Air France Flight 447 Disappears?

Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

So are they saying that electromagnetic interference would cause the radio to be inoperative? The no radio contact is a big clue here, as is the debris being spread across 35 miles. Both indicate a catastrophic event very high up in altitude - no time to radio that the systems are failing or you're in a dive and plenty of time for debris to be spread over such a wide area. The debris field does seem to indicate that it wasn't a 'dive' into the ocean, but an explosion/impact of some sort at high altitude. osit
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Here's some new info. Apparently Air France had received a bomb threat a few days earlier for a flight in Buenos Aires, Argentenia.

_http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/Travel/story?id=7742900&page=1

Searchers hunting for clues in the disappearance of Air France flight 447 found a 23-foot piece of airplane in the Atlantic Ocean, Brazilian air force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said today.

Officials try to piece together where Air France Flight 447 hit the water.
The flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris vanished with 228 people onboard Sunday night. On Tuesday searchers found debris from the plane floating in the Atlantic 700 miles off the coast of Brazil.

Also today, ABC News has confirmed that Air France received a bomb threat over the phone concerning a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Paris days before Air France flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean Sunday night.

Authorities at Buenos Aires' Ezeiza Airport delayed the May 27 flight before takeoff and conducted a 90-minute search of the threatened aircraft. Passengers were not evacuated during the search, which yielded no explosive material. After the inspection, authorities allowed the plane to take off for Paris.

Four days later, flight 447 departed from Rio de Janeiro. There was no known threat against the missing flight.
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Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Apparently there was some seismic activity in this part of the world. 4.7 magnitude on may 31. 00:47! However, this time does not match flying timeline or assumed time of crash but it's interesting info.

_http://www.iris.edu/seismon/zoom/?view=eveday&lon=-34&lat=6
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

anart said:
So are they saying that electromagnetic interference would cause the radio to be inoperative? The no radio contact is a big clue here, as is the debris being spread across 35 miles. Both indicate a catastrophic event very high up in altitude - no time to radio that the systems are failing or you're in a dive and plenty of time for debris to be spread over such a wide area. The debris field does seem to indicate that it wasn't a 'dive' into the ocean, but an explosion/impact of some sort at high altitude. osit
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No. If this is based on the Qantas problem, where the navigation computer "lost it's mind", there are a few things to consider here.

1) for the Qantas problem, the pilots were able to recover control over the airplane based on their quick response. They may have simply "been lucky", and the Air France crew was "unlucky" given (essentially) the same circumstances.

2) If the plane went into a sudden uncontrolled dive, the last thing on the minds of the pilots would be to operate the radio. The three rules of flying an airplane are: "1) aviate (i.e. fly the dang plane), 2) navigate (i.e. know where you are and where you are going) 3) communicate". Almost certainly, if this is a repeat of the Qantas problem, the air crew was quite occupied on job #1.

3) if the plane was actively in severe turbulence (as has been assumed) the combination of the sudden change in aircraft attitude by the computer coupled with the turbulence may have caused a "first failure" like happened with TWA flight 800, where first the nose of the plane "fell off". This first failure may have given the electronics sufficient time to send the automated message. Meanwhile the pilots were preoccupied with reacting to a dramatic situation and making a radio call was WAY down their list of things to do. Next the entire airframe comes apart from the forces (as suggested by the two distinct debris fields).

So IMHO, the radios may very well have been in perfect working order, its just that they were never used simply because the pilots were reacting to an extreme emergency.

The flight data recorder is likely the keystone to this mystery.
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Does seem to indicate a high altitude event with a complete and total loss of flight controls and radio. Even if the pilots were on datalink and not on HF communications, it takes but only a few seconds to sent a pre-formatted Mayday message via datalink. To not be able to even manage that few seconds seem to indicate something truly catastrophic like a mid air explosion perhaps.

A standard position report would be something like AirFrance123, position Gogo at 2325, FL350, Mach decimal 82 estimate, Invok at 0005, Tasil next. So the format is aircraft callsign (AirFrance 123) current position (Gogo) at time in UTC (2325) cruising flight level (FL350) speed in mach number, (.82) next position and estimate time (Invok 0005) and subsequent postion (Tasil).

