AIRCRAFT INCIDENTS

[cycloneye]

Aviation Experts say Black Boxes may never be found

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil – Military planes and ships struggled through high seas and heavy winds Wednesday and found more debris from an Air France jet, while an investigator said the black boxes may never be found in the depths of the Atlantic.

Rescue vessels from several nations were sailing toward the site to start the recovery as aviation experts tried to determine why the plane carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday night ended up in the sea.

A 23-foot (seven-meter) chunk of plane and a 12-mile-long (20-kilometer-long) oil slick were found early Wednesday, Brazilian air force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said. Rescuers have still found no signs of life.

The new debris was discovered about 90 kilometers (55 miles) south where searchers a day earlier found an airplane seat, a fuel slick, an orange lifevest and pieces of white debris.

The location of the new debris is consistent with where experts say currents in that part of the Atlantic would push anything on the surface.

The original debris was found roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.

The recovery effort is expected to be exceedingly challenging. Storm season is starting in the are and water depths sink down to 22,950 feet (7,000 meters).


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090603/ap_ ... azil_plane

[wx247]

Weird coincidence or something more??

http://news.aol.com/article/air-france- ... s%2F505833

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

Jun 3, 12:30 PM EDT

Heavy seas hamper search for Flight 447 debris

By FEDERICO ESCHER and ALAN CLENDENNING
Associated Press Writers

excerpt from this link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/ ... CTION=HOME

Flight 447 disappeared minutes after flying into an extremely dangerous band of storms Sunday night, but what exactly caused its electrical systems and cabin pressure to fail remains a mystery. The "black box" cockpit recorders could be miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

If they can't be recovered, investigators will have to focus on maintenance records and a burst of messages sent by the plane just before it disappeared. Officials have released some details of these messages, but a more complete chronology was published Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, citing an unidentified Air France source.

Air France and Brazilian military officials refused to confirm the report. But if accurate, it suggests that Flight 447 may have broken up thousands of feet in the air as it passed through a violent storm, experts told The Associated Press.

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

Ten minutes later, the plane sent a burst of automatic messages, indicating the autopilot had disengaged, the "fly-by-wire" computer system had been switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm also sounded, indicating the deterioration of flight systems, according to the report.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages indicated the failure of two other fundamental systems pilots use to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Then, a cascade of other electrical failures in systems that control the main flight computer and wing spoilers.

The report repeats a detail previously released by Brazil's Air Force: that the last message came at 11:14 pm, indicating loss of air pressure and electrical failure. The newspaper said this could mean sudden de-pressurization, or that the plane was already plunging into the ocean.

Air France spokesman Nicolas Petteau referring questions about the report to the French accident investigation agency, BEA, whose spokesman Martine Del Bono said the agency won't comment.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

a poor translation of the original article.

4 minutes of 1st breakdown up to the fall

Daniel Gonzales, NEWSPAPER OF the AFTERNOON; Bruno Tavares
http://www.estadao.com.br/estadaodehoje ... 1364,0.php

The automatic messages received by the thirst of in Paris, indicate Air France what the tragedy of the flight 447 took shape in only 4 minutes. The first sign of a possible problem on board arrived to 23h10 (hour of Brasilia) of Sunday, noticing what the automatic pilot of the Airbus A330-200 existed if desconectado. The next messages point to a succession of serious breakdowns in some of the principal computers of the jet. The last alert was given out to 23h14: " cabin vertical speed " (cabin in vertical speed, in the translation of English)

The final information, say military investigators, can have two leituras: free fall or a brusque variation of pressure inside the cabin caused by a descent quicker of what the common thing. Since the crew of the A330 did not do any attempt of communication for radio and not even the air company received other alerts, it is possible that this is a " technical sign " of that the aeroplane fell in the Atlantic Ocean.

After two days of searches, wreckage they were identified to 1.200 kilometers of the Reef, in the dawn of yesterday, by aeroplanes of the Air Brazilian Strength (FAB). The confirmation of the tragedy, to the biggest of the civil international aviation from 2004, fell to a Minister of the Defense, Nelson Jobim, who was brought together by the families of the victims yesterday afternoon in a hotel of the western zone of the Rio. The aeroplane of Air France had 228 passengers - 59 Brazilians, according to the air company. But there was Brazilian and foreign with double nationality. The official list of victims must be spread today.

In agreement with Jobim, bodies were not visualized. A trace of 5 kilometers of metal materials and not metal it proves what one treats as the aeroplane of Air France. Jobim emphasized that the searches continue with an area of 9.785 km ², they were avoided to me to speak in eventual survivors. " I do not work with hypotheses, but with empirical results ", it affirmed.

The first tracks were located by the aeroplane R-99 of the FAB, endowed of sensors, about 1 hour of yesterday. The identification of this area of searches was possible on basis of informations of pilots of the TAM - in the night of the tragedy, the flight 8055, which was doing exatamente the opposite course (You give birth to It), reported five points of light, in the orange and red colors, to 10 minutes of leaving the air space of Senegal. To 5h37 of yesterday, a Hércules C-130 visualized stains of oil in the sea. To 6h49, an armchair of aeroplane was identified. To 12h30, the C-130 detected the line of wreckage.

The sequence of the last messages, obtained by the Newspaper of the Afternoon, began to 23h, 20 minutes before the time-table predicted for the Airbus to join the air space of Senegal, in the western coast of Africa. Through the system Acars (acronym in English for System of Communication and Turn back), the crew informed in writing to the air company that it was crossing an area on cumulus nimbus - region of instability formed by loaded clouds of electricity, in whose interior they take place striped of winds and storms with possibility of flashes of lightning. Up to that time, there was nothing of abnormal one with the flight.

