Air France 447

Apparently this is a theory accident investigators are pursuing:

Speed sensors on aircraft fail (could be caused by icing) and the pilots get incorrect speed readings.

Plane is flying way too fast as it encounters the weather and the excessive speed, combined with severe turbulence, puts too much stress on the airplane's frame. The plane breaks up in mid air and falls to the ocean.

Pretty freaky, but there are a lot worse ways to go.

plane crash has got to be one of the worst ways to go imo - if it broke up in mid air... they would've died immediately upon the plane breaking or what?

i fly quite a lot but over the years i've gotten more nervous, not more relaxed.

And I haven't even told you that my company is managing travel for your company.

And I'm backup for your company's account.

I've been following this story very carefully over at the airliners.net forums and there's a lot of pretty good information there before the threads devolved into commentaries about Air France. There's still precious little information to go on here except for what scant information is available from the ACARS messages and even those readings could be skewed if the weather was severe enough to freeze the pitot tubes up or otherwise damage things from hail.

This airliners.net post is crazy thorough

AirlineCritic From Finland, joined Mar 2009, 49 posts, RR: 0
Reply 1, posted Thu Jun 4 2009 23:47:51 your local time (2 hours 35 minutes 31 secs ago) and read 4636 times:

This is the third version of my list of speculated causes of the accident. Please contribute by adding theories, evidence, or suggesting revisions to the conclusions for existing ones. And I would like to thank everyone who has posted speculations, evidence, and arguments in these threads. The information below is entirely based on your input.

For currently known facts about the accident, please see the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

A. Terrorism or other malicious use of explosives

A bomb explodes in the cargo hold, crippling the aircraft's control systems or starting a structural break-up that eventually leads to loss of control.

Supportive evidence: According to Wikipedia, a bomb threat had been made on an earlier flight. Lack of communications from the flight crew indicates either a sudden event or something which lead to significant problems that the crew had to focus on. This would be consistent with the effects of a bomb. The automatic messages about computer system failures sent by the aircraft could be interpreted either as indications that the aircraft's movements have exceeded the limits that the systems can handle, or as indications about direct damage to the systems. A flash of light has been seen by other aircraft in the area.

Evidence against: While terrorist organizations exist both in France and Brazil, there has been no recent activity. No organization has claimed responsibility for the act. There is no specific evidence about a bomb. Nothing is known about any individuals or organizations who would have non-terrorism related reasons for malicious acts. It seems too big of a coincidence that a bomb would go off at the same time as the aircraft flies through very rough weather. Finally, what we know about the sequence of ACARS messages indicates that loss of cabin pressure was the last message in the sequence. This appears to rule out an explosion, unless it was contained in the hull and only damaged internal structures and components. This seems unlikely. The flash of light was apparently seen from too far to be caused by AF 447 related problems.

Open questions: Where are the cargo holds that are used to carry the passengers' luggage? Are they physically close to the computer and navigation systems that ACARS messages reported as failing? And obviously, physical evidence would be useful.

Verdict: Can most likely be ruled out

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#cite_note-58 A flash of white light has been reported by other aircraft in the area: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/0...orld/international_us_france_plane Distance calculation for the flash of light and AF 447 was in Pihero's post in thread 9: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo...general_aviation/read.main/4435136

B. Explosion or other rapid, harmful reaction from the cargo

The sequence of events is as in the terrorism theory.

Supportive evidence: The sequence of events fits this theory, as it does the terrorism theory. The cargo might have shifted at the time of turbulence, initiating the reaction.

Evidence against: See the evidence regarding the malicious use of explosives. In addition, there is no information that the cargo could have contained something harmful.

Open questions: More information is needed about what was in the cargo, and who cargo was taken from.

Verdict: Can most likely be ruled out

C. Fire

Fire starts in cargo hold, in systems, or somewhere else in the aircraft. Eventually the fire either disables a sufficient number of aircraft systems leading to a loss of control, or incapacitates the crew.

Supportive evidence: Systems turning themselves off one by one could be caused by fire. Cabin pressure warning might have been generated through the crew's actions to let the air out of the cabin in an effort to put out the fire. The location of the debris indicates that the crew might have turned back in an effort to get to the nearest airport (but it has now become uncertain if any debris has actually been found). The long duration of the ACARS messaging (4 minutes) seems to indicate a slowly progressing event like fire, as opposed to sudden event like a bomb or structural failure. The fire might have been initiated when the aircraft hit heave turbulence 10 minutes before the problems began.