So as you can see it seems like a mouth full but it takes about 10 seconds to get that through on normal radio. With datalink, the above information displays in a page on a communications computer and all the pilot needs to do is to press the "Send" button without having to say anything.

Satellite as far as I know, do not actively track an aircraft. Modern aircraft carry what is called an ADS-B which automatically broadcast to the controller the aircraft position. This is independent of datalink where the pilot has to physically push a button to sent out his position report and usually over Oceanic, routes position reports are about 45 minutes apart.
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

rs said:
So IMHO, the radios may very well have been in perfect working order, its just that they were never used simply because the pilots were reacting to an extreme emergency.
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That sounds fairly plausible... and maybe the situation was so extreme that even pushing a button to send an automatic message was out of the question.

Of course I LIKE the comet fragment hypothesis... but just because I like it doesn't give it higher probability.

It's hard to tell if Airbus is trying to cover something up - that's possible also.

The one thing that does remain just a tad suspicious is that the event occurred just out of radar view.
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Something else interesting:

Brazilian military finds debris from Air France crash in the Atlantic

Aviation analysts said the crash could be a huge blow to Airbus and the entire industry if investigators were unable to explain to the public how the aircraft crashed.

"Every time I hear about one of these events that's totally unexplained, I would certainly hesitate to get on that kind of airplane," said Dale Leppard, a former commercial pilot and member of the U.S. National Association of Professional Accident Reconstruction Specialists.

First launched in 1998, there are 341 Airbus A330-200 planes in service around the world operated by major carriers such as KLM, Air France, Austrian Airlines, EgyptAir, Lufthansa, Qantas, and Swiss International Air Lines, as well as Montreal-based charter company Air Transat.

Leppard told Canwest News Service that the tragedy would have to have been caused by a sudden event that immobilized the crew, such as a bomb or the breakup of the Airbus's tail due to exceptionally severe turbulence.

French officials, who on Monday dismissed any suggestion of a possible terrorist incident, left open all possibilities Tuesday.

"All scenarios have to be envisaged," French Defence Minister Herve Morin said. "We can't rule out a terrorist act since terrorism is the main threat to western democracies, but at this time we don't have any element whatsoever indicating that such an act could have caused this accident."

Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates said analysts are "all scratching at straws, really."

"We could for example be talking about a sequence of weather events here that conspired to create the aeronautical equivalent of the perfect storm."
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Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

IMHO with all these modern tracking devices the plane was just disappeared, everything indicating that whatever happened up there must happen spontaneously things like explosion.

I can’t accept that EM interference could be a possible cause of it because plane would simply crash to the water and this does not produce (fragments in vast area) then the meteorite theory is almost unacceptable too because there are no such a incidents ever been reported since the very beginning of the human flight history.

This would leave two possible theories either there were some kind of very strong explosives on board (very strong) or technical failure in the fuel system caused the explosion and makes those fragments.

Or on my wild side…. A UFO caused the incident .
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Laura Wrote :

The one thing that does remain just a tad suspicious is that the event occurred just out of radar view.


ay, there's the rub.

I got a strange feeling that something was different with this one when I first spotted it on the morning news here , maybe because the words " dissapeared" and "Vanished" were being used rather than "Missing" which are usually used are they not?
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Is there any way of finding out if this particular airbus was maxed out for passenger and crew capacity .Or in other words how many seats where available on this flight .

Ive searched for capacity of an airbus , but cant work out what the below actually means , or if they are the same design.

Typical passenger seating
A330 - 200

253 (3-class)
293 (2-class)

A330- 300
295 (3-class)
335 (2-class)
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

rabbit said:
Typical passenger seating
A330 - 200

253 (3-class)
293 (2-class)

A330- 300
295 (3-class)
335 (2-class)
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The above just means that there are firstly 2 types of A330; a dash 200 model and a dash 300 model. The difference between the models can be many things like higher takeoff and landing weights, greater fuel capacity between models, longer range, etc.

