Airliners-India

karatecatman · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:57 pm Post subject:

AP
Air France memo says it's replacing flight sensors
By MARCO SIBAJA and GREG KELLER
June 5, 2009

RECIFE, Brazil (AP) — An Air France memo to its pilots about the crash of Flight 447 says the airline is replacing flight-speed sensors in all its medium- and long-haul Airbus jets.

Air France declines to comment on the memo obtained by The Associated Press, saying it is for pilots only.

Airbus says the matter is part of the probe into the crash that killed 228 people flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

***

French officials have stopped short of criticizing their Brazilian counterparts, but France's Transportation Minister Dominique Bussereau said his own country's searchers have found no signs of the Airbus A330.

"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, also questioned the Brazilian claims, saying French teams "cannot precisely confirm the zone where the plane went down."
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एअर इंडिया AIR INDIA Fly DVD --- Desh VIDESH Desh

karatecatman · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:10 pm Post subject:

Minister says cannot rule out terrorism in Air France plane crash

www.chinaview.cn
2009-06-06 00:46:57

PARIS, June 5 (Xinhua) -- French Defence Minister Herve Morin said Friday that the possibility of a terrorist attack on Air France Flight 447 cannot be ruled out.

"We have no right to exclude terrorism," he told journalists, but adding that he had not heard of any threats to the flight or of any group or individual claiming responsibility for bringing down the aircraft.

The Airbus A330-200 airliner with 228 people aboard went missing over the Atlantic Sunday night after leaving Rio de Janeiro to Paris. According to Air France earlier this week, the plane sent out a series of messages showing "multiple technical failure" just before it disappeared.

Editor: Yan
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karatecatman · Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:32 pm Post subject:

BBC
But the biggest mystery is why the aircraft seems to have ended up flying through what meteorologists believe were storm cloud formations towering more than 15,200m into the air.

The volatile Intertropical Convergence Zone along the equator is navigated safely by hundreds of aircraft every day.

They have a weather radar showing the locations of storms and Lufthansa has described how one of its crews, in the area at the time, steered a course through the turbulent skies without any problems.
None of the fault messages leaked so far have suggested the radar system itself failed.

But without the aircraft's recorders, investigators are working with one hand tied behind their backs, while the world waits for answers.
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एअर इंडिया AIR INDIA Fly DVD --- Desh VIDESH Desh

Devesh

Can someone decode these ACARS messages from F-GZCP AF447

http://www.eurocockpit.com/images/acars447.php
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Devesh
Bangalore Aviation

iflytb20 · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:17 am Post subject:

This should be much easier to read and reply to.

I guess MEL bhai can throw some more light on it. It contains a lot of ATA codes and i'm clueless about them

iflytb20 · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:50 am Post subject:

The 10 digit numbers are the date and time of the message.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
So this would be the sequence of events:

...Date... Time (UTC) Event
31/05/09 2245 MAINTENANCE STATUS
31/05/09 2245 X2, ,,,,,LAV CONF
01/06/09 0210 AUTO FLT AP OFF AutoPilot OFF
01/06/09 0210 AUTO FLT
01/06/09 0210 F/CTL ALTN LAW Flight Controls Alternate Law
01/06/09 0210 FLAG ON CAPT PFD
01/06/09 0210 FLAG ON F/O PFD
01/06/09 0210 AUTO FLT A/THR OFF Autothrust OFF
01/06/09 0210 NAV TCAS FAULT
01/06/09 0210 FLAG ON CAPT PFD
01/06/09 0210 FLAG ON F/O PFD
01/06/09 0210 F/CTL RUD TRV LIM FAULT Flight Controls Rudder Travel Limit FAULT
01/06/09 0210 MAINTENANCE STATUS
01/06/09 0210 MAINTENENCE STATUS
01/06/09 0210 EFCS2 1,EFCS1,AFS,,,,,P
01/06/09 0210 EFCS1 X2,EFCS2X,,,,,,FC
01/06/09 0211 FLAG ON CAPT PFD
01/06/09 0211 FLAG ON F/O PFD
01/06/09 0211 ISIS 1,,,,,,,ISIS(22FN
01/06/09 0211 IR2 1,EFCS1X,TR1,TR3,
01/06/09 0212 NAV ADR DISAGREE
01/06/09 0213 F/CTL PRIM 1 FAULT
01/06/09 0213 F/CTL SEC 1 FAULT
01/06/09 0213 AFS 1,,,,,,,FMGKC1(1C
01/06/09 0214 MAINTENANCE STATUS
01/06/09 0214 ADVISORY
---------------------------------------------------
The Italics are my interpretation of the message. Since i am not a bus guy, i could be wrong. Expert opinion invited

Devesh · 01/06/09 0211 IR2 1,EFCS1X,TR1,TR3,

karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 12:11 pm Post subject:

Sent by email
Air France Flight 447 Search Results Lead to Rogue Antivirus
4:37 am (UTC-7)
by JM Hipolito (Technical Communications)

Issues surrounding the crash of Air France Flight 447 have not been fully resolved up to now but, it didn’t need be for cybercriminals; they’re already taking advantage of this tragedy too.