Evidence against: It seems unlikely that the fire could have spread fast enough that the crew would not have notified air traffic control. Why would fire happen exactly at the same time as the aircraft flies through extreme weather? Wouldn't a cargo hold fire lead to an ACARS message?

Open questions: More information is needed about the ACARS messages and whether they could have been caused by fire.

Verdict: Possible, but there are several open questions

D. Weather

D1. Turbulence

Turbulence breaks up the plane, or causes it to enter an uncontrollable dive.

Supportive evidence: Very high winds and turbulence were detected in the area. Tim Vasquez's analysis indicates that there were strong updrafts in the exact area that the flight was expected to fly through. The crew manually sent a report of turbulence 10 minutes before the accident.

Evidence against: other flights in the same time frame and route did not encounter significant turbulence.

Verdict: Possible, but there are several unexplained questions. In particular, why was only AF 447 affected? Or did several issues contribute to the outcome, along with turbulence?

References: Tim Vasquez's analysis: http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/ AP reports that the pilots sent a report about turbulence and timing of the various events: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CJAC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

D2. Lightning

Lightning hits the aircraft and causes either structural or systems damage.

Evidence against: Tim Vasquez's analysis speaks against this.

Verdict: Unlikely, by itself

D3. Hail

Hail hits the aircraft and causes either structural damage, shuts the engines down, or breaks cockpit windows and incapacitates the crew.

Supportive evidence: There has been rumors about ACARS icing messages.

Evidence against: Tim Vasquez's analysis speaks against the occurrence of significant hail. Unless the crew was incapacitated, mere engine shutdown would have lead to the crew contacting the air traffic control. What we know about the sequence of ACARS messages indicates that the cabin pressure loss happened last, which speaks against the accident beginning with the breakage of the cockpit windows.

Open questions: The sequence of ACARS messages needs to be known in more detail.

Verdict: Unlikely

D4. Ice

Icing causes the aircraft to lose its flying capabilities.

Supportive evidence: See the evidence for the hail theory.

Evidence against: Tim Vasquez's analysis speaks against the existence of supercooled water at the flight level and conditions that the aircraft was flying through.

Verdict: Unlikely

D5. Sensor icing

Speed or other sensors are iced over or malfunction in some other way, leading to the computers or pilots taking incorrect action, causing the aircraft to stall and/or break up.

Supportive evidence: There are rumors of icing-related ACARS messages.

Evidence against: Normally the sensors (such as the pitot tubes) are heated. Icing should not affect them, unless the crew failed to turn the heating on, particularly severe icing conditions existed in the strom cell that they flew through, or hail hit the sensors. Also, Tim Vasquez's analysis speaks against the existence of suitable icing or hail conditions.

Open questions: More data is needed about the actual ACARS message sent by the aircraft.

Verdict: Unlikely

References: BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8083474.stm

E. Systems malfunction

A repeat of the Qantas incident: ADIRU failures cause the aircraft control systems to believe that a steep dive and/or nose-up is needed, leading to a loss of control and/or aircraft break-up.

Supportive evidence: See GlobeEx's posts.

Evidence against: It seems unlikely that the crew would have been unable to control the situation at FL35, when crews in the previous incidents were able to regain control with the loss of few hundred feet of altitude. There are some reports that AF uses ADIRUs from a different manufacturer. The long duration (4 minutes) of the automatic messaging speaks against a very sudden event.

Open questions: At this point, we do not yet know if AF used the same manufacturer's ADIRU (Litton) as was involved in the Qantas incident. Rumors indicate that the equipment comes from a different manufacturer, namely Honeywell. No previous incident is known on a Honeywell ADIRU.

Verdict: Unlikely, though more information is needed. Perhaps combined with a pilot error and the effects of the bad weather this theory is more likely, e.g., maybe the recovery was not executed in time.

References: GlobeEx's post, reply 71 in part 8 of the a.net thread: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo...general_aviation/read.main/4433331 and reply 129 in part 9 http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo...general_aviation/read.main/4435136 The Qantas incident is described in http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/...008/AAIR/pdf/AO2008070_interim.pdf Qantas downplays the link http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...tory/0,25197,25579625-2702,00.html

F. Collision

Collision with another flying object such as aircraft or meteor.