Ten minutes then, the Acars shoots an automatic message indicating that the automatic pilot was if desconectado. The action is not atypical and it can have been an initiative of the pilots or of the systems themselves of the aeroplane, who "return" the controls for the crew whenever they detect critical faults, like a divergence of calculations between the pilot and automatic copiloto. The change of command, on the contrary of what it is possible to imagine, not catches the crew of surprise, even because it is almost instinctive in order that most of the crews put the hands on the controls direcionais - joystick, in case of the Airbus - during strong turbulences.

The next message informs that the by fly-by-wire (electronic system of controls of the movable surfaces of the aeroplane) passed for the regime of alternative law - one of the traineeships of the intricate net of " protection over envelopes " of the Airbus. According to a specialist in this type of aeroplane, the indicative of alternative law points to a degradation of the computerized systems of the jet.

All the messages transmitted in the next minutes indicate faultier in essential computers to the flight. The Adirus (acronym in English for Unity of Reference Inercial in Flight), for example, supply with, between other data, space direction the pilots. Other who presented breakdown is the call Isis, monitor that shows to the crew the vertical speed on the air and altitude. Without these instruments, say military investigators, the pilots would dispose only of least parameters for the air traffic, but even so sufficient, at least for any minutes, to maintain the stabilized aeroplane and if they flew. The most probable hypothesis here is of that, thrown off course, the crew has not managed to control the aircraft, doing so that she lost sustenance and fell 11 thousand meters of altitude.

What it is still a mystery it is why the A330 entered in this situation. The jet is equipped by radars able to predict meteorological averse conditions in the route and to escape from the nucleus of cumulus nimbus, where the instability is still bigger. Different fountains heard by the report affirm what none should bread moderate would be able separately to knock down the aeroplane.

[Sanibel]

Luftansa transited the same spot a half hour earlier and didn't report any violent weather. Airbus has a problem of crazy computer commands that pilots have difficulty controlling.

[Brent]

What it is still a mystery it is why the A330 entered in this situation. The jet is equipped by radars able to predict meteorological averse conditions in the route and to escape from the nucleus of cumulus nimbus, where the instability is still bigger.

This is what I don't get. It makes no sense to me that a plane would fly directly into the worst weather. I think there's still something more to this story. My thought on Monday is why was everyone discounting a potential explosion when the plane hadn't even been found yet(not saying it did happen but to rule anything out is foolish), and a bad storm when the plane is at 35,000 feet alone shouldn't down a jumbo jet. Most weather related plane crashes happen when the plane is taking off or landing, not at cruise altitude.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's always some mystery about what happened, lots of the plane will likely never be found based on the ocean depth.

[Category 5]

Doesnt the black box emit a signal for a while after the crash?

[cycloneye]

They are saying that the black boxes emit signals for 30 days.I think if the authorities make a great effort,those boxes can be located,by the way of mini submarines as 30 days is plenty of time.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

Analysis: turbulence, not lightning, most likely cause of Air France crash

Brutal freak turbulence is the most plausible cause of the crash of Air France Flight 447. If lightning alone caused the crash questions would be asked about the design of the A330, a medium-sized long-range airliner that enjoys a high reputation with the world's airlines.

No major crash has been directly blamed on lightning for more than four decades. Large aircraft are regularly struck by lightning but very rarely suffer damage from the bolt, which passes along the exterior of the fuselage and is diffused into the open air, mainly from small tabs on the trailing edge of the wings. Recent US statistics showed that every commercial aircraft is struck by lightning at least once a year.

The violent turbulence in the heart of storms is a threat to even large aircraft, however. Airliners usually avoid them by flying over or around the biggest ones. Smaller aircraft are from time-to-time torn to pieces in storms or thrown on the ground by them when they are approaching to land or taking off.

The best-known case of turbulence causing a commercial airliner crash was when a BOAC flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong went down near Mount Fuji in 1966 after encountering a storm.......

......The early data from France and Brazil today does not make clear whether the Airbus power failed directly because of lightning or whether the circuits were cut by some catastrophic failure in the aircraft.

All that is known is that the aircraft was in a tropical storm system and that electrics failure was brutal and sudden. It killed all the multiple means by which modern airliners communicate with the ground and prevented the use of back-up power — otherwise the pilots or the automated system would have been able to send a distress message.

Lightning could, for example, cause a fuel tank to explode, as happened on at least one occasion in the 1960s. It is more likely that the extreme turbulence of a tropical storm could have upset the aircraft, causing an uncontrollable descent and an in-flight break-up that would have cut the power. That scenario has been followed by numerous smaller aircraft over the decades. Ronan Hubert, a French airline accident expert, said on French television that this was the likely sequence of events.

All that is known so far is that the automatic data link in the Air France aircraft reported an electrical power loss to the Paris central control, which monitors the company's flights. Over the ocean, the aircraft would not have been tracked by conventional radar. But the aircraft would be reporting its position to controllers at fixed intervals. The information is fed into a central system that provides radar-like tracking. A power failure would interrupt this data flow.

All modern airliners are designed with multiple systems to protect their sensitive electronic systems from lightning discharges that would otherwise cause power surges that would fry their software and blow circuit breakers. To be certified as airworthy, the plane-makers must show the authorities that the aircraft can withstand jolts of electricity equivalent to lightning.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 407081.ece


Finding the so-called black boxes is often difficult, especially with crashes at sea. Locating them in a 7,000-metre deep patch of the Atlantic presents an daunting challenge.

Both bright-orange recorders, located in the tail of the aircraft, are designed to withstand the crushing pressure of the ocean, and will emit a locator signal for up to 30 days.

If the locator beams can be detected, remotely-piloted submersibles will be launched, and – using claw-like probes – will attempt to find, free and recover the recorders.

It has been done before. In 1985, after a terrorist bomb blew Air