Through SEO poisoning, searches for reports related to the plane crash yield links that when opened trigger multiple redirections to various sites, which ultimately lead to download of rogue antivirus software.

The URLs shown above (Figure 2) are detected as follows:

hxxp:// cnnnews2009.{BLOCKED}.com/french-airbus-crash.html - detected as HTML_REDIRECT.ED
hxxp:// cnnnews2009.{BLOCKED}.com/images/menu.js - detected as JS_CRYPTED.HW
hxxp:// {BLOCKED}ware-live-scanv3.com/1/?id=2022&smersh=8186a276d&back=%3DDQwxDDwNcQNMI%3DN/My computer Online Scan.htm detected as JS_FAKEAV.BIM
As of this writing the other URLs are inaccessible. On the other hand, the downloaded rogue antivirus Install_2022.exe is detected as TROJ_FAKEAV.BIM. Upon execution, it connects to a URL to download another file which is now detected as TROJ_YEKTEL.AA.

Upon execution, TROJ_YEKTEL.AA displays an installation prompt for a supposed antivirus application called Personal Antivirus. Should any user proceed with the installation, he or she will be greeted by a parade of malware detections supposedly found on their system. The said malware detections are fake, and are used to scare the user into getting a copy of the full version of the software—for a fee of course.

It is saddening to see cybercriminals trying to pull off one of these rogue antivirus schemes using most recent tragedies where so much mourning is involved.

Nonetheless, Trend Micro Smart Protection Network already stops this threat from affecting users, as the malicious URLs and files are already blocked and detected respectively.
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एअर इंडिया AIR INDIA Fly DVD --- Desh VIDESH Desh

karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 12:32 pm Post subject:

www.france24.com/en/20090605-air-france-447-jet-spanish-aircraft-brazil-iberia
Flying behind doomed jet, a Spanish aircraft avoided disaster
Friday 05 June 2009

A Spanish plane bound for Madrid on Monday was closely following the Air France aircraft when it disappeared with 228 people on board. The Iberia flight crew tried to contact their French colleagues, in vain. Friday 05 June 2009
By FRANCE 24 - Nicolas DE SCITIVAUX (text) / Florence VILLEMINOT (video)
React (224) Print save As the doomed Air France jetliner plunged into the storms above the Atlantic Ocean, Flight IB 6024, bound for Madrid, decided to change its itinerary to avoid the ominous clouds. As they circled the storms, its pilots heard the last messages emitted by Brazilian air traffic controllers to the jetliner, the Spanish press reports.

The Iberia aircraft took off from Rio de Janeiro at 00:07am (Madrid time – GMT+2), seven minutes after the Air France jetliner, according to the website of the Spanish daily ABC.

Silence

The IB 6204 crew members -- who prefer to remain anonymous -- explain that they were flying in the same air corridor as the French aircraft, ten minutes behind it, at a distance of about 128 km.

Facing difficult weather conditions, much like the AF 447, the captain and co-pilot decided to reroute 56 km to the east. “That’s how we navigated the storm, in order to avoid turbulence and electrically charged clouds,” says one of the Spanish pilots.

The Spanish pilots never saw the Air France jet, but they did hear the unanswered messages sent by Brazilian air traffic controllers trying to establish contact with the French pilots.

Worried, the IB 6024 pilots tried to contact their French colleagues, without success. They also tuned into the aircraft emergency frequency, but heard no distress messages.

The Air France jet stopped emitting automatic messages at 3:33 am on Monday morning.

False readings

French air safety investigators said that automatic messages broadcast by the Rio-to-Paris flight just before it plunged into the Atlantic had shown that the plane's systems were giving false readings.

"Airbus sent a reminder overnight to all the companies using its planes about procedures to follow in the case of inconsistency in speeds measured," a spokesman for the French-based manufacturer told AFP.

The French daily Le Monde reported Thursday that the pilots of the Air France jet -- which is still missing, along with the 228 people on board -- may not have been flying at the right speed for dangerous weather.

Airbus declined to comment on the report.

The Iberia jet was an Airbus A340-300.
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karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 12:49 pm Post subject:

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aRTRMJqJcXRs&refer=canada
Airbus Said to Have Cited Sensor Concerns Before A330 Jet Crash
By Laurence Frost and Andrea Rothman

June 6 (Bloomberg) -- Airbus SAS advised airlines more than a year ago to replace airspeed sensors on its A330 jet, the model that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on an Air France flight to Paris, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The service bulletin about the Thales SA parts was a recommendation, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the memo was confidential. Officials are said to be studying whether flawed data from ice-damaged sensors could have confused the flight computer or pilots on the June 1 flight.

“Recommendations are frequent and not issued in cases where there’s a truly pressing concern,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president at consultant Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia. In cases deemed critical, regulators put out binding directives.