Supportive evidence: This could cause similar effects as a bomb, so in some sense it fits the sequence of events. A flash of light was seen, which might also be from a meteor

Evidence against: There is no known collision with another aircraft. Meteor collision is extremely improbable. The flash of light was apparently seen from too far to be caused by AF 447 related problems.

Verdict: Very, very unlikely

References: White flash of light: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/0...orld/international_us_france_plane

G. Fuel tank explosion

A TWA800 -like event.

Supportive evidence: Fuel tank explosion, like other explosions, would fit the sequence of events observed through ACARS and lack of a mayday message from the crew.

Evidence against: By this time, the center fuel tank would have been very cold. TWA800 accident required a warm fuel tank for the vapors to develop in suitable quantity.

Verdict: Can be ruled out.

H. Explosive decompression

A cargo door or other part departs the aircraft, leading to an explosive decompression.

Supportive evidence: ACARS message about cabin pressure.

Evidence against: The sequence of messages is wrong, as cabin pressure drop was not the first one.

Verdict: Can be ruled out

I. Crew error

I1. Flying into severe weather

The crew flies directly into the most severe part of the storm

Supportive evidence: Tim Vasquez's analysis of the weather system indicates that it would have been very hard for AF447 to avoid the weather system alltogether, but there is no evidence to suggest that they flew directly into the worst part.

Open questions: Exact flight path is needed.

Verdict: They did fly into the weather, but it is unknown if this was avoidable or if they flew to the worst part. Note that in combination with another problem, such as radar failure the likelihood of this theory would be much higher.

References: Assumed flight path from the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8082241.stm Tim Vasquez's analysis http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

I2. Flying too high

Trying to fly over the weather system and exceeding limits of the aircraft, leading to a "coffin corner" situation and an unrecoverable stall.

Supportive evidence: None, except perhaps the diffult and hard-to-avoid weather system. Tim Vasquez's analysis points to very high updrafts, which might have contributed to an involuntary gain in elevation.

Open questions: Additional information about the aircraft's altitude is needed.

Verdict: Unlikely, it is very hard to believe that an experienced crew would on purpose violate the aircraft's limits

I3. Excessive corrective action

The crew over-corrects the effects of turbulence or high wind in a manner similar to AA587.

Supportive evidence: This might have lead to separation of control surfaces, which in turn might have lead to autopilot and other control systems giving up. The sequence of ACARS messages might match this situation.

Evidence against: A330 is a fly-by-wire aircraft which may not allow excessive control input. On the other hand, the first ACARS message received indicated disengaging the autopilot and the control systems entering the alternate law mode. This mode has less protection against exceeding the safe flight envelope.

Open questions: More information is needed about the exact ACARS messages and in what conditions they will be sent. More information is needed about the effects of excessive control inputs in the A330 fly-by-wire system.

Verdict: Very unlikely, unless something else happened, disabling the autopilot and then the crew accidentally exceeded the structural limits of the aircraft.

J. Prior damage from a ground collision

The aircraft in question collided in 2006 with an Airbus A321 aircraft. An undetected problem in the wing of the A330 might have stayed dormant until the airframe was stressed in severe turbulence.

Supportive evidence:

Evidence against: The maintenance procedures for inspecting and correcting collision damage are quite extensive, and it is hard to image something was missed.

Verdict: Unlikely

References: http://www.jacdec.de/news/years/ALL2006.txt

K. Combination of factors

K1. Systems failure and crew error

A systems failure initiates an event and the crew fails to respond properly or in time. For instance, a radar failure might lead to the crew flying blind into the worst part of the weather. Or disengaging the autopilot or Airbus flight envelope protection leads the crew to overstressing the airframe.

Supportive evidence: There is no strong evidence of any single event that is know to bring down the airplane. There is evidence of some of the control systems (autopilot, ADIRU) shutting down. While these events should be recoverable, it is easy to imagine a crew error that exacerbates the situation, particularly in bad weather.

Evidence against: There is no information about any errors by the crew. Many of the systems, such as the radar electronics, have backups, and are not expected to completely fail.

Open questions: CVR and FDR are needed to find out more.

Verdict: Possible

K2. External event and crew error

Icing, turbulence, lightning or lightning causes an upset, and the crew reacts in an inappropriate manner or fails to recover in time. Or, alternatively the crew makes an error in setting the proper speed for the type of weather (turbulence, updrafts) which later leads to a stall or a spin.