As for seating, it depends how the aircraft is configured. So looking at the -300 model above, it can carry 295 passengers in a 3 class seating arrangement. 3 class typically means first, business and economy class. In a 2 class seating arrangement usually business and economy classes, the aircraft has a seating capacity of 335 people. The reason for the larger seating capacity is because the first class seats (sometimes called premium business class) are larger seats and occupies more space in the cabin.

Now we are only talking about capacity. So was this aircraft "maxed out"?

Going by the details found here, the aircraft was a dash 200 model in a two class seating configuration and it had 216 passengers and 12 crew (meaning 9 cabin crew and 3 pilots) making a total of 228 people on board. So seating capacity in a 2 class config is 293 minus the 216 on board leaves 77 spare or empty passenger seats.
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Laura said:
Considering the strange events of the past couple of years, the increasing number of fireballs and meteorites, added to the Cs remark that this was going to be a "smashing year," I actually think the "Tunguska like event" is definitely on the table. That would explain 1) the electrical anomaly 2) the fact that there was NO voice contact from that instant forward.

One must ask: what could affect a plane in that way - mess with the electrical system and then bring on sudden and total destruction so that not a single word was uttered via radio?
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Atlantic Searched For Missing Air France Jet

or Missing Air France Jet

7:27am UK, Tuesday June 02, 2009
Military aircraft and warships are searching a vast area of the Atlantic for any sign of an Air France passenger jet that vanished with more than 200 people on board.

Air France's Airbus 330-200

Air France's Airbus 330-200 in May 2006

Earlier pilots from Brazilian commercial airline TAM said they had spotted what they thought was fire on the ocean in the region where the plane went missing.

A Brazilian Air Force spokesman said: "There is information that the pilot of a TAM aircraft saw several orange points on the ocean while flying over the region... where the Air France plane disappeared.

"After arriving in Brazil, the pilot found out about the disappearance and said that he thought those points on the ocean were fire."

The sighting was made at around 0300 BST on Monday morning - shortly after the aircraft disappeared.
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Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

Vulcan wrote:

Going by the details found here, the aircraft was a dash 200 model in a two class seating configuration and it had 216 passengers and 12 crew (meaning 9 cabin crew and 3 pilots) making a total of 228 people on board. So seating capacity in a 2 class config is 293 minus the 216 on board leaves 77 spare or empty passenger seats.



OK thanks. The reason I ask is because in the Guardian uk newspaper I was reading about people who ,fortunate for them did not make the plane.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/02/air-france-passengers-escape-air-crash

Claude Jaffiol, a French medical professor, had been at a congress in Rio before he and his wife visited a friend, the Dutch consul, in Brasilia. They decided to return early to Montpellier in southern France and insisted on getting flight 447. Their diplomatic friend pulled every string he could to get them on the flight but to their frustration, it was full. "It's a miracle," Jaffiol said, after arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport on a later flight. "We should have been on that plane."

Something? Nothing?
 
Re: Air France Plane Goes Down Over Atlantic

More data:

Did Computer Failure Bring Down Air France 447?

{....} And the fact is, wonky ADIRUs have been identified as the culprits in several recent near-catastrophes involving Airbus. Last year, for instance, authorities blamed the ADIRU after a Qantas Airbus 330 started porpoising wildly while at cruising altitude. There were 51 passenger injuries, ranging from broken bones to spinal damage, before pilots regained control.

"About two minutes after the initial fault, (the air data inertial reference unit) generated very high, random and incorrect values for the aircraft's angle of attack," the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in a statement at the time, according to Agence France Presse.

Also last year, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued an Airworthiness Directive warning airlines about an "unsafe condition" associated with ADIRU's aboard Airbus 319, 320, and 321 models. The directive warned that the ADIRU in question was issuing bogus navigational fault warnings that could "result in loss of one source of critical altitude and airspeed data and reduce the ability of the flight crew to control the airplane."

As for the Air France crash, in which it's believed 228 tragic souls perished in the sea off Brazil, the Airbus 330 involved reportedly transmitted warnings to Air France maintenance that its ADIRU was not functioning properly. Did the faulty system ultimately cause the aircraft's experienced flight crew to lose the airplane?
At this point, we don't know—but the possibility must be investigated.

ADIRU manufacturers include Honeywell and Northrop Grumman--though it's not immediately clear whose technology was aboard the doomed Air France flight and it's too early to single out manufacturers for any fault related to the accident.