Air France has been installing the new sensors, which are less vulnerable to ice, as the jets undergo scheduled overhauls, one of the people said. The people familiar with the advisory didn’t know whether the work had been done on the lost A330.

Accurate airspeed readings are pivotal because flying too fast can damage a plane’s airframe and traveling too slowly risks losing lift in a so-called aerodynamic stall. Flight 447 disappeared with 216 passengers and 12 crew members en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro.

The only clues so far to what went wrong are the presence of violent turbulence and the “incoherence of the different speed measurements” transmitted from the jet, France’s BEA air- accident investigation bureau said on June 4.

‘Small Problems’

“Like any other aircraft, this plane had problems that were dealt with” during its four-year service history, although nothing obviously dangerous, BEA Director Paul-Louis Arslanian said on France 2 television. “One of our sources of information is the examination of all these small problems,” he said without elaborating.

Stefan Schaffrath, a spokesman for Toulouse, France-based Airbus, declined to comment on the planemaker’s service bulletins. Veronique Brachet, a spokeswoman for Paris-based Air France, declined to comment on the airspeed sensors, saying all information would be given to investigators.

Discrepancies among readings from the A330’s three airspeed sensors could have triggered the shutdown of the autopilot four minutes before the last message from the jet, or pilots may have taken control when they became concerned about that data or another problem, a person with knowledge of the probe said.

In an advisory about the crash sent to airlines on June 4, Airbus reminded pilots of the need to maintain engine thrust and the proper rate of climb when airspeed data become unreliable, as detailed in flight manuals.

Measuring Airspeed

The sensor on the A330 is a so-called Pitot tube, named after the French engineer who discovered in the early 1700s that the pressure of a gas or liquid through a tube could be used to determine velocity. According to Thales, its unit includes an electric heating system to “limit the risk of icing” that could obstruct the airflow and produce faulty readings.

Thales will be asked to supply information to crash investigators, the person with knowledge of the inquiry said. Christophe Robin, a spokesman for the Neuilly-sur-Seine, France- based company, didn’t immediately return a call to his mobile phone after regular business hours.

Blocked or damaged Pitot tubes have been blamed for air disasters including the 1996 crash of a Boeing Co. 757 flown by Alas Nacionales, which plunged into the Atlantic after takeoff from the Dominican Republic, killing all 189 people on board. Readings overstating the plane’s speed caused the pilots to fly too slowly and stall, investigators found.

Overshooting the Runway

In 1999, a blocked sensor contributed to the crash of a Boeing MD-11 flown by FedEx Corp. that overshot the runway as it attempted to land in the Philippines.

Brazilian and French search teams have yet to recover any confirmed debris from Flight 447, which was lost in an area without radar coverage.

In the jet’s last minutes, automated radio transmissions logged a catalog of failures, beginning with the disengagement of the autopilot and ending with a drastic drop in the pressure difference inside and outside the cabin, which can result from a plane’s disintegration or from a rapid decline in altitude.

According to the Airbus Web site, more than 600 A330s are in service around the world with 65 carriers, including Delta Air Lines Inc. and US Airways Group Inc. Both companies declined to comment.
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karatecatman · 01/06/09 0211 IR2 1,EFCS1X,TR1,TR3,

karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:27 pm Post subject:

Some interesting info here:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/
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karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:52 pm Post subject:

Copyright picture

This satellite photo provided by GeoEye and taken Thursday June 4, 2009, shows about 100 sq km of the area in the Atlantic Ocean where French and Brazilian investigators have been searching for debris from the Air France crash which killed 228 passengers and crew Sunday May 31, 2009. GeoEye specifically tasked a satellite to look at this area in hopes of providing imagery to the investigators searching for debris from the Air France plane.
Copyright picture
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karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 4:45 pm Post subject:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8086860.stm
Plane 'sent 24 error messages'
June 6, 2009

A French navy plane joins the search for debris from Air France 447
The Air France jet which went missing over the Atlantic sent 24 error messages minutes before it crashed, French investigators say.

Investigators also said the plane's autopilot was not on, though they do not know if it had been switched off or was not working.

Weather experts said there was no evidence storms the plane encountered were "exceptional" for the season.

The Airbus A330 vanished en-route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Monday.

Officials do not know what triggered the plane's problems, but it was flying through an area of thunder storms and turbulence.

Speaking at a press conference in Paris, the director of France's air accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said a total of 24 error messages were received in the final moments of Air France 447, as its systems shut down one by one.

But he said it was impossible to tell from the plane's signals why the autopilot was not on.

Faulty speed meters
Mr Arslanian confirmed that the missing jet had had a problem calculating its speed, adding that it was a recurring problem on the A330s and that Airbus was undertaking a replacement programme.

"We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330," Mr Arslanian said. "There is a programme of replacement, of improvement."

But he insisted the planes were safe in the meantime.

The deputy head of the French weather service, Alain Ratier, said the weather pattern was normal at the time that Flight 447 disappeared.