Supportive evidence: There is no strong evidence of any single event that is know to bring down the airplane. There is evidence of conditions that are potentially harmful (like turbulence), but that are known to be experienced by a large number of aircraft, so its not clear why these events alone would have caused the accident. But it is easy to imagine a combination of two problems, or one problem and a crew error to lead to a disaster.

Evidence against: There is no information about any errors by the crew.

Verdict: Possible

Open questions: Again, CVR and FDR are needed.

References: Incorrect speed has been mentioned in the press as a possible cause of the accident: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/0...orld/international_us_france_plane

K3. External event leading to fire

Turbulence rocks the plane, leading to a short circuit and fire. Lightning hits the plane and causes a fire. The fire eventually spreads to the whole aircraft.

Supportive evidence: The crew reported turbulence, and at least turbulence and maybe even lightning is known to exist in the area. For the other evidence, see the fire theory.

Evidence against: See the evidence regarding fire; it is odd that no ACARS or crew message would have been received from a slowly progressing event such as fire in the cargo hold.

Open questions: Again, CVR and FDR are needed.

Verdict: Possible, but there are open questions

References: CB97's reply 105 on thread 9: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo.../general_aviation/read.main/443513 Tim Vasquez's weather analysis: http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

The black boxes might answer this question, but they may never be found.

There's a good chance they will be though. Hell, one of the boxes from SAA 295 (possibly the spookiest airliner crash ever) was recovered from 5000 meters deep.

Speed sensors on aircraft fail (could be caused by icing) and the pilots get incorrect speed readings.

Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroperú_Flight_603

(although in this case, a piece of tape was left over one of the sensors)

On Wednesday, searchers recovered two debris fields and had identified the wreckage, including an airplane seat and an orange float as coming from Flight 447. Officials now say that none of the debris recovered is from the missing plane.

Ok is anyone else a little upset by the fact that there's this much shit floating in the ocean that looks like pieces of this airplane, but isn't?

Aside, I had no idea this place existed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter_and_Paul_Rocks

"a rocky place where my seed can find no purchase"

^^^^ good places to set up a colony of noise dudes
xpost

Was I alone in thinking that it was pretty difficult to lose an airliner these days?

i was ok on planes, but i've now got contagious freaked deathcrash meltdown due to my girlfriend's manic hand-clutching on take-off. (we're flying to sydney tomorrow morn)

Was I alone in thinking that it was pretty difficult to lose an airliner these days?

this is an important aspect of the story. it's potentially easier to find an automobile than a jumbo-jet. we can pinpoint the location of most anything, most anywhere in the world assuming it has the right equipment. GPS is hardly an exotic technology at this point. Yet, investigators have to rely on the last radar hit and projected flight path to find this plane.

How would you use GPS to find a car? The GPS device in your car is only a receiver. The satellite that broadcasts the signal doesn't know where the receivers are.
Cell phone type signals could help (your cell phone identifies itself to the network, you also transmit signals), except that there's no reception on the high seas.

How would you use GPS to find a car? The GPS device in your car is only a receiver. The satellite that broadcasts the signal doesn't know where the receivers are.
Cell phone type signals could help (your cell phone identifies itself to the network, you also transmit signals), except that there's no reception on the high seas.

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

Ok, it's not impossible. Isn't it kind of like the (?) ACARS messages planes already have, though?

ACARS could be used to push GPS data to receivers on the ground, I would assume. I have no idea why such a system does not exist. Seems easy to do.

Cost? (Would probably be considerable. An always-on connection with every plane in the air all over the world, when there's already more than 5,000 commercial flights in the air above north america alone at any given time - I wish I remembered where I read that, but I did) also, Different standards everywhere and an already full transmission spectrum?

If it would be cheap and easy I think we'd already have it. Now, it's not worth bothering with just because of this one freak occurrence where one crashed plane can't be located right away. (Statistically, this just doesn't happen.)

I have no idea why such a system does not exist. Seems easy to do.

It's entirely possible that this could be the incident that spurs this on.

Now, it's not worth bothering with just because of this one freak occurrence where one crashed plane can't be located right away. (Statistically, this just doesn't happen.)

At least twice before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Air_Flight_574
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Airways_Flight_295 (though in this case, the pilot did manage to get off some radio transmissions)

CNN has anticipated our discussion here: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/03/db.plane.nav.tracking/index.html

They still think they found the right wreckage in that article though, btw.

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/06/02/askthepilot322/index.html

Bermuda Triangle.

