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Topic: Hopes dim for 228 aboard missing French jet (Read 1368 times) |
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Walter Watts
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Re:Hopes dim for 228 aboard missing French jet
« Reply #15 on: 2009-06-05 02:28:31 » |
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Now I came across an article that introduces even more confusion:
--Walter
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excerpted from article below:
"Meteorologists said the Air France jet entered an unusual storm with 100 mph updrafts that acted as a vacuum, sucking water up from the ocean. The incredibly 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."
That's quite opposed to what the previous analyst said......
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Article:Investigators focus on sensors in jet crash:/c/a/2009/06/04/MN0718119F.DTL
Article:Investigators focus on sensors in jet crash:/c/a/2009/06/04/MN0718119F.DTL
SFGate
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SFGate
Investigators focus on sensors in jet crash
Bradley Brooks,Joan Lowy, Associated Press
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Relatives and friends of those lost aboard Air France Fli...
(06-04) 04:00 PDT Rio De Janeiro - --
Investigators trying to determine why Air France Flight 447 broke apart in a violent storm over the Atlantic are looking at the possibility that speed sensors - or an external instrument key to collecting speed data - failed in unusual weather, two aviation industry officials said Thursday.
Meanwhile, Brazil's Navy issued a statement saying that wreckage recovered by a helicopter crew earlier in the day was not from the plane. The military earlier said it had pulled a cargo pallet from the water where the Airbus A330 went down off the country's northeastern coast, killing all 228 people aboard - the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.
Officials with knowledge of the investigation and independent analysts all stressed they don't know why a plane that seemed to be flying normally crashed just minutes after the pilot messaged that he was entering an area of extremely dangerous storms.
They 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.
Other hypotheses - even terrorism - haven't been ruled out, though there are no signs of a bomb. Officials have said a jet fuel slick on the ocean's surface suggests there was no explosion.
Two officials with knowledge of the investigation said they are looking at the possibility 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 that read the data malfunctioned.
If the instruments were not accurately reporting information, it is possible the jet would have been traveling too fast or too slow as it entered turbulence from towering bands of thunderstorms, according to the officials.
"There is increasing attention being paid to the external probes and the possibility they iced over in the unusual atmospheric conditions experienced by the Air France flight," one of the industry officials explained, speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn't authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
Meteorologists said the Air France jet entered an unusual storm with 100 mph updrafts that acted as a vacuum, sucking water up from the ocean. The incredibly 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 as it crashed into the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris Sunday night.
Independent aviation experts said it is plausible that a problem with the external probe - called a "pitot tube" - or sensors that analyze data collected by the tube could have contributed to the disaster.
The tubes have heating systems to prevent icing, but if those systems somehow malfunctioned, the tubes could quickly freeze at high altitude in storm conditions, said the other industry official, who also was not authorized to discuss the investigation.
Other experts outside the investigation said it is more likely that the sensors reading information from the tubes failed.
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.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/04/MN0718119F.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Walter Watts
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Re:Hopes dim for 228 aboard missing French jet
« Reply #16 on: 2009-06-26 01:46:54 » |
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NTSB probes 2 incidents involving Airbus A330s
Source: Associated Press
Authors: Joan Lowy
Dated: 2009-06-25
Federal safety officials said Thursday they are investigating two incidents in which airspeed and altitude indications in the cockpits of Airbus A330 planes may have malfunctioned.
The aircraft are the same type as the Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on May 31 after sending out low airspeed messages, killing all 228 aboard.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement that the first incident occurred May 21, when TAM Airlines Flight 8091 flying from Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil, experienced a loss of primary speed and altitude information while cruising.
[b]Initial reports indicate that the flight crew noted an abrupt drop in the outside air temperature reading, followed by disconnections of the autopilot and autothrust, along with the loss of speed and altitude information, the board said. The flight crew used backup instruments, and airspeed and altitude data was restored in about 5 minutes, the board said.
The board only recently became aware of the incident, but it confirmed the event through the Brazilian government.
Information on the second incident is more sketchy, but it involves a Northwest Airlines flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo on Tuesday, the board said.
Data recorder information, aircraft condition monitoring system messages, crew statements and weather information involving that flight are being collected by NTSB investigators.
In both cases the planes landed safely and no one was injured, the board said.
Air France Flight 447 came down in the Atlantic after running into thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The Brazilian military has led the search and recovery efforts for bodies and debris, while the French are in charge of investigating the crash and the hunt for the flight recorders, or black boxes.
The cause of the crash is unclear.
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Re:Hopes dim for 228 aboard missing French jet
« Reply #17 on: 2009-07-03 10:18:36 » |
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Probe: Doomed Flight 447 fell intact into sea
Life vests weren’t inflated when Air France jet plunged into Atlantic in June
[ Hermit : While I am still rather partial to my earlier assessment of turbulence related issues coupled with technical problems leading to multiple instrument failures, compounded by systematic cockpit management failure concluded by an uncontrolled descent into terrain, at this point I would definitely not rule out sabotage or incompetence on the part of ground crew. ]
Source: MSNBC
Authors: Not Credited
Dated: 2009-07-02
Dateline: France, Le Bourget
Related: Unlinkable video segment available from source page
Air France Flight 447 slammed into the Atlantic Ocean, intact and belly first, at such a high speed that the 228 people aboard probably had no time to even inflate their life jackets, French investigators said Thursday in their first report into the June 1 accident.