"According to the analysis of the infrared images, there is nothing to suggest that there was a cluster of thunderstorms of exceptional intensity, Mr Ratier said.

"Certainly there was powerful cumulo-nimbus [storm clouds], but these are found frequently in this area and in normal climactic conditions," he added.

Search efforts

Hopes of locating the plane have been frustrated so far.

Brazilian search teams first said on Tuesday they may have spotted debris from the plane. But material recovered from the sea on Thursday turned out to be unrelated to the Air France jet.

Efforts are now focusing on the two sonar beacons - or "pingers" - attached to the flight's black boxes, the BBC's Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.

But at the news conference, a spokesman for France's accident investigation bureau said there was no guarantee the beacons were still attached to the flight recorders.

He said, given the likely force of the impact of a crash, they could easily have become separated.

On Friday, French Defence Minister Herve Morin said a French submarine was being sent to join in the search since it had sonar equipment that could help locate the airliner's flight data recorders.

The US is also sending specialised listening equipment.

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karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:19 pm Post subject:

Obama pledges support on Air France probe
June 6, 2009
CAEN, France (AP) — President Barack Obama says the United States has authorized all of the government's resources to investigate an Air France plane that disappeared off the coast of South America.

Obama told French President Nicholas Sarkozy on Saturday that Americans offer their thoughts and their prayers to the French, particularly those who lost family members in the suspected crash. Investigators are searching for debris from Air France Flight 447, which lost contact with officials on June 1 during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Two Americans were aboard the 228-person flight.

Obama says it's not clear yet what happened to the plane but the two countries want to find discover what caused the plane to be lost.
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

news just breaking.... 2 bodies and some debris recovered.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8087303.stm
_________________
Kabir
India Correspondent
Airliner World

karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 11:41 pm Post subject:

karatecatman · Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 11:53 pm Post subject:

Copyright picture

The Air France Building at Fernando de Noronha Island, on June 6, 2009, has been on the island since 1927 and is used as a home for technicians, to store equipment and a transmission antennas. Fernando de Noronha, the Brazilian archipelago 400 kilometers (250 miles) into the Atlantic that serves as a base for the search and initial collection point for any debris or bodies that might be recovered from Air France flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic ocean June 1.
Copyright picture
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HamiltonAir · Member Joined: 25 Dec 2006 Posts: 797 Location: Bangalore

17 more bodies have been recovered. R.I.P to the passengers and the crew Sad

http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20090608/890/twl-17-more-bodies-recovered-from-crashe.html
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HamiltonAir

HAWK21M · Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 5:53 pm Post subject:

ATA Chapters are as follows:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA_chapter_numbers
regds
MEL.
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Think of the Brighter side !!!

karatecatman · Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:15 pm Post subject:

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=a8dY0m8FTZkI&refer=canada
Air France Union Demands A330 Upgrades Before Flights

By Laurence Frost and Andrea Rothman
June 8 (Bloomberg) -- An Air France labor union called on pilots to refuse to fly Airbus SAS A330s and A340s until the airline replaces speed sensors after investigators said the equipment probably played a role in a June 1 plane crash.

The Alter union, which represents 12 percent of the Paris- based carrier’s pilots, wants Air France to replace at least two of the three probes on each plane, Francois Hamant, a spokesman at the labor group, said in a phone interview.

“We made this decision following our reading of the technical messages” sent automatically by the Air France A330 that went down into the Atlantic Ocean a week ago, Hamant said. “Air France communicated to pilots that it accelerated the program to replace these probes. I’m not a technical expert but it makes us fear that this is a very serious matter.”

Unreliable data from speed sensors may have triggered a chain of events leading to the crash of Air France Flight 447 that killed 228 people, France’s chief crash investigator said. Brigitte Barrand, a spokeswoman at the airline, declined to comment on the union’s demands. The carrier has been changing the probes, made by Thales SA, on single-aisle Airbus A320s since late 2007 and on twin-aisle A330s and A340s since May.

Air France pilots are represented by a half-dozen unions, with the largest, SNPL-ALPA, claiming 50 percent of them as members. SNPL-ALPA hasn’t made any recommendation yet, a spokesman said.

Salvage Work

Salvage teams from the French and Brazilian navies have recovered 16 bodies from the region of the Atlantic where military planes and ships are searching for the wreckage, the Brazilian armed forces said today. “Hundreds” of pieces of debris have been found, it said.

The U.S. Navy is sending equipment and personnel to help search for the aircraft’s flight-data recorders, known as black boxes, and two French mini-submarines are scheduled to arrive in the area by about June 12.

US Airways Group Inc., the smallest U.S. full-fare carrier, and Aer Lingus Group Plc, Ireland’s second-biggest carrier, said they’re replacing speed sensors on their A330s. Aer Lingus already had a program of installing upgraded probes in its A320s-series aircraft.