For reals.

SuperCub:

it's potentially easier to find an automobile than a jumbo-jet. we can pinpoint the location of most anything, most anywhere in the world assuming it has the right equipment.

there is a rather massive difference between triangulation within dense urban centers versus remote intercontinental flight paths.

just sayin...

* 11 p.m. The pilot sends a manual signal saying the jet was flying through CBs -- towering cumulo-nimulus thunderheads.

* 11:10 p.m. A cascade of automatic messages indicate trouble: The autopilot had disengaged, stabilizing controls were damaged, flight systems deteriorated.

* 11:13 p.m. Messages report more problems: The system that monitors speed, altitude and direction failed. The main flight computer and wing spoilers failed.

* 11:14 p.m. The final message indicates a loss of cabin pressure and complete system failure -- catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.

: /

off-topic but related. terrifying and sad

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/5167883/Man-jumps-to-his-death-from-Canadian-charter-plane.html

Weirder and weirder:

Airlines confirmed that at least a dozen aircraft departed roughly at the same time and traversed approximately the same route, but did not report problematic weather conditions. This has led some aviation experts to suggest that technical problems on the airplane might be the main cause of the crash, though they may have combined with weather conditions to create serious problems.

...In addition to Flight 447, Air France had four other Paris-bound flights that left in the same broad time frame from that part of the world, according to an airline spokesman. One flight left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at 4:20 p.m. At that same moment, another Air France flight left nearby Sao Paulo. A third Air France flight left Buenos Aires, Argentina, at 5:50 p.m., also heading for Paris. A final Air France flight left Sao Paulo at 7:10 p.m., almost exactly when the doomed flight took off from Rio.

All of these flights took a similar route toward Paris, heading first toward Recife on the east coast of Brazil and then continuing northeast over the Atlantic. None of the other flights experienced anything unusual, the spokesman said. All arrived in Paris the next day, with no significant delays of any kind.

That same evening two Air Iberia flights bound for Madrid, Spain, left Brazil at about the same time as Flight 447; one departed from Rio de Janeiro and another from Sao Paulo, according to officials at Iberia. Those flights also reported no problems.

It was the same story for one British Airways flight and three Air TAM Brazil flights, all of which flew routes similar to the missing plane.

Although none of the other flights are known to have reported weather problems en route, aviation experts said weather can change suddenly and vary over short distances, so one plane might experience conditions far worse than another.

approximately the same route

meaning what? there's no question that it flew through a large area of cells in the intertropical convergence zone. the question is which cells it flew between/into/over - did the other planes go through the same ones at the same time?

apparently there's a lot of academic support for the notion that the Atlantic ITCZ responds to ENSO signs (among a lot of other things) in late Spring (the Southern Fall), largely in May. i don't see support in a very cursory search, but wikipedia says it can be correlated with ENSO cool to neutral conditions (as exist now) and disappears with El Nino (to which we are probably transitioning).

we tend to call things weird when we're denied the ability to observe them in every detail. nothing here seems very strange to me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090606/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane

see?

Gabbneb, grievance counselor.

my condolences to all the ilxors affected, RIP

xxpost: That link now says (updated 13 minutes ago) : 2 bodies, ticket found near Air France crash site

we tend to call things weird when we're denied the ability to observe them in every detail. nothing here seems very strange to me.

Ok so then what's your verdict?

I don't have a personal need to claim an explanation for things before the evidence has been gathered.

dude

i pity you, heathen.

likewise

It's Nazi Hitler Obama's fault! But of course!

http://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=10540

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aktwfm9fe0NY&refer=latin_america

five bodies found - two men, three others as yet undetermined.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/09/air-france-crash-killed-two-prominent-illegal-arms-foes/

uh hoh

if only there was an easier way to take these people out!

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Terror-Names-Linked-To-Doomed-Flight-AF-447-Two-Passengers-Shared-Names-Of-Radical-Muslims/Article/200906215300405?lpos=World_News_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15300405_Terror_Names_Linked_To_Doomed_Flight_AF_447%3A_Two_Passengers_Shared_Names_Of_Radical_Muslims

An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week, killing all 228 on board, has died in a car accident, Italy's ANSA news agency reported.

Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from the Bolzano-Bozen Province (South Tyrol), and her husband Kurt, were vacationing in Brazil and missed Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1. The couple took a flight to Europe later that day.

The car veered off the road near Kufstein, Austria, killing Johanna.

