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747-237

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12953432

Wreckage from Air France jet found in Atlantic
3 April 2011

Wreckage from an Air France jet lost over the Atlantic nearly two years ago with 228 people on board has been found, French investigators say.

With the cause of the crash still unknown, a fourth attempt to locate the plane's voice and data recorders got under way last month.

Searchers located wreckage during the past 24 hours, investigators in Paris said, without giving details.

Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris came down in a storm on 1 June 2009.

A French judge recently filed preliminary manslaughter charges against Air France over the crash.

Airbus, the maker of the jet, says no one can know for sure how the crash occurred unless the so-called "black boxes" are found.

The search has been financed jointly by Air France and Airbus. It involves dives to depths of up to 4,000m (13,120ft) with the use of special robots to examine the ocean floor between Brazil and West Africa.

'No guarantee'

France's Bureau of Investigations and Analysis (BEAR) said that plane parts of the plane had been located by the searchers, led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“These parts have been identified by BEA investigators as belonging to the wreck of the A330-203, Flight AF 447”

French Bureau of Investigations and Analysis "These parts have been identified by BEA investigators as belonging to the wreck of the A330-203, Flight AF 447," it added.

The bureau promised to release further information later.

An initial search found 50 bodies and hundreds of pieces of the plane, including its torn-off tail, while the last search ended in failure in May 2010.

The latest search was planned as a "systematic exploration" of an area of some 10,000 sq km (3,900 sq miles).

Officials have previously said there can be no guarantee that the flight recorders will ever be found.

Those who died included more than 30 nationalities. Most were French, Brazilian or German.

The crash has been partially blamed on malfunctioning speed sensors but officials believe other factors must also have contributed.

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iflytb20 · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 11:40 pm Post subject:

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747-237 · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:48 am Post subject:

Bodies found from 09 plane crash in Atlantic still inside fuselage

Authorities confirmed that bodies have been found, but considering the nature of the find, the details of how and where they were found will be told to the families first. Things such as passengers still strapped in their seats, if this is indeed the case, is something that the authorities want to tell the families before releasing details to the media.

http://www.huliq.com/12079/bodies-found-09-plane-crash-atlantic-still-inside-fuselage
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shivendrashukla · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 9:23 pm Post subject:

Great job done by BEA. It is like finding a needle in a haystack. May all those who perished in this tragedy, rest in peace.

Shivendra

HAWK21M · Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:37 am Post subject:

Amazing find....Now lets hope the CVR/FDR is found & the Mystery unwound.
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yash777 · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 6:41 am Post subject:

Air France crash flight recorder found

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/04/27/Air-France-crash-flight-recorder-found/UPI-90251303942971/

A robot submarine located the flight data recorder from Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009, but its data are missing, officials say.

The search by the robot submersible for the wreckage of the airliner, which crashed in the equatorial Atlantic in June 2009 on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, began last month, NewsScientist.com reported Wednesday.

The flight recorder is missing a crucial component called the Crash Survivable Memory unit, which records and holds the all-important flight data in solid-state memory chips, said officials of the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, the French government's air crash investigator.

"It [the recorder] was surrounded by debris from other parts of the airplane," the BEA said in a statement.

"The searches are continuing," the BEA said, with hopes the memory component will be found nearby in the debris field.

All 228 passengers and crew on flight were killed when it went down into the Atlantic in heavy weather.
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iflytb20 · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 2:50 pm Post subject:

ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 1710

sri_bom · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 2365 Location: Singapore

Curious to know, I understand that the plane went through a bad storm, but if the aircraft was a 4 holer like the 747 would it have been able to ride the storm out?

iflytb20 · Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 5:19 pm Post subject:

The APU
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ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 1710

Wait a minute..so the APU, which is housed in the fuselage just below the tail, went down intact and infact SUNK to a great depth, but the tail itself was found floating on the surface ??

Then again, the engines and the fwd landing gear, and most of the fuselage went down several hundred (thousand?) metres, but some parts of the galley were floating on the surface??

What kind of an impact was this ? Did the tail break off before the rest of the fuselage ?
Did the fuselage break up somewhat in mid-air?

Purely looking at how and where the airplane parts have been found, would it not be possible to look at scenarios ?
It just seems bizarre that significant portions of the plane sunk to a great depth..if this was a high-velocity high vertical-angle impact, the plane would have broken up into several parts , wouldnt it?

Did the plane ultimately make a shallow dive into the sea, snapping off the tailplane in the process ?

iflytb20 · Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 11:59 pm Post subject:

They found the CSMU Very Happy

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iflytb20 · Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 12:05 am Post subject:

iflytb20 · Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 12:45 am Post subject:

Some excerpts from the BEA Interim report. For full report click here

ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 1710

This again begs a question, if the plane literally dropped into the sea with positive (nose up) attitude, shouldnt most of it have floated up instead if sinking to the sea bed ?

Did the pilots not try to level the wings in the final moments to make any sort of soft landing ?

TB20- if you can explain better- loss of lift, resulting in zero forward airspeed., what asymetrical condition would cause this for an airliner as large as the A330?. A plane cruising at (probably) M.82 or so, suddenly stalls, and from 35-37000 feet, it just drops like a large rock?