Spokesmen at Neuilly Sur Seine, France-based Thales, Europe’s biggest maker of military electronics, haven’t returned repeated calls to office and mobile phones seeking comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Laurence Frost in Paris at lfrost@bloomberg.net; Andrea Rothman in Toulouse, France, at aerothman@bloomberg.net.
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एअर इंडिया AIR INDIA Fly DVD --- Desh VIDESH Desh

karatecatman · Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:48 pm Post subject:

A picture released by the Brazilian air force shows divers recovering the stabilizer from the tail of the Air France jetliner that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.

www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/world/americas/09plane.html?ref=world
Divers Recover Telling Debris From Air France
Published: June 8, 2009
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazilian divers have recovered a distinctive red- and blue-striped section of the tail of the Air France jetliner that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean last week, a find that may help investigators narrow the hunt for the plane’s voice and data recorders.

Also on Monday, Brazilian military lowered its count of the number of bodies recovered so far to 16 from the 17 it had announced on Sunday. All 228 people who were aboard the plane are presumed dead.

Photographs released Monday by the Brazilian military showed a team of divers and sailors on a rubber dinghy tying a rope around what appeared to be the vertical stabilizer from the tail section of the plane. The part, which bears the trademark stripes and logo of Air France, bore no evident burn marks and retained its triangular shape, save for a chunk missing where it appeared to have been torn from the body of the plane.

Another photograph of recovered debris released by the military showed chunks of orange, white and cream-colored wreckage amid a tangle of wires and crushed tubes.

The flight recorders are generally kept in the tail section of the plane, so the finding of the tail section may help to narrow the search in the ocean’s deep waters. The flight recorders represent investigators’ best hope for discovering why the plane went down on May 31, in stormy, turbulent weather.

A team of American Navy searchers is being flown in along with two devices that can detect emergency beacons to a depth of 20,000 feet, according to the Pentagon, The Associated Press reported. They will be delivered to ships that will then listen for transmissions from the black boxes, which are programmed to emit signals for at least three more weeks.

The Brazilian frigate Constituição was carrying the recovered remains, officials said, and was scheduled to arrive Tuesday on the island of Fernando de Noronha, a few hundred miles from where officials are centering the search for wreckage. From there, the remains will be flown to Recife to be examined by forensic and medical experts. Wing fragments and hundreds of personal items believed to be from passengers have also been found.

France is leading the investigation into the cause of the crash, while Brazilian officials are focusing on the recovery of victims and wreckage. Officials said that five ships from the two countries are combing a defined search area, and 14 airplanes are scouring that area and adjacent ones.

“The government is going to continue with its efforts, via the navy and via the air force, to find, if possible, all the bodies, because we know what it means for a family to receive the remains a missing loved one,” Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said Monday in his weekly radio address. “At this painful time it won’t solve the problem, but it is an immense comfort to a family knowing that is burying its loved one.”

On Sunday, Dominique Bussereau, the French secretary of state for transportation, told RTL radio that the authorities were focusing on a transmission from the plane, during the last minutes of flight, indicating that airspeed readings on its onboard systems were inconsistent.

“The series of readings represent the only real element for investigators at this moment,” he said. In particular, they were reviewing the performance of a Pitot tube, part of the speed measurement system.

“There have been situations on Airbus planes, and perhaps on others, where these tubes no longer indicated the airspeed because it entered a humid area, a low-pressure area, an area of turbulence,” he added. If the Flight 447 pilots could not read the correct speed, the plane could have been flying too slowly or too fast, with deadly results.

French investigators announced Saturday that the plane had been scheduled to have its Pitot tube replaced, but it remained unclear whether the part had malfunctioned or had anything to do with the crash.

The ocean floor where the debris is being recovered is a tangle of mountains towering two miles above ocean valleys, which will make the recovery of the flight recorders — or black boxes — very difficult. The recovery, however, is paramount for investigators, as without them, said James T. Francis, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, the Air France case will be “a tough, tough cookie.”

Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

That is a very eerie picture.
_________________
Kabir
India Correspondent
Airliner World

ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 691

I know it is TOO early to speculate, but finding a significant portion of the tail fin intact is interesting.

1) If the whole (or most) of the fuselage went into the water then the tail fin should have been intact, unless it hit the water at a skewed angle, causing the tailfin to snap off.

2) OR, did the tail fin snap off in the air itself? - This is very worrying

3) If the tail is floating, where are the wings? Assuming 1) above, either or both wings should also have broken off.

Airbus and Air France should come clean on faulty pitot tubes. There is something quite fishy about how Air France is taking hasty steps now. I believe the pilots union wants the parts changed before further flights take place. Who wouldnt?

himmat01 · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 870 Location: DEL

Is it possible to have a ground based black box? In this age of satellite communications, the a/c data can be transferred to a ground based 'black box' via satellite.

Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

Transmitting CVR from the flight would take some very serious bandwith. But this can be done with the FDR with existing technology. As far as i know the data is recorded in "trend" format for FRD, so that data will be reasonably small.
_________________
Kabir
India Correspondent
Airliner World

HAWK21M · Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:46 pm Post subject:

karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:34 pm Post subject:

PHILADELPHIA ENQUIRER
A question of technology
After loss of Airbus, experts see room for safety improvements.
By Louise Watt

Associated Press
LONDON - The mysterious disappearance of an Air France jet while flying over the Atlantic in fierce thunderstorms is stirring a debate about whether new technologies and procedures are needed to prevent similar tragedies.

Experts say it will be difficult to build a better plane than the Airbus A330 that plunged into the ocean last Sunday, killing all 228 aboard. But they see room for improvement in other technological areas that could help boost safety.

One idea is to move from radar to satellite surveillance systems that would allow air-traffic controllers to track a plane's progress on flights across the ocean. Currently, planes go out of radar range after 200 miles from land.

Another focus is on how to make black boxes - the flight data and cockpit voice recorders - more easily recoverable in an ocean crash.

One solution being discussed in aviation circles is wiring the black box to make it stream data to help air-traffic officials locate the box and the wreckage.

"The black box could be set up to send an immediate message that could give the parameters of the plane," in a similar way that Flight 447 put out a burst of automated messages detailing mechanical failures, said Michael Boyd, an airline analyst in Colorado.

The Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared nearly four hours after takeoff, in the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001.

The disaster has prompted calls for the United States and other countries to hasten the move to GPS-based networks that would pinpoint planes and enable controllers to monitor them as they cross the ocean outside radar-range.

"It does seem a little disconcerting for the public who have not been familiar with the lack of surveillance in oceans," said Bill Voss, president and chief executive officer of the Flight Safety Foundation in Virginia.

Nearly 70 percent of the world's airspace is not radar-controlled, and the existing radar system is likely to remain for at least a decade.

While some European and Asian countries are moving toward satellite systems, which would reduce travel times and fuel use by helping the pilot find the most efficient route, a huge obstacle is expense.

In the United States, technology for such a system is being tested, but full implementation - estimated to cost $35 billion - has languished amid funding delays and disputes over technical complexities.

Some elements of these essentially GPS-controlled systems already exist but are not in widespread use.

Major carriers are already capable of using automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) technology, in which the plane emits data that show up on the controller's screen. But the overall infrastructure is not yet in place to allow its general use.

Voss believes that being able to better communicate with aircraft is more important than surveillance for safety.

Passengers may be able to use cell phones on a flight, but the pilot may be relaying information via VHF - which has been standard in aviation for at least 60 years. When crossing oceans, pilots communicate with air-traffic control if necessary via high-frequency radio, which is prone to interference from sun spots and lightning and can be difficult to hear.

"This crash may put more pressure on international organizations to advance the use of satellite voice communications," said Voss.

One key factor in figuring out what went wrong on Air France Flight 447 is finding the black boxes. But they could be scattered nearly anywhere across a vast undersea mountain range, throwing retrieval efforts into doubt.

Boyd said the black box might be configured to automatically send messages out every 10 minutes or so, he added. "I think we're going to go in that direction now."

But new black box technology may be held up by cost, the rarity of ocean crashes, and the aviation industry's culture.

A plane crash over the sea is "very rare," said Boyd, noting the last such accidents to happen were in the 1980s.

"Most airline accidents happen on landing or takeoff. You always find a black box there," said Boyd.

Furthermore, "the aviation industry is extremely conservative in accepting new technology," according to Voss.

Chris Yates, Jane's aviation security editor, rules out black boxes that would float, saying the shell would have to be so flimsy that "in the event of a crash it would automatically break up and we would lose that data."

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karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 3:53 pm Post subject:

Sent by email

U.S. military spacecraft aid search for missing Airbus
BY CRAIG COVAULT
June 1, 2009

U.S. Air Force Defense Support Program (DSP) missile warning satellite data collected early June 1 over the central Atlantic, is being examined to see if it captured a possibly fiery breakup or impact of the Air France Airbus A330 that disappeared enroute to Paris from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The objective is to help locate the position of the aircraft when it went down and also provide insight into what may have caused the accident. Air France flight 447 was carrying 228 passengers and crew when it vanished.

"What the French government is trying to get, is any information which could have been gathered by (the) satellite system of U.S., if anything can help," Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, CEO of Air France-KLM, told reporters during a news conference June 1.

Two or three Northrop Grumman DSPs constantly scan that region of the Earth with powerful Aerojet-developed infrared telescopes. Rotating at 6 rpm, they are designed to detect the heat from the launch of land or sea based ballistic missiles. The satellites are based in geosynchronous orbit at nearly 23,000 miles in altitude.

Each satellite carries a 6,000 element mercury-cadmium-telluride detector able to discriminate not only missile launches but also many different kinds of thermal phenomenon such as lightning, meteorites and aircraft that are flying on afterburner or on fire.

The A330's telemetry system, which automatically sends data to the airline's maintenance computers, transmitted data indicating electrical problems and possible depressurization of the aircraft at 0233 GMT June 1, about three hours after takeoff. The A330 was about 230 miles northeast of the Brazilian coast approaching heavy thunderstorms that line the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) at that latitude. The ITCZ is an area of continuous low pressure that lines the equatorial regions.

