Air France passenger jet drops off radar

[Flying Fox]

Great work & I'm totally amazed that they were able to find it after so long and under so much water!

 

[Mrmaxwell]

This will be a great Air Crash Investigation story. Great to know they may finally be able to unlock the mystery.


Sent from my iPhone using AFF Mobile

I was thinking the same thing!

It was great to watch recent episodes detailing both BA38 crash landing at Heathrow and US1549 into the Hudson. Waiting for both the QF32 and this AF447 episodes.

Amazing work at finding both these boxes after so long...I wonder when they will just have all flight data streamed back to base rather than recording everything in-plane?

 

[markis10]

Amazing work at finding both these boxes after so long...I wonder when they will just have all flight data streamed back to base rather than recording everything in-plane?

They already do for critical issues and there was a stream of data coming from the AF jet, given the costs of satellite data I doubt they will ever have a full stream.

 

[Nigelinoz]

There is an excellent article in the New York Times here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08Plane-t.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all
Very good reading.
Cheers
N'oz

 

[QF WP]

Thanks for posting this article, Nigelinoz

Most interesting reading. Not another pitot tube issue :shock:

 

[Nigelinoz]

Thanks for posting this article, Nigelinoz

Most interesting reading. Not another pitot tube issue :shock:

I did think it was an excellent article-till it was pointed out that there is actually more than one pitot tube and that the failure of one would not necessarily lead to failure of the autopilot.
But on the whole it's still a good article.
Cheers
N'oz

 

[serfty]

Air France black box data intact after crash

Great work & I'm totally amazed that they were able to find it after so long and under so much water!

Air France black box data intact after crash - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

All flight data from the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 has been preserved in the plane's retrieved black box recorders, French aviation authorities said on Monday. ...

 

[samh004]

Several weeks yet, but at least we’re getting closer to an answer now… hopefully.

 

[Nigelinoz]

The French are already claiming that the first data retrieved "exonerates" Airbus.
Le Figaro - Flash Actu : INFO LE FIGARO - AF 447 : Airbus mis hors de cause par les boites noires
The above link is in French but a very loose translation from Babel Fish says

LE FIGARO INFORMATION - AF 447: Airbus put out of cause by the block boxes
According to sources with the government and close relations of the investigation questioned , the first elements extracted put Airbus out of cause in the drama which cost the life 228 passengers on June 1, 2009

Cheers
N'oz

 

[UP4014]

The French were never very good at copping it on the chin.

 

[holdenvxman]

Another update on the AF plane

Air France pilots may have erred in 2009 crash: report
(AFP) – 24 minutes ago
WASHINGTON — Pilots aboard an Air France plane whose plunge into the Atlantic killed 228 people were confused by a series of flight control alarms and possibly reacted in error before the crash, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
It said sources familiar with the preliminary findings of the investigation found the pilots failed to follow standard procedures as they wrestled to figure out what was happening.
The Airbus A330 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009 ran into heavy turbulence and icing that could have generated erroneous airspeed data and warnings, distracting the three pilots as the aircraft lost engine thrust.

AFP: Air France pilots may have erred in 2009 crash: report

 

[holdenvxman]

Air France flight 447 crash pilot was not in coughpit - mirror.co.uk

 

[AdMEL]

And a third version of the story, from The Age:

Air France Flight 447 slowed to a stall before crash: report

It's interesting how three stories about the same thing can be so different!

If you combined the three stories, I think you might be close to having the full story!

 

[MatF]

It will be interesting to see this unfold. Initially, there seem to be some possible similarities to Birgenair 301?

Birgenair Flight 301 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[djfuzz]

Air France flight 447 crash pilot was not in coughpit - mirror.co.uk

Sounds eerily like part of the causation chain in Michael Crichton's Airframe.

 

[jb747]

Right now I wouldn't be taking too many of these reports as gospel...especially anything that says Airbus is in the clear.

It's worth noting, that since this accident, and also the 330 in Africa, Airbus has put out a number of training packages, and procedural changes having to do with aircraft stalls. This follows on from the original AB blurb in which the aircraft is bascially supposed to be unstallable, due to their advanced FBW control systems.

So, there are a couple of different questions that need to be answered here. Firstly, how did the aircraft react to the pitot/static problems? As we saw from QF72, their FBW control laws were quite capable of coming up with erroneous answers given the right set of conditions. It would be especially messy if the pitot failures happened in such a way that the system did not see them as failures, but continued to consider the data as valid. I'm especially curious about the supposed pitch up that happened early in the event.

And then of course, what did the pilots do? Flying the aircraft without air data is not difficult. Yep, it may set off various warnings, but they're easy enough to cancel or ignore. But, the aircraft was in the cruise. All that is really necessary is to hold the current attitude (which would have been about 2.5 degrees nose up) and the current power. If neither of those items are changed, nothing else will change to any great degree. New pilots, learning to fly, are always taught that power + attitude = performance....and it will, even if you don't have the ability to actually measure that performance.

Flight control law- wise...the aircraft would have dropped to direct, or perhaps alternate II. In either event the smarts that are normally there disappear, and it should start to behave like any other non FBW aircraft. Flight directors, autopilot, and autothrust all disappear at that time. Plus of course, what happened to the standby airspeed indication...that should have continued to work. GPS/IRS groundspeed also gives a pretty good clue. If you were travelling at 450 kts g/s beforehand, it's a good bet that that g/s will give you approximately the same IAS that it you had previously too.

 

[tuppaware]

Right now I wouldn't be taking too many of these reports as gospel...especially anything that says Airbus is in the clear.



Flight control law- wise...the aircraft would have dropped to direct, or perhaps alternate II. In either event the smarts that are normally there disappear, and it should start to behave like any other non FBW aircraft. Flight directors, autopilot, and autothrust all disappear at that time. Plus of course, what happened to the standby airspeed indication...that should have continued to work. GPS/IRS groundspeed also gives a pretty good clue. If you were travelling at 450 kts g/s beforehand, it's a good bet that that g/s will give you approximately the same IAS that it you had previously too.

Is there now an automatic action to blame the plane in these type of accidents, as I'm sure the media likes playing up airbus automation failure?

 

[Robert K]

Has there been studies done on feasibility of parachutes on planes?

 

[jb747]

Is there now an automatic action to blame the plane in these type of accidents, as I'm sure the media likes playing up airbus automation failure?

It's a very suspicious accident. I really don't care how the media want to play it, but my perspective is that of someone who flies an Airbus product, and not as a passenger. It may well be that the pilots ultimately screwed it up, but the failure sequence that the aircraft went through will have a major bearing on what happened.

 

[simongr]

What I dont understand is how a pilot can be essentially stalling the aircraft and not realise. I have flown only single engine trainers so my only experience if forced stalls during training but surely - the nose is up and power is doing nothing so the nose needs to come down?