And I shudder to think of the final moments of the passengers, in an intact plane, they were probably all screaming, praying(?), terrified at the sudden vertical drop, atleast they didnt see the ocean loom up on them at night.. Sad

iflytb20 · Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 11:25 am Post subject:

ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 1710

Thanks for the explanation, though I knew about the T-tail deep stall..But my point is, how come something so drastic happened that recovery was impossible even from 35-37000 feet ? In case of the Aeroflot A310 the kid yanked the controls..so that is a deliberate move.

iflytb20 · Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 4:44 pm Post subject:

They found the CVR too Very Happy

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HAWK21M · Posted: Wed May 04, 2011 3:07 am Post subject:

Eagerly Awaiting the SSCVR/SSFDR data results.
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iflytb20 · Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 1:31 am Post subject:

Video showing the recovery operation of the FDR CSMU

YouTube
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747-237 · Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 10:00 pm Post subject:

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/05/09/356420/picture-one-of-af447s-engines-retrieved-from-sea-bed.html

One of AF447's engines retrieved from sea bed
09/05/11

One of the two General Electric CF6 engines of the crashed Air France Airbus A330, lost in the South Atlantic two years ago, has been raised from the sea bed.

Salvage efforts have continued following the location of the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders from flight AF447, both of which are en route to the analysis laboratory of French investigation agency Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses.

With the priority task of retrieving the recorders completed, BEA says that it has started recovering structural parts of the twinjet.

It has lifted the avionics bay, with several computer systems from the A330, and one of its CF6 engines - it is unclear whether this is the starboard or port powerplant.

The recorders have been transferred from the Ile de Sein recovery vessel to a French naval patrol boat, La Capricieuse, which is taking the devices - under the watch of two investigators and a judicial police officer - to Cayenne in French Guiana.

BEA says the patrol boat should arrive in Cayenne on 11 May, from where they will be flown to its headquarters in Paris.

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iflytb20 · Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 2:29 am Post subject:

iflytb20 · Posted: Sun May 22, 2011 9:01 pm Post subject: Some more "Leaked" information

ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 1710

Yeah..of course the plane lost lift..thats why it crashed..what a superb conclusion Rolling Eyes

1) If the tubes iced over, couldnt the pilots have maintained some sort of a shallow dive to bring the plane down to lets say, 10000 feet? wouldnt that have ""freed up the ice"? Would it be so difficult to maintain level flight after that ?

Also, would the plane have lost altitude reference ? I guess the pitot tubes are meant for airspeed only or no?

Are we saying that pitot tubes are SO Critical that ice ingestion leads to only one possible result- catastrophic loss of flight control..

shivendrashukla · Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 10:10 pm Post subject:

Air France crash pilots lost vital speed data, say investigators

iflytb20 · Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 11:53 am Post subject:

Follow this Link for the official release by BEA - the investigating agency
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ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 1710

There is a lot of interesting discussion about the Pilot's actions pre-entry into the stall and the actions (of lack thereof) during the stall.

I am not sure if they were getting reliable airspeed readings for quite some time prior to entry of the stall. Are we saying that the pitot tubes froze instantly, leading to AP/disengage?

Perhaps the pitot tubes were inconsistent in the few early minutes before the stall. If the PFD/ASI was showing M.82, was it really at M.82 or slightly slower already ?
Somehow their inability to control the plane in alternate law and the fact that they had a nose-up during the stall to climb, perplexes me. If A/T was disengaged, then I cant imagine they climbed up from 350 to 380, all the while when the airspeed started to bleed off. Did they apply manual thrust ?

And then having to counter the 40deg roll..something is just not right.

Did the pilots fail to apply Stick-and rudder principles (applicable from Cessna152 onwards) ?

What could they not do that they had to call in the Captain ?

Just 4 minutes from a near serene cruise ( perhaps with drinks and dinner being served, passengers enjoying movies or dozing off in flatbeds) to catastrophic plunge into the ocean. Sad

texdravid · Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:36 am Post subject:

What does this whole accident investigation look like to the average person on the street who is not a pilot?

1). Chief pilot was asleep or on "rest" and it took several attempts to reach him before he re-entered cockpit.

2). Why didn't he immediately get back into the left seat and get things in order? Evidently he did not.

3). The relief pilot/first officer looks like in retrospect that he was in over his head.

4). Complete lack of situational awareness by the first officer/relief pilot.

5). Finally, can the over reliance on computers doing the flying on modern aircraft dull the senses of old fashioned flying techniques, in the same sense that calculators have dulled the senses of modern school students in the mathematical sciences?

6). Any way you look at it, preliminarily, Air France better start looking for their checkbook....it's going to get ugly, nasty, and expensive. Your pilots I think messed up big time.
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ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 1710

texdravid · Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:05 am Post subject:

I think it looks more like the Colgan air incident:

Colgan air # 3407 to Buffalo. Stall exacerbated by improper pilot maneuvers; i.e. pulling up and only slightly increasing power instead of nose down and going full throttle up.

While there are differences, in essence, both flight crews did not respond to the problem at hand, which was a stall. In fact, their actions made it worse, and caused the aircraft loss.
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