph) updrafts that acted as a vacuum, sucking water up from the ocean. The moist air rushed up to the plane's high altitude, where it quickly froze in minus-40 degree temperatures. The updrafts also would have created dangerous turbulence.
The jetliner's computer systems ultimately failed, and the plane broke apart likely in midair as it crashed into the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris Sunday night.
But investigators will have little to go on until they recover the plane's "black box" flight data and voice recorders, now likely on the ocean floor miles beneath the surface.
___

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by SF_BHT

Hummmm FCC investigator did he investigate the breaking up of Radio waves?

I bet the FAA Investigators do a lot of AC investigations...

Just bustin on you we all knew which one you were refering to....... Just had to take a jab....

Uhh....maybe it was the Federal Crash Commission.... Yeah, that's the ticket.

Dammit. Never post in the morning before coffee.

[112thSOLCA]

FWIW..... FCC, FAA … NTSB

My experience has been the National Transportation Safety Board is the lead agency responsible for investigating fatal aircraft crashes. In every case I have been involved with the “team” includes representatives from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Aircraft Manufacturer, the Engine Manufacture, the Insurance Company, the FAA and Local Law Enforcement.

However, the final report has always been issued by the NTSB Investigator.

I do agree aviation accidents are almost always a string of events that lead to the cause.

[Ret10Echo]

Airbus has warned airline crews to follow standard procedures if they suspect speed indicators are faulty, suggesting that technical malfunction may have played a role in this week's Air France crash. Skip related content

Investigators know from the aircraft's final batch of automated messages, which were sent over a three minute period, that there was an inconsistency between the different measured airspeeds shortly after the plane entered a storm zone.

The Airbus telex was sent to customers of its A330s late on Thursday. An industry official said such warnings are only sent if accident investigators have established facts that they consider important enough to pass on immediately to airlines.

The recommendation was authorised by the French air accident investigation agency (BEA) looking into the disaster. It has said the speed levels registered by the slew of messages from the plane showed "incoherence."

Airbus said its message to clients did not imply that the doomed pilots did anything wrong or that a design fault was in any way responsible for the crash.

"This Aircraft Information Telex is an information document that in no way implicates any blame," Justin Dubon, a spokesman for Airbus, said Friday.

The Air France A330-200 was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it suffered a rapid succession of technical problems after hitting turbulence early Monday and almost certainly plunged into the Atlantic. All 228 people on board died.

Brazilian authorities hunting for the plane said Thursday that flotsam scooped from the sea about 1,100 km (680 miles) northeast of Brazil's coast, was not from the Airbus A330, as previously reported.

Searchers have found several debris sites spread out over a 90 km (56 miles) zone and boats in the area are trying to pick it up to ascertain if the plane really did come down there.

BLOCKED SENSORS?

More than 300 aircraft similar to the missing Air France jet -- an Airbus A330-200 -- are in service worldwide.

Investigators do not know if Flight AF 447 was travelling at an incorrect speed as it crossed a storm cluster.

An aviation expert, who declined to be named, said the plane's airspeed sensors, called pitot tubes, work on air pressure and might provide incorrect readings if they get obstructed by objects such as ice.

The tubes are heated to prevent icing at high altitude and there was no immediate information on what went wrong.

If pilots believe the flawed readings are right, they might mistakenly alter their speed, jeopardising their plane.

Airbus said the correct procedure when confronted by unreliable speed indications was to maintain thrust and pitch and start trouble shooting.

The Airbus telex has revived a long-standing debate among pilots over whether the Airbus planes are overly complex.

"This is a plane that is conceived by engineers for engineers and not always for pilots," Jean-Pierre Albran, a veteran pilot of Boeing 747s, told Le Parisien newspaper.

"For example on a 747, the throttle is pushed by hand. You feel it move in turbulence. On recent Airbuses, this throttle is fixed. You look at the dials. You don't feel anything."

Aviation experts have speculated that the Air France plane was brought down by a chain of problems, with strong turbulence and stormy weather almost certainly a factor. Officials have played down any suggestion of terrorism.

[PSM]

What am I missing here? I've been retired as a dispatcher a few years, so I guess now it's OK to fly into a Cb now?

* Thunderstorm tops.. Based on the soundings above, my conclusion is that the maximum thunderstorm tops were 56,000 ft with an equilibrium level of 47,000 ft, representing the tops of most parts of the MCS except near the edges. In the worst-case scenario tops reached just short of 60,000 ft.

The Captain killed himself and 227 others! He could have, perhaps, skirted West a bit to bypass the wall. He didn't. He could have diverted. He didn't.

Even if the A/C can handle it, the passengers can't. I was jump-seating on a B727 flight into KPDX when we flew through a small thunderstorm with moderate to severe turbulence. In a three minute period we got hit by lightning twice. The look on the 1st Class Pax faces when we opened the cockpit door after landing was shocking.

