Air France flight that was lost over the Atlantic...

[envivision]

Prateor,

As a Brazilian, don't you find it scary and puzzling that the last 3 major air disasters in the world (Gol in 2006. Tam in 2007, and now this) all have a brazilian connection ? I do.

[praetor]

Prateor,

As a Brazilian, don't you find it scary and puzzling that the last 3 major air disasters in the world (Gol in 2006. Tam in 2007, and now this) all have a brazilian connection ? I do.

The AirFrance A330-200 crash haven't a connection with Gol/Legacy disaster, this caused by the Legacy's pilot, who turned off the transponder over Amazonia. The Gol jet plane was a Boeing 737-800. The TAM crash in São Paulo airport, 2007 with a AirBus A320, haven't a connection either.
TAM and Gol are brazilian airlines, AirFrance, french. We don't know who cause the crash, storm, ray, fuel leak, and others.

[a994]

The nephew of a colleague and good friend of mine was one the plane. The nephew was quite well known in fact, but it goes to show us all, there is only one way out of this "illusion" we call life. We have little or no control of our exit no matter how wealthy, how smart or beautiful we are. T'is a shame no matter how you slice it.

My condolences to each of you. And to each of the families and friends of all those who were aboard the plane.

[thx1138]

latest info: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...ys-Brazil.html & http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...stigators.html

[praetor]

Crash: Air France A332 over Atlantic on June 1st 2009, aircraft impacted ocean
By Simon Hradecky, created Saturday, Jun 6th 2009 17:46Z, last updated Sunday, Jun 7th 2009 15:18Z

Forca Aerea Brasileira (FAB) have announced today (Jun 6th), that they have found two male bodies today as well as a blue chair (serial number 23701103B331-0 not yet confirmed to be part of F-GZCP), a bag with a vaccination card and a leather briefcase, which contained a ticket for flight AF-447 and a laptop. The bodies and debris were found about 1200km off the coast of mainland Brazil and about 69.5km northwest of the airplane's last ACARS position report.

Air France confirmed the ticket number to be a valid ticket for flight AF-447.

Later the day around 16:00 local the Hercules C-130 spotted another debris field (most interesting find see photo) west of the location, where the two bodies had been found.


Two ships are collecting the debris located so far. The search operation however has still priority to find the other 226 people over locating/recovering debris. Each new find so far has reinforced the need to expand the search area, that already spans more than 200,000 square kilometers (almost the size of the United Kingdom).

Air France said, that Airbus Industries had issued a recommendation to retrofit the pitot tubes in September 2007, giving the operators full freedom to decide about the implementation of the recommendation. Air France had implemented the recommendation to their A320 fleet, but did not retrofit the long range A330s and A340s due to the absence of incidents. Starting May 2008 Air France however observed the loss of air data on their A330 and A340 fleet. These incidents were discussed with Airbus Industries, who identified the problems as icing related and suggested that the modification implemented on the A320 would not resolve the icing issue. In the first quarter of 2009 laboratory tests however proved, that the new pitot tube design establishes a significant improvement over the previous design. Following a test flight Air France began to implement the retrofit of the new design pitot tubes onto their A330 and A340 fleet on April 27th 2009. Without prejudice Air France has now decided to accelerate that program to retrofit the pitot tubes on the A330/A340 fleet.

On Jun 7th the FAB reported, that they have recovered three more bodies and located several more bodies, which will be recovered shortly. 14 search airplanes and 5 ships are currently engaged in the recovery mission.

Forca Aerea Brasileira (FAB) have confirmed in a press release, that one of the Hercules C-130 search airplanes sighted metallic and non-metallic debris on the ocean surface about 650km northnortheast of Fernando de Noronha Island at around 09:49Z. Two locations, about 60km apart have been identified.

The debris has been identified as an airplane seat, small white pieces, an orange ball, a drum and traces of oil and kerosene.

The Brasilian government now assumes, that these parts belonged to the Air France Airbus and confirms the crash.

The FAB announced, that the crash will be investigated under the lead of the French BEA with the support by Brazil's CENIPA (Centro de Investigação e Prevenção de Acidentes Aeronáuticos, Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aviation Accidents).