OK this is the kind of stuff that could turn me into a conspiracy theorist.

can you put that in english for me ET?

it landed nose slightly up + small bank angle + no slip + no masks or vests deployed + crew was not braced for emergency landing = surprise turbulence rendering the aircraft inoperable and fell out of sky like a brick?

good advice for future oversea flights: don't fly into monstrous storms in the middle of oceans.

can you put that in english for me ET?

it landed nose slightly up + small bank angle + no slip + no masks or vests deployed + crew was not braced for emergency landing = surprise turbulence rendering the aircraft inoperable and fell out of sky like a brick?

Cribbing from the interim report PDF, it looks like the plane impacted the water as if you held a model airplane stationary in the air and then just dropped it. Compression fractures in the area of the tail topped off at 36g so it was definitely brick-like in it's descent. We just don't know how it got there.

don't fly into monstrous storms in the middle of oceans.

Corollary to that... you may have flown through big storms before but in the end Mother Nature always holds the trump card.

New wreckage found.

In fact it's more than that -- seems like they've found the fuselage and a number of bodies, though they're not sure about the black boxes yet.

for some reason it's really freaky to me, the idea of these bodies & this plane just having been floating around in the atlantic all this time

well, maybe not floating, but you get what i'm saying

Part of the black box found

Search teams have found a part of the crucial "data recorders" of the Air France flight which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, says France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA).

The orange-colored recorder 'chassis' was found on Wednesday during the second day of an operation which also hopes to retrieve bodies from the wreckage site.

All 228 people aboard the Airbus A330 Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were killed.

The find - which comes more than three weeks after search teams found the tail section of the aircraft -- does not include the "memory unit" which holds the recorded data that could eventually help investigators determine the cause of the crash.

Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for the Paris-based BEA says there is a good chance the memory unit, which records any instructions sent to the aircraft's electronic systems, will still hold retrievable data.

Here's hoping. Grim comfort at best even so.

Big new NYT Magazine piece up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08Plane-t.html

Also, both the data and cockpit voice recording parts have been recovered.

Air France 447: How scientists found a needle in a haystack

This year's search was the fourth attempt to find the wreckage of Flight 447, and it probably would have been the last, even if the plane hadn't been found. Previous searches had been done by boat, mini-sub, and—back when there was still a chance of catching the audio signal from the plane's black boxes—underwater acoustic sensors. In 2010, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute were brought in to search for the crash site using autonomous robot subs. Still nothing had been found.

On March 22, 2011, the Woods Hole team set out from Brazil to try again. They'd barely been at the search location for a week when they found what they were looking for. On April 3, researchers spotted the plane's debris field, 13,000 feet down, smack in the middle of a massive underwater mountain range.

The success was astounding, but I wanted to know ... what made this search different from the others? What could the team from Woods Hole do that other groups could not, and how did their system work? To find out, I spoke with Mike Purcell, senior engineer with Woods Hole, and the chief of sea search operations for the mission.

All flight data and cockpit conversations recovered. We should all know the basics of what happened in a couple of months.

Preliminary Findings Suggest Pilot Error in Air France Crash

The pilots of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean two years ago apparently became distracted with faulty airspeed indicators and failed to properly deal with other vital systems, including adjusting engine thrust, according to people familiar with preliminary findings from the plane's recorders.

The final moments inside the cockpit of the twin-engine Airbus A330, these people said, indicates the pilots seemingly were confused by alarms they received from various automated flight-control systems as the plane bucked through some turbulence expected on the route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris but also faced unexpectedly heavy icing at 35,000 feet. Such icing is renowned for making airspeed-indicators and other external sensors unreliable.

Ultimately, the crew failed to follow standard procedures to maintain or increase thrust and keep the aircraft's nose level, while trouble-shooting and waiting for the airspeed sensors and related functions to return to normal, according to these people.

Slated to be disclosed by investigators on Friday, the sequence of events captured on the recorders is expected to highlight that the twin-engine jet slowed dangerously shortly after the autopilot disconnected. The pilots almost immediately faced the beginning of what became a series of automation failures or disconnects related to problems with the plane's airspeed sensors, these people said. The crew apparently had difficulty sorting out the warning messages, chimes and other cues, while monitoring essential displays showing engine power and aircraft trajectory.

The pilots were never trained to handle precisely such an emergency at high altitude, according to safety experts and a previous report by France's Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, which is heading up the investigation. All 228 people aboard died in the accident.