The aircraft had already flown beyond radar contact and, like all airline traffic in the central Atlantic, was using satellite voice position reports or automated telemetry reports to enable air traffic control to know their locations.

Data from two or three other U.S. military space systems are also being assessed to see if their sensors were pointing at the area where the Airbus went missing.

That includes data from the two new Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) starring arrays riding piggyback on two National Reconnaissance Office spacecraft in highly elliptical orbits. SBIRS sensors do not scan, they stare.

And unlike the DSPs, the new SBIRS satellites are not yet positioned to provide a continual stare toward all areas of Earth. But if a flaming breakup occurred and a SBIRS array was pointed in that direction, it, like the DSPs, could provide position information on the crash.

It is also possible that data from Lacrosse imaging radar satellites, that could sweep the ocean area for signs of debris, is being employed or that signal intelligence "eavesdropping" spacecraft data is being examined for unusual static or other transmissions they may have picked up coming from the stricken aircraft.

Truly amazing.
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karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 3:58 pm Post subject:

www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/06/05/france.plane.investigation/
12 similar flights deepen Air France 447 mystery

At least 12 flights traveled from Brazil to Europe around same time as 447
None of the other flights reported bad weather or other problems
Aviation experts say weather alone would not normally cause a crash
They also say weather can change quickly and vary over short distances
June 5, 2009

From Scott Bronstein
CNN Special Investigations Unit

(CNN) -- At least 12 airplanes shared the trans-Atlantic sky with doomed Air France Flight 447, but none reported any problems, deepening the mystery surrounding the cause of the plane's disappearance.

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.

The new information raises more questions than answers about Air France 447, believed to have plunged into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between the coasts of Brazil and West Africa on May 31, presumably killing all 228 aboard. The plane's computer system reported a series of technical problems about four hours after takeoff and immediately after entering a large storm system a few hundred miles from the far eastern coast of Brazil.

Severe winds, updrafts and even lightning have been mentioned as possible causes of the crash, potentially triggering a failure of the plane's technical systems.

But aviation experts cautioned that weather alone would not normally cause a crash. Planes routinely fly through large storms, using the sensitive radar on board to navigate through specific storm cells. When conditions are severe enough, planes can easily deviate around or above storms, experts say.

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.
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

Thats a very strange report. They contradicted themselves in the very first para.
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India Correspondent
Airliner World

Boeing7xx · Member Joined: 23 Dec 2006 Posts: 408 Location: WSSS

I'm still appalled at the amount of speculation going around without the recovery of the FDR. Almost everything seems to be based on the ACARS messages. The 3xx family is surely squeaky and enough ACARS messages have been generated even in the past in various scenarios.

RIP to the departed souls (I still hope there are life rafts floating somewhere with people in it).

Air France going out and announcing a +ve lightning strike even when there was possibly enough fuel left for the aircraft to be flying is simply shameful. Sounds like a PR effort to minimize insurance liabilities.

Sad to see that your own employer can turn on you for $$.

(let the flames begin)

karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 10:16 pm Post subject:

NDTV now says there were upto 3 suspected "unwated passengers" on board --- theor names appear on the banned list/global passenger alert list. Islamist radicals, it says. Wonder where NDTV picked that up from.

NDTV also entertained viewers by explaining what an A330 is all about -- got one of its anchors to sit before a Microsoft flight simulator.
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

If it was a terrorism based incident some terrorist organization would have claimed responsibility.
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India Correspondent
Airliner World

Aseem · Member Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1823 Location: YYZ

shivendrashukla · Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:19 am Post subject:

Before this show, I respected Vishnu Som as a reputed aviation Journalist. But yesterday's show was a farce. It really was. Instead of clarifying things, he really started floating new rumors. I am not impressed.

Cheers
Shivendra

karatecatman · Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:01 pm Post subject:

Bodies have been recovered more than 50 miles apart.

www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/world/americas/11plane.html?hp
New Signs That Air France Jet Broke Up in Flight

By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: June 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — Two pieces of evidence have emerged that lend new credence to the theory that the Air France jet that crashed more than a week ago broke up in flight.

The Brazilian Air Force released information on Tuesday night showing that bodies from Flight 447 had been recovered from locations that were more than 50 miles apart. And Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer, sent its airline customers a bulletin saying a re-analysis of the stricken plane’s last automatic transmissions reinforced the idea that many parts malfunctioned, but that the parts that measure air speed may have failed first.

A faulty air speed indicator could mislead pilots into flying faster than the aircraft could withstand, or faster than it should be flown into turbulence — two circumstances that could lead to the craft coming apart in flight.