If the ADIRU brought down Air France 447, it would be the largest aviation disaster to be blamed directly on a buggy IT system. As such, it would raise questions about whether today's airliners are overly dependent on computers. {...}

Many of today's younger jet jockeys haven never flown a plane without help from a computer.

It's one thing if Gmail goes down for a couple of hours. It's something wholly different if the software and chips designed to keep a 200 ton tin can straight-and-level as it hurtles along at 500 MPH can't be trusted.

The FAA's tech experts need to get on top of this--now.
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Air France jet likely broke apart above ocean

{...} Heavy weather delayed until next week the arrival of deep-water submersibles considered key to finding the black box voice and data recorders that will help answer the question of what happened to the airliner, which disappeared Sunday with 228 people on board. But even with the equipment, the lead French investigator questioned whether the recorders would ever be found in such a deep and rugged part of the ocean.

As the first Brazilian military ships neared the search area, investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms. They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time saying he was flying through an area of "CBs" — black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning. Satellite data has shown that towering thunderheads were sending 100 mph (160 kph) updraft winds into the jet's flight path at the time.

Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.

The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure — catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.

"This clearly looks like the story of the airplane coming apart," the airline industry official told The Associated Press. "We just don't know why it did, but that is what the investigation will show." {...}

Other experts agreed that the automatic reports of system failures on the plane strongly suggest it broke up in the air, perhaps due to fierce thunderstorms, turbulence, lightning or a catastrophic combination of events.

"These are telling us the story of the crash. They are not explaining what happened to cause the crash," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "This is the documentation of the seconds when control was lost and the aircraft started to break up in air." {...}

Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with some 230 kilometers (140 miles) separating pieces of wreckage they have spotted. The floating debris includes a 23-foot (seven-meter) chunk of plane and a 12-mile-long (20-kilometer-long) oil slick, but pilots have spotted no signs of survivors, Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said.
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PASSENGER LIST FROM FLIGHT 447
The official list of victims will be released by Air France, accordingly to the Brazilian Agency of Civil Aviation (ANAC), but accordingly to information by relatives, friends and assistants, the names listed below were in the flight when it left from Rio to Paris last night.

-- Eirch Heine - President of Admistration Council of ThyssenKrupp-Companhia Siderurgica do Atlantico(CSA)

-- Luis Roberto Anastacio - President Michelin South America

-- Antonio Guerios - IT Director Michelin

-- Christin Pieraerts - Employee Michelin

-- Dr. Roberto Correa Chem - Plastic Surgeon - Director of Skin Bank and Chief of Plastic Surgery Service of Porto Alegre Hospital.(Porto Alegre is a City in the South of Brazil)

-- Vera Chem (Wife of Dr. Chem)

-- Leticia Chem (daughter of Dr. Chem - International Roaming manager of OI Phone Company

-- Deise Possamai

-- Marcelo Parente - Chief of Staff of Rio de Janeiro Mayor.

10.) Leonardo Veloso Dardengo - Oceanographer

-- Pedro Luiz de Orleans e Braganca - Prince - Descendant of Don Pedro II Brazilian Emperor 1822-1831

-- Rino Zandonai - Director of the Trentini Nel Mondo Onlus Association - Italy

-- Giambattista Lenzi - Regional Conselor of Trentino Alto Adige - Italy

-- Gianni Zortea - Mayor, Canal San Bovo - Italy

-- Silvio Barbato - Conductor Rio Municipal Theater.

-- Aisling Butler, 26; Irish, of Roscrea, Ireland; doctor

-- Brad Clemes, 49; Canadian from Guelph, Ontario; Coca-Cola executive

-- Arthur Coakley, 61; British; structural engineer for PDMS

-- Jane Deasy, 27; Irish; doctor

-- Michael Harris, 60; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana; geologist

-- Anne Harris; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana

-- Zoran Markovic, 45; Croatian, from Kostelji, Croatia; sailor

-- Eithne Walls, 29; Irish; doctor
Click to expand...

Also see: Among the Victims on Air France Flight, Doctors, Dancers and Royalty
 
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