The senior captain, Marc Dubois, appears to have been out of the cockpit for a routine rest break when the fatal chain of events started, according to safety experts familiar with the details. But according to one person close to the probe, the cockpit-voice recorder suggests that once problems cropped up, he may have rushed back to the cockpit to join the other two pilots of Air France Flight 447.

Though Friday's announcement won't provide final conclusions or specific causes, investigators believe Air France never trained its pilots to cope with such automation problems in conjunction with a high-altitude aerodynamic stall, an emergency when the wings lose lift and the plane quickly becomes uncontrollable.

must be horrendous listening to the last few seconds of that cockpit recorder but then i guess i am morbidly fascinated enough to be thinking about it at all wargh

Its always frightening to think that what keeps jet planes in the air is really just their forward momentum. And if that stops...

It's their job. If people like this or people who work at morgues etc wouldn't be able to disconnect they would be working somewhere else. xpost

Yeesh...

3.5 minutes of terror: Air France crash dropped at 10,000 feet a minute

Passengers on an Air France flight plunged for three and a half minutes before crashing into the Atlantic, killing all 228 on board, after it lost speed and stalled while the main pilot was resting, the first evidence from black boxes has found.

AF447's junior pilot battled to save the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight, as the second pilot tried to rouse the captain shortly after the plane had begun its fateful descent in a tropical storm.
According to flight recorder data, the younger of the two men, Pierre-Cédric Bonin, 32, angled the jet's nose higher, a position the aircraft maintained until its final impact, after inconsistent speed readings confused the plane.

Aviation experts asked why the pilot kept giving nose-up inputs when the plane was in a stall, given that one normally puts the nose down to recover speed and regain control.

All 228 people on board – including crew – died after the Airbus hurtled into the Atlantic at a speed of 180 feet a second in the worst disaster in Air France's history.
David Robert, 37, the second pilot, had begun anxiously calling for their more experienced captain after autopilot suddenly cut out four hours after take-off. Captain Marc Dubois, returned a minute and a half later, but never retook control of the plane – instead leaving the flying to his assistants.

...

Releasing preliminary findings yesterday, France's accident investigation office, the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (BEA), said they showed the co-pilots decided to turn slightly to the left to avoid a zone of turbulence, warning cabin crew to expect the plane to "move around" in forthcoming turbulence.

Two minutes later the autopilot disengaged, the instruments began showing that the speed had slowed dramatically and the engine stall warning began to sound.

The BEA said the pilots received inconsistent speed readings for around a minute, with one pilot saying: "We have no valid indications." This suggests there was a problem with the plane's speed sensors, so-called Pitot tubes that an earlier preliminary investigation had indicated might have contributed to the crash.

The pilots responded by pulling up the nose of the aircraft, triggering a stall warning in the cockpit.

According to the BEA, the co-pilots continued to increase the angle of climb, rising rapidly from 35,000 feet to 37,500 feet. When a third stall warning sounded, they continued to pull back on the controls with the engines set to full thrust and rose to about 38,000 feet, where the plane entered a stall.

With the plane's nose still pointed up about 15 degrees, the jet began falling at about 10,000 feet a minute, rolling left and right. Almost one minute into the stall, the pilots had reduced engine thrust and tried pushing down on the controls to lower the nose.

Airspeed indications returned and the alarm sounded again as the stalled aircraft picked up some speed, but the plane never recovered.

I'm not easily scared, but a 10,000 feet a minute drop squicks the hell out of me.

well, i guess it's no fun, but if it's any consolation they may not even have realized

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/27/air-france-crash-inquiry

Despite what the pilots must have been going through in the cockpit, the pitch attitude remained fairly constant throughout so the passengers would not have sensed something was seriously wrong. They would have felt mild buffeting of the stalled airflow over the wings and the initial sinking feeling. That's all.

3.5 minutes is a long time, in that situation, i bet i felt a lot longer.

I know it's a minor thing, but your ears can hurt on descent, i wonder if it was in issue for those aboard 447?
I can picture furious boiled sweet sucking to prevent ear popping.

Sorry :/

Long Aviation Week article on the results so far.. The takeaway is that pilot training hasn't really kept up with the systems management duty required by modern airplanes.