The BEA said, 20 investigators supported by 30 engineers from Air France and Airbus Industries have started to collect evidence. A team has been sent to Brazil to secure and analyse recordings of air traffic control frequencies and other evidence in Brazil.

The NTSB said, they have accepted an invitation by the BEA to assist in the investigation and have dispatched Bill English as their representative joined by engineers from the FAA, General Electrics (manufacturer of the CF6 engines) and Honeywell.

On Jun 4th the FAB announced, that they have found debris around 510km northnortheast of Fernando de Noronha. A cargo pallet of about 2.5 square meters and two buoys were recovered. Seven hours later the FAB however had to report, that the recovered debris did not belong to the Air France Airbus.

The BEA announced on June 5th, that so far only these facts have been verified:

- location near the planned route over the Atlantic in the vicinity of significant convective cells characteristic for the equatorial region
- from start of the automatic message transmissions the reported measured speeds were inconsistent.

Airbus Industries reminded all operators of Airbus Aircraft series A300 to A380 of the operational, abnormal and emergency procedures in the relevant Flight Crew Operation Manuals and Quick Reference Manuals regarding flying with unreliable airspeed.

A press conference of BEA on June 6th confirmed, that a total of 24 ACARS messages, 14 within the first minute at 02:10Z, indicating system faults, arrived from the airplane. The message show inconsistencies in the air speeds measured by the three pitot systems of the aircraft rendering the air speed indications unreliable. The BEA however cautioned, that those messages don't say anything about the causes and are not meant as a tool to aid investigations, but mainly reflect the system status and don't tell anything about the why. Although it appears probable, that the messages and the loss of the airplane are related, there is no confirmation of a casual link between the two events. Weather experts of Meteo France said, that the weather development on June 1st (UTC) within the InterTropical Convergence Zone was normal with no anomalies, there was no evidence, that AF-447 encountered a storm of extraordinary intensity. Weather developments were more intense in the days surrounding the accident day.

In the press conference the BEA said, that three methodes of finding the black boxes are currently employed: two ships have been equipped with acoustic equipment from the USA to be able to detect the 160dB(A) signal from the black boxes assumed to be at 4600 meters depth of the ocean. Another "ordinary warship" is tracking the area as well as a nuclear submarine.

BEA also said, that Airbus Industries had already recommended a retrofit of the pitot tubes of the airplane, F-GZCP however had not yet received that new design pitot tubes. Air France is still in the process of replacing the pitot tubes on all their aircraft.

A passenger on board of a TAM Linhas Aereas Airbus A330-200 registration PT-MVH performing flight JJ-8098 from Sao Paulo Guarulhos (Brazil) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (France) bound to land in Paris about 40 minutes past AF-447 reported, that they were about 4 hours into their flight, when the airplane experienced severe turbulence and began to violently shake. The pilots performed an emergency descent to get into calmer air. Only after about 30 minutes the turbulence ended. Subsequently the airplane reached Paris without further incident.

More details of the ACARS messages have become available on June 5th and suggest following events while the airplane was in cruise (note, there is no message regarding electrics, hydraulics or engine problems):

02:10Z: Autothrust off
Autopilot off
FBW alternate law
Rudder Travel Limiter Fault
TCAS fault due to antenna fault
Flight Envelope Computation warning
All pitot static ports lost
02:11Z: Failure of all three ADIRUs
Failure of gyros of ISIS (attitude information lost)
02:12Z: ADIRUs Air Data disagree
02:13Z: Flight Management, Guidance and Envelope Computer fault
PRIM 1 fault
SEC 1 fault
02:14Z: Cabin Pressure Controller fault (cabin vertical speed)


There have been at least two similiar incidents preceding AF-447 (dates of both flights are unknown):