Pat

[AngelsSix]

Originally Posted by PSM

I wonder if these guys were asleep. Who, cruising at 35,000', looks at a 50,000' wall of Cumulonimbus Ohmygodus and thinks to himself "Piece of cake!"?

Even without WX RDR they'd have a very impressive, towering, light show...to scare the crap out of them!

Pat

Nice!

[Richard]

And so it goes... RIP all.

Richard's $.02

Brazilian Military Finds Two Bodies From Crash
Liz Robbins and Nicola Clark, NYT, 6 Jun 2009

Search crews recovered two male bodies in the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday morning about 40 miles from where Air France Flight 447 last gave its position before disappearing Sunday night.

Two people speaking for the Brazilian military confirmed the findings, which appeared to be the first physical evidence of the crash that killed all 228 people on board the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The Brazilian air force said it had also recovered a blue airplane seat with a serial number, a briefcase and a letter folder containing an Air France boarding pass. The military said it sent the serial number to Air France officials to verify that it had come from the plane.

“When we started out we concentrated on finding survivors, but that was not possible,” Jorge Amaral, the assistant head of the Air Force’s Press Office told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife, according to the Brazilian Web site, ig.com. “Then we started looking for debris, survivors and bodies. But it is only today that we have had a positive, albeit sad, result. But that has brought us the certainty that our work was done properly.”

Earlier on Saturday, the head of French air investigators said at a news conference north of Paris that the jet was due to have part of its airspeed sensor system replaced after the plane’s manufacturer, Airbus, had advised operators of some of its A330 aircraft to do so.

Investigators are looking into whether inconsistent speed measurements could have played a role in the crash. The sensing system includes a part called a Pitot tube, which was what Airbus recommended replacing. The tubes are vulnerable to icing in cold weather, which the plane, flying through severe thunderstorms, could have experienced.

“The sensors on this aircraft had not yet been replaced,” said Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of France’s Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses, known as the B.E.A.

But he emphasized that it was “far too early to conclude” that a malfunction of the sensors was to blame for the accident, saying that it could still have been possible for the crew to continue flying the aircraft with “degraded systems.”

A spokeswoman for Airbus in the United States said in an e-mail message on Saturday that the recommendation for the replacement of the Pitot tubes was “not a safety issue.”

The two bodies were found not long after the Brazilian military, together with ships from France and the United States, made their way to a 50-mile long strip just north of the equator, about 600 miles off Brazil’s coast, where the plane was believed to have plunged into the water. After recovering floating debris on Thursday and mistakenly concluding that it had belonged to Air France Flight 447, the Brazilian military backtracked to find other debris that surveillance aircraft had sighted earlier in the week.

The jet, which had only been in service four years, disappeared on June 1 with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

The key to determining the cause of the crash probably rests at the bottom of the ocean — where the black boxes that are the data and voice recorders could be submerged in 3,000 feet to 13,000 feet of water and in rocky and muddy terrain. The boxes emit signals from a “pinger,” but those will start to fade after 30 days. The French navy is sending a nuclear-powered submarine to the area in an effort to detect the signals.

“This is what we are looking for in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,” Mr. Arslanian said. He held up a small canister roughly about the size of a cardboard toilet paper roll.

Before the bodies and other items were found Saturday, the investigation had been focused on the 24 automated messages the plane sent out in a four-minute burst just after midnight Brazil time before it disappeared indicating wide systems failures. One message indicated that there were incoherent speed readings.

Mr. Arslanian said that in addition to the inconsistent speed readings, the messages also indicated that the plane’s auto pilot system was not engaged. But he said it was not possible to know from the transmissions whether the autopilot shut down automatically, or whether the pilots did so manually as part of a troubleshooting effort.

“We also haven’t yet made a connection between these system breakdowns and the inconsistency of the speed measurements,” Mr. Arslanian said.

After the crash, Airbus sent out a reminder to all its customers to follow established procedures when pilots suspect airspeed sensors are not functioning properly. The message, approved by the French investigators, said that the reminder had been sent “without prejudging the final outcome of the investigation.”

Air France had already begun installing improved sensors across its entire fleet of medium- and long-haul aircraft as part of regularly scheduled maintenance checks, Mr. Arslanian said. The overhaul was due to be completed over the course of the next several weeks.

A malfunction of a plane’s airspeed sensors can be crucial to the pilots’ ability to control their aircraft. A plane that flies too slow can lose lift and crash, while one that is moving too fast can break up in the air.

Airspeed on jets is measured by the combination of the Pitot tube, which faces forward, and an opening on the side of the plane known as a static port. The plane’s speed is determined by comparing the pressure in the Pitot tube that is created by the oncoming wind with the pressure from the static port.

