Air France Flight 447 Disappears?

[Vulcan59]

Well the latest on this is that the aviation industry has instituted high altitude flying without the autopilot during biannual training. So that implies that the industry has assumed that there was some sort of failure that caused the autopilot to fail and the pilots somehow failed to handle the aircraft without the autopilot. Amazingly, all this has been instituted without any official report on the disaster!!

The normal course of events is that on take-off, the autopilot is engage at 200ft and basically left engaged till approximately before or earlier than 200ft above aerodrome elevation, depending on weather conditions, unless the aircraft was flown in Cat 2/Cat 3 conditions which basically means that the autopilot lands the aircraft when the weather conditions are really bad.

Edit = Spelling

 

[Joe]

There was a telling report in the local French newspapers recently where the request by victims families to have an independent observer as part of the investigation was rejected by the French government.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2009/11/05/01016-20091105ARTFIG00631-af-447-les-proches-se-sentent-tenus-a-l-ecart-.php

No good reason for refusing - just "no".

Wonder why

 

[RedFox]

Amazingly, all this has been instituted without any official report on the disaster!!

No good reason for refusing - just "no".

I find the lack of an official report and refusal of an independent investigation incredibly telling also. Does anyone know if this is the first time there has been no official report or denial of an independent investigation for a large passanger air disaster?
Thanks for the updates.

 

[Endura]

_http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=401_1259621018

Air France A332 over Atlantic on Nov 30th 2009, Mayday call due to severe turbulence
An Air France Airbus A330-200, registration F-GZCK performing flight AF-445 (dep Nov 29th) from Rio de Janeiro Galeao,RJ (Brazil) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (France), was enroute at FL380 overhead the Atlantic on airway UN866 just before waypoint DEKON about 680nm northeast of Fortaleza,CE (Brazil) and 750nm southwest of Praia (Cape Verde), when the crew called Mayday on the international emergency frequency indicating, they encountered severe turbulence and were descending to a lower altitude. The airplane was seen enroute at FL280 overhead France and landed safely at Paris Charles de Gaulle 6:40 hours after the emergency call.

The Mayday call was relayed by the crew of a TAM Airbus A330-200 registration PT-MVG performing flight JJ-8055 from Paris CDG to Rio de Janeiro,RJ (Brazil) at around 03:50Z (Nov 30th).

Air France has now a new procedure requesting to fly at lower altitude in case of severe turbulences.

 

[Vulcan59]

Hi Endura,

That is no new procedure. This so called "new procedure" is common sense and frequently adopted when encountering moderate to severe turbulence during flight. Most pilots adopt this method although you could climb out of the turbulence if you had adequate performance. :)



Edit - Spelling

 

[Skyfarmr]

Having just read the SOTT Flashback article about Air France 447 last night http://www.sott.net/articles/show/186672-What-are-they-hiding-Flight-447-and-Tunguska-Type-Events I was surprised to hear an updated version on CBS Early Show this morning where travel news editor Peter Greenberg gave his interpretation of the recently updated report released by BEA. (The timing of this media response in lieu of SOTT posting this article again is quite timely)

The CBS link http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/27/501364/main20066735.shtml, article titled "Air France captain absent when descent began -
Pilots wrestled with controls for nearly 4 minutes before crash, initial findings of 2009 accident probe show; Captain was resting when emergency started to unfold"
this intro seems to be suggesting the pilot's absence may have been part of cause of the crash, but this fact has already been dismissed as insignificant.

The PDF report by BEA:http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/point.enquete.af447.27mai2011.en.pdf
Nowhere in this report was there a mention of where "pilots wrestled with controls... initial findings of 2009 accident probe show". Does it? I thought the"the flight recorders were found along with bodies in the latest search of the ocean depths last month." One thing I noticed about the BEA report is that there are alot of [...]. maybe CBS takes those notations as a fill in the blank exercise


In his analysis of the BEA report, Greenberg seems instrumental in spinning confusion and contradicting the findings while admitting they still don't know the cause of crash.
One reference says the plane hit the water intact, but they're not sure why the tail of plane was found miles from the rest of the plane...wouldn't that indicate the plane didn't impact the water intact?

from the CBS Early show:

Greenberg also noted that the initial findings don't answer a potentially critical question about the crash: Why the plane's tail was found intact many miles away from the main debris field.