Likening the investigation to a puzzle with missing pieces, lead investigator Alain Bouillard said that one month after the crash, "we are very far from establishing the causes of the accident."
Problematic speed sensors on the Airbus A330-200 jet that have been the focus of intense speculation since the crash may have misled the plane's pilots but were not a direct cause, Bouillard said, while admitting that investigators are still a long way from knowing what did precipitate the disaster.
"The investigation is a big puzzle," said Bouillard, who is leading the probe for the French accident agency BEA. "Today we only have a few pieces of the puzzle which prevents us from even distinguishing the photo of the puzzle."
The plane was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it went down in a remote area of the Atlantic, 930 miles off Brazil's mainland and far from radar coverage.
The BEA released its first preliminary findings on the crash Thursday, calling it one of history's most challenging plane crash investigations. Yet the probe, which has operated without access to the plane's flight data and voice recorders, appears so far to have unveiled little about what really caused the accident.
The speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, are "a factor but not the only one," Bouillard said. "It is an element but not the cause," Bouillard told a news conference in Le Bourget outside Paris.
Other elements that came under scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of the crash, such as the possibility that heavy storms or lightning may have brought down the jet, were also downplayed in the BEA's presentation.
Meteorological data show the presence of storm clouds in the area the jet would have flown through, but nothing out of the ordinary for the equatorial region in June, Bouillard said, eliminating the theory that the plane could have encountered a storm of unprecedented power. Other flights through the area shortly after Flight 447 disappeared didn't report unusual weather, Bouillard said.
"Between the surface of the water and 35,000 feet, we don't know what happened," Bouillard admitted. "In the absence of the flight recorders, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions."
Black boxes still missing
A burst of automated messages emitted by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search, which has failed to locate the plane's black boxes in the vast ocean expanse.
The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling daily as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the tragic accident may never be known.
One of the automatic messages indicates the plane was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilize its control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over.
The Pitots have not been "excluded from the chain that led to the accident," Bouillard said.
Analysis of the 600-odd pieces of the jet that have been recovered indicate the plane "was not destroyed in flight" and appeared to have hit the water intact and "belly first," gathering speed as it dropped thousands of feet, he said.
He also said investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."
Bouillard said air traffic controllers in Dakar, Senegal had never officially taken control of Flight 447 after its last radio contact with Brazilian flight controllers at 1:35 a.m., and it wasn't until up to seven hours later that flight controllers in Madrid and Brest, France raised an alarm. He said the delay was being investigated but was not a cause of the crash.
Brazilian Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said all required information on the plane's flight plan was passed to Senegalese air controllers.
Some members of the crash victims' families said that without a clear cause to blame the accident on, the interim report held little significance.
Marco Tulio Moreno Marques, a 43-year-old lawyer in Rio de Janeiro, lost both his parents in the crash. He did not bother watching the French investigators' public presentation, saying that without the black boxes, he was skeptical of any findings.
"I think it is difficult that they will ever find out what happened," he said. "They can say a flying saucer hit the plane, but if they don't find the black boxes we will never know for certain what happened."
'Significant' it landed belly up
Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said although investigators seem to know very little about what happened due to "a horrendous lack of evidence," it is significant that the plane landed the right way up.
"It suggests they were in some kind of flight attitude," he said.
But he warned that "without finding the black boxes it's going to be phenomenally difficult, maybe impossible, to determine what happened."
Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water. The pilots apparently also did not send any mayday calls.
He said there was "no information" suggesting a need to ground the world's fleet of more than 600 A330 planes as a result of the crash.
"As far as I'm concerned there's no problem flying these aircraft," he said.
Air France said all elements of the investigation "will be fully and immediately taken into account by the airline" and that it is continuing to cooperate with the investigators with "a commitment to total transparency with regard to the investigators, its passengers and the general public."
The black boxes — which are in reality bright orange — are resting somewhere on an underwater mountain range filled with crevasses and rough, uneven terrain. Bouillard said the search for them has been extended by 10 days through July 10, while his investigation would run through Aug. 15.
Bouillard said French investigators have yet to receive any information from Brazilian authorities about the results of the autopsies on the 51 bodies recovered from the site.
But a spokesman for the Public Safety Department in Brazil's Pernambuco state — in charge of the autopsies — denied that.
"French medical examiners are working together with Brazilian medical examiners and they have full access to all the information obtained from autopsies," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity according to department rules.
Families of the victims met with officials from BEA, Air France and the French transport ministry before the report was released. An association of families addressed a letter to the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, demanding answers to several questions about the plane.
Investigators should have an easier time recovering debris and clues in the crash of a Yemeni Airbus 310 with 153 people on board that went down Tuesday just nine miles north of the Indian Ocean island-nation of Comoros.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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