First incident: An Air France Airbus A340-300, registration F-GLZL performing flight AF-279 from Tokyo Narita (Japan) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (France), was enroute at FL310, when the airplane went through a line of thunderstorms. The captain's air speed indication suddenly dropped to 140 knots, the systems issued an alert regarding disagreeing speeds (NAV IAS DISCREPANCY), the navigation display showed a tail wind component of 250 knots. The captain released control of the airplane to the first officer and tried to switch his display from ADIRU1 to ADIRU3. 2 minutes later autopilot and autothrust disconnected and the fly by wire changed into alternate law. The crew noticed icing conditions (static air temperature [SAT] -29 degrees Centigrade) and switched anti ice including pitot heating systems from automatic to on. The speed indications became normal again and agreed again, the autoflight systems were reengaged and ATC informed of severe icing. ATC reported, that two flights had just passed the location without problems. When the crew attempted to reset and reengage ADIRU 1 two times, the system again brought the message "NAV IAS DISCREPANCY" on both attempts, although the speed data appeared consistent. The crew suspected polluted pitot tubes.

Maintenance found, that the drainage holes of all three pitot tubes had been clogged, rendering it very likely that weather combined with the clogged drainage holes caused the incident. Maintenance had reported more clogged drainage holes on A330 and A340 aircraft in the past to Airbus Industries. Airbus Industries was aware of the problems, changes had already been introduced to the pitot tubes on the A320 family, where similiar problems had occured. A modification of the A330/A340 pitot tubes was already planned by AI.

Second incident: An Air France Airbus A340-300, registration F-GLZN performing a flight from Paris Charles de Gaulle (France) to New York JFK,NY (USA), encountered brief turbulence while enroute. The autoflight systems dropped offline, "NAV IAS DISCREPANCY", "NAV PRED W/S DET FAULT" and stall alerts were repeatedly issued during the following two minutes. The airplane continued to JFK without further incident. A review of the policy of retrofitting pitot tubes was recommended and authorities informed.

http://avherald.com/h?article=41a81ef1/0022&opt=0

[Azanti]

the whole thing was tragic whatever way you look at it.

[praetor]

[praetor]

Crash: Air France A332 over Atlantic on June 1st 2009, aircraft impacted ocean
By Simon Hradecky, created Saturday, Jun 6th 2009 17:46Z, last updated Sunday, Jun 7th 2009 20:02Z

Forca Aerea Brasileira (FAB) have announced today (Jun 6th), that they have found two male bodies today as well as a blue chair (serial number 23701103B331-0 not yet confirmed to be part of F-GZCP), a bag with a vaccination card and a leather briefcase, which contained a ticket for flight AF-447 and a laptop. The bodies and debris were found about 1200km off the coast of mainland Brazil and about 69.5km northwest of the airplane's last ACARS position report.

Air France confirmed the ticket number to be a valid ticket for flight AF-447.

Later the day around 16:00 local the Hercules C-130 spotted another debris field (most interesting find see photo) west of the location, where the two bodies had been found

Two ships are collecting the debris located so far. The search operation however has still priority to find the other 226 people over locating/recovering debris. Each new find so far has reinforced the need to expand the search area, that already spans more than 200,000 square kilometers (almost the size of the United Kingdom).

Air France said, that Airbus Industries had issued a recommendation to retrofit the pitot tubes in September 2007, giving the operators full freedom to decide about the implementation of the recommendation. Air France had implemented the recommendation to their A320 fleet, but did not retrofit the long range A330s and A340s due to the absence of incidents. Starting May 2008 Air France however observed the loss of air data on their A330 and A340 fleet. These incidents were discussed with Airbus Industries, who identified the problems as icing related and suggested that the modification implemented on the A320 would not resolve the icing issue. In the first quarter of 2009 laboratory tests however proved, that the new pitot tube design establishes a significant improvement over the previous design. Following a test flight Air France began to implement the retrofit of the new design pitot tubes onto their A330 and A340 fleet on April 27th 2009. Without prejudice Air France has now decided to accelerate that program to retrofit the pitot tubes on the A330/A340 fleet.

On Jun 7th the FAB reported, that they have recovered three more bodies and located several more bodies, which will be recovered shortly. 14 search airplanes and 5 ships are currently engaged in the recovery mission. Later the day the FAB released a first picture of the ticket recovered on June 6th.


The ticket recovered in the ocean (Photo: FAB):

[praetor]

http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Mundo/0...DESTROCOS.html

[Coroner]

They´ve found 5 corpses so far. The cause will be known when they find the black box. Everything else is speculation.