“We will learn a lot from this accident,” says William R. Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, who believes that AF447 should have fundamental consequences for the content of pilot training globally. “We are still training for the engine fire at V1, but the complexity of automated systems has grown. We have to develop crews that can deal with incidents such as QF32,” the Qantas Airbus A380 that suffered an uncontained engine failure after takeoff in Singapore on Nov. 4, 2010, and returned to the airport severely damaged.

Voss argues that AF447 would not have crashed if the aircraft had been of an older generation. “Highly automated aircraft have saved many lives, but they fail differently than aircraft of 20 years ago,” he says. He sees it as a “failure of the industry” that pilot training has not kept in step with the latest aircraft technologies. He also argues for improved upset recovery training, as “we are not explicitly training that” and the AF447 A330 “seems to have had pitch-and-roll authority all the way down to the water.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/world/europe/air-france-flight-447-crash-report-july-2011.html?pagewanted=all

Was scanning that earlier. Sounds like a compounding of a lot of problems in the end, but if the core was that the pilots weren't trained properly...

in some ways much more disturbing than simple mechanical failure - how many pilots out there are qualified to deal with that kind of situation? air travel is a growing industry in many developing countries, most notably China where many pilots have been caught with fake licenses.

pilots should probably know how to fly the plane manually at high altitude, yeah

The part that scared me was that there is no indicator in the cockpit that shows the "angle of attack" - a key piece of information in that situation.

"Safety experts say those procedures are now essentially the same for both aircraft makes, regardless of altitude, and instruct pilots in the first instance to lower the nose of the aircraft and, if necessary, to reduce thrust to avoid excessive acceleration.

Previously, the standard procedure for an approaching stall at low altitude was to raise the nose by around 5 degrees and to maintain full thrust. "

Why was the previous method for overcoming stalls pointing the nose up? Unless by "low altitude" they mean in the very early stages of a flight, where I guess you can't nose down for long enough to build up speed.

Final report from the French crash investigators is out

LE BOURGET, France — French investigators’ final report on the 2009 crash of an Air France jet that killed 228 people portrays a cockpit rapidly consumed by confusion and unable to decode a welter of alarms to determine which flight readings could be trusted, with the pilots’ apparent reliance on a faulty display cementing the plane into its fatal stall.

The report, released Thursday by the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis, concluded that the errors were the outcome of a confluence of factors beyond the competence of any individual pilot. The investigators stood by earlier findings that the pilots had not been adequately trained to fly the aircraft manually in the event of equipment failure or a stall at high altitude.

There was a “profound loss of understanding” among all three pilots of Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330 en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro, about what was happening after ice crystals threw off the plane’s airspeed sensors and the autopilot disconnected, the report said. The pilots then struggled to control the plane manually amid a barrage of alarms, a situation further confused by the faulty instructions displayed by an automated navigational aid called the flight director.

“The crew never understood they were in a stall situation,” the report said, “and therefore never undertook any recovery maneuvers.” It said further that “the combination of the ergonomics of the warning design, the conditions in which airline pilots are trained and exposed to stalls during their professional training and the process of recurrent training does not generate the expected behavior in any acceptable reliable way.”

The report offered an answer to a central puzzle: the consistent and aggressive “nose up” inputs by the pilot at the controls, which added to the loss of lift. Pilots are normally trained to point the nose of the aircraft down in a stall to regain speed.

The report said that the readings being gathered by the automated flight director — which uses cross hairs superimposed over an artificial horizon to indicate the required positioning of the plane — would have resulted in repeated calls for the plane’s nose to be lifted.

One aviation expert was troubled that the pilots did not appear to have the skills to start from the basic observation that airspeed indicators were giving conflicting readings and anticipate which of their flight readings — like that of the flight director — would therefore be untrustworthy.

William R. Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va., said: “We are seeing a situation where we have pilots that can’t understand what the airplane is doing unless a computer interprets it for them. This isn’t a problem that is unique to Airbus or unique to Air France. It’s a new training challenge that the whole industry has to face.”

Air Crash Investigations gets to the AF447 crash. In the last eight minutes I'm shouting at the co-pilot "GET YOUR SHIT STOWED AND PUSH FORWARD ON THE FUCKING STICK!"

"we're searching an area the size of Switzerland - including the Alps"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTuagG3aW_g

New deep story on the crash and questions of air safety in general

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash

No crisis existed. The episode should have been a non-event, and one that would not last long. The airplane was in the control of the pilots, and if they had done nothing, they would have done all they needed to do.

William Langewiesche is the best.