In 2007, Airbus advised operators of the Airbus A330 that were equipped with Pitot tubes manufactured by the French company Thales to replace them.

Stefan Schaffrath, an Airbus spokesman, confirmed that this recommendation, known as a service bulletin was made, but said it was for reasons of improved performance rather than safety concerns.

“The advice was issued because there was a new generation of device out there with improved performance regarding its measurement capability,” Mr. Schaffrath said. “This is nothing unusual as there are constant updates ongoing throughout the life of an aircraft.”

Airbus said it had informed air safety regulators in Europe and North America about the recommendation at the time. But on Friday a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration was not able to confirm this, and said there were no plans to turn this recommendation into a requirement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

[Richard]

Latest on the recovery and investigation.

Richard

More Bodies Recovered Near Site of Plane Crash
Marco Sibaja and Alan Clendenning, AP, 7 Jun 2009

Three more bodies were found Sunday in the ocean near the spot where an Air France jet is believed to have crashed a week ago, bringing the total number of bodies plucked from the water to five, Brazil's military said.

Authorities said pilots searching the mid-Atlantic also spotted an undetermined number of additional bodies from the air and are sending ships to recover them, Navy Capt. Giucemar Tabosa Cardoso said.

Flight 447 disappeared in turbulent weather May 31 during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard -- all now presumed dead.

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.

The French agency investigating the disaster said airspeed instruments on the plane had not been replaced as the maker had recommended, but cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions about what role that may have played in the crash.

The agency, BEA, said the plane received inconsistent airspeed readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm.

In Brazil, Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said he could not immediately provide information on how many more bodies were spotted from the air. Cardoso said late Sunday morning that ships should be able to recover some of them within hours despite rainy weather and poor visibility.

None of the bodies recovered Sunday had documents with them to indicate their identities, and authorities did not specify their gender. The first two bodies, found Saturday, were men.

The three bodies were found about 70 kilometers (45 miles) from the site where the jet sent out a burst of messages indicating it was experiencing a series of electric failures and losing cabin pressure. All the bodies that have been recovered were found in the same general area.

They declined comment on the condition of the recovered bodies, saying the release of that information would be too emotionally painful for relatives.

Authorities also announced that searchers spotted two airplane seats and other debris with Air France's logo, and they have recovered jet wing fragments and other plane debris. Munhoz said there is ''no more doubt'' that the wreckage is from Flight 447.

Hundreds of personal items belonging to the passengers have been recovered, but Munhoz said authorities would not immediately identify them because relatives of the victims panicked after authorities on Saturday announced the discovery of a laptop computer and a briefcase with a plane ticket inside it.

''We're don't want to cause them more suffering,'' Munhoz said.

The bodies and plane wreckage will be transported Monday to the Brazilian islands of Fernando de Noronha, where the military has set up a staging post for the search operation. From there, remains and debris will be taken to the northeastern coastal city Recife for identification.

Air France Flight 447 emitted its last signals roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands.

The Pentagon has said there are no signs of terrorism. Brazil's defense minister said the possibility was never considered. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner agreed that there is no evidence supporting a ''terrorism theory,'' but said that ''we cannot discard that for now.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009...er=rss&emc=rss

[Richard]

IIRC, it was an Airbus which crashed upon takeoff from NYC because its tail came off due to turbulence from following too closely behind another departing aircraft. It'll be interesting to see what the data recorders eventually show.

Richard's $.02

Tail of Air France plane found; hunt on for black boxes
USA Today, 7 Jun 2009

Brazilian searchers found a large tail section from an Air France jet Monday, one of the biggest pieces yet recovered from wreckage that could help narrow the search for Flight 447's black boxes. A U.S. Navy team is bringing in high-tech underwater listening devices to detect pings from the data and voice recorders.

Brazilian and French military ships that have so far recovered 16 bodies and large amounts of plane wreckage searched amid a sea of floating debris, finding the tail section with Air France's trademark red and blue stripes. All the wreckage has been found bobbing in the Atlantic Ocean; the Brazilians don't have the means of locating underwater debris.

(cont'd)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...hooModule_News

[Red Flag 1]

Originally Posted by PSM

What am I missing here? I've been retired as a dispatcher a few years, so I guess now it's OK to fly into a Cb now?



The Captain killed himself and 227 others! He could have, perhaps, skirted West a bit to bypass the wall. He didn't. He could have diverted. He didn't.

Even if the A/C can handle it, the passengers can't. I was jump-seating on a B727 flight into KPDX when we flew through a small thunderstorm with moderate to severe turbulence. In a three minute period we got hit by lightning twice. The look on the 1st Class Pax faces when we opened the cockpit door after landing was shocking.

Pat

Thunderstorms are not as bad on the inside as they appear from the outside.......











They are worse on the inside"

RF 1