The theory will remain just that, however, until more evidence is collected. The black boxes that contain data and voice recordings are likely to be the key to resolving the mystery of what happened to the plane, which was carrying 228 people. According to news service reports, the French nuclear attack submarine Émeraude, with a crew of 72 men, has joined two sonar-detecting surface vessels in the search for the boxes. Each vessel is able to sweep a narrow strip of ocean for the “pings” emitted by the boxes and audible for a distance of no more than three miles under ideal conditions.

In its message sent to airlines this week, Airbus said that no data was available beyond the automatic transmissions from the Air France jet, but it appeared that the manufacturer was fitting those messages into a scenario that began with the air speed problem. It said those messages “indicate that there was unreliable air speed indication” and that that situation was “consolidated” by messages indicating other failures that would be consequences of such a failure.

The Web site of The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com, first reported on the Airbus bulletin.

Airbus evidently did not fit all the messages into a clear sequence. It said one message showed a change of cabin pressure equal to an altitude change of greater than 1,800 feet per minute “which remains to be explained.” One explanation would be cabin depressurization.

Perhaps to reassure airlines, Airbus said the data did not suggest a loss of the computerized instrument display, or the Air Data Inertial Reference Unit, which helps planes locate their positions and which has had problems on other A330s.

Long before the crash, Airbus had recommended that airlines replace parts, called Pitot tubes, that scoop in air to help planes measure their air speed. The company said in its new message that for now, airlines could continue flying with older Pitot tubes.

The Federal Aviation Administration sometimes makes such manufacturer recommendations mandatory, as air worthiness directives, but Laura J. Brown, an agency spokeswoman, said “we don’t think we’re at the point where we can issue an air worthiness directive.”

“We don’t have data to indicate an unsafe condition exists,” she said.

A Delta Air Lines spokeswoman, Betsey Talton, said Delta had replaced the tubes on some models and was replacing them on its A330s, the model in the accident.
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HAWK21M · Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:29 pm Post subject:

karatecatman · Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:29 pm Post subject:

Sent by email
Air France search has ties to Coast Guard, Yorktown
By Hugh Lessig
June 11, 2009
NEWPORT NEWS - The newest search tool from the Coast Guard, taught only at its school in Yorktown, is aiding the recovery of doomed Air France Flight 447 by simulating a look back in time.

The computer modeling program is called "reverse drift," and it has helped searchers from Brazil and France in the grim task of recovering wreckage and victims from the Airbus A330.

The aircraft was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it crashed May 31. No survivors have been found.

The modeling program came into play after searchers found crash debris. Using that as a starting point, it factored in wind speed, currents and other essentials, then reversed direction.

"We're essentially trying to find the origin of where that object came from," said Lt. Richard Sansone, a senior instructor at the National Search and Rescue School at the Coast Guard Training Center in Yorktown.

Plotting long-term movements in the shifting ocean is not an exact science, officials say. The program incorporates an error factor, and it spits out a color-coded search grid that includes most-likely and least-likely locations.

"It would be really nice to have all this debris converge back on the point that it happened, but that's impossible," said Jack Frost, who manages the program known as SAROPS, which stands for Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System.

SAROPS is the Coast Guard's comprehensive search planning tool, and it's been in use since 2007. Reverse drift modeling is its newest feature, and Flight 447 represents its first major test.

The reverse drift program has been taught since May at the Yorktown training center.

"Search and rescue is like a classic mystery," Frost said. "You're trying to solve a mystery — what happened and where — and reverse drift will always be useful as one line of evidence."

A key factor in applying the program is knowing when the incident occurred. The less known about when a craft disappeared, the more difficult it can be to estimate its location.

In the case of Flight 447, rescuers had a fairly solid estimate of when it ran into trouble, Frost said.
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

Air France CEO 'not convinced' sensors cause crash

PARIS: Air France's CEO said Thursday that he is `”not convinced'' faulty speed monitors caused the crash
of Flight 447, which went down on its
way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard.

Replacement external speed monitors, or Pitot tubes, for jet models of the same type as the crashed plane arrived three days before the fatal accident, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told journalists.

The manufacturer Airbus ordered the replacements on April 27 after pilots noted a loss of airspeed data in flight on Airbus A330 and A340 models.

The incidents were ``not catastrophic'' and planes with the old Pitots are considered airworthy, Gourgeon said.

“Because I am not convinced that the sensors are the cause of the accident, and we have said it, I had no need to issue a press release the day after the accident,'' Gourgeon added, responding to criticism that there was a lack of transparency.

``It's perhaps because we spend too much time with the families and not enough the press that you say this,'' he told an association of aerospace journalists in Paris.

Air France hopes that the plane's flight recorders will be recovered, but even without them examinations of the debris and bodies recovered from the crash are expected to shed new light on what happened when the plane crashed May 31, he said.

``We will know much more, I think, after the autopsies allow us to better understand the technical causes of death and when the debris have been examined by experts,'' he said.

``In a week there will be a little more information but the important point will be the recorders,'' Gourgeon added.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Air-France-CEO-not-convinced-sensors-cause-crash-/articleshow/4644436.cms
_________________
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India Correspondent
Airliner World