"The real question is did that tail come off before the plane hit the water? And when did it come off if it came off at all? That's what they're going to look at now."

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/27/501364/main20066735.shtml#ixzz1NZfUcFnx

The CBS article also mentions the speed sensors possibly being faulty, but as yet, they haven't found the Pitot tubes (speed sensors). If, however, an EMP from a Tunguska type explosion occurred, as suggested in SOTT article, could that cause them to be found faulty if they are recovered, even though prior to the event they may have been working properly?

I know little to nothing about aviation, but find some of the media comments about the cause of the crash continuing to be confusing and misdirecting, as was noted in the SOTT article.

 

[Ellipse]

There's something I don't understand. How, in one hand, the pilots had false informations displayed in the cockpit and, in the another hand, the BEA can reconstruct what happened from the same source of informations .

 

[Giray Khan the Brave]

Hi Ellipse,

If I understand black box recorders correctly, they not only record various parameters of the plane's many individual systems, they also record a separate 'cockpit display' value for each parameter. In other words, say the flaps of the plane were set to 15 degrees but the cockpit flap display was showing 30 degrees because it was faulty, both parameters would be recorded and would show up as a discrepancy when the data was analysed. At least, that's how I understand it to be...

 

[Ellipse]

Hi Ellipse,

If I understand black box recorders correctly, they not only record various parameters of the plane's many individual systems, they also record a separate 'cockpit display' value for each parameter. In other words, say the flaps of the plane were set to 15 degrees but the cockpit flap display was showing 30 degrees because it was faulty, both parameters would be recorded and would show up as a discrepancy when the data was analysed. At least, that's how I understand it to be...

If I understand well what you say, some informations provided by sensors go to the black box but not in the cockpit. Is it that?

 

[Giray Khan the Brave]

I had the exact same thought 3 seconds after I clicked the 'post' button and I spent some time trying to locate where exactly on the interwebs I had read about this feature of flight data recorders but I couldn't find it so maybe there was a parameter discrepancy between my brain and reality. It's been known to happen. :)

However, it would make sense for the FDR to 'sit' between the actual sensor and the cockpit displays so the parameter values would first go through the FDR and get recorded correctly, then go to a cockpit gauge. So if the mechanics of the gauge are faulty, it will show an incorrect value but the FDR would already have recorded the correct value.

Anyone here have any information more tangible than my half-baked memory?

 

[Richs]

There's something I don't understand. How, in one hand, the pilots had false informations displayed in the cockpit and, in the another hand, the BEA can reconstruct what happened from the same source of informations .

I agree. There is really no way for them to know exactly what information was being displayed in the cockpit if all the electronics and computer systems were gone haywire!

It seems likely that the plane actually broke up in midair since the passengers bodies recovered showed evidence of being torn apart, and were scattered over a large area, which could only have been from such an occurrence. The idea that the plane was in a stall condition all the way to the sea is problematical, since the aerodynamic forces on an aircraft in a stall are not sufficient to be able to cause any structural damage to the aircraft. Since this is so, the plane must have been traveling pretty fast to have been torn apart in the air.

Maybe too it doesn't really matter that much what was being displayed in the cockpit if the computers which run the actuation of the control surfaces were all messed up. In that case, no matter what they tried to do it would have no effect. And, even if they truly did have the ability to control the aircraft, if the wrong information was being displayed in the cockpit they would have no way to retain any semblance of control of the plane because they would have no idea of what it was really doing.

I'm not saying that this is definitively what really happened but just a likely scenario with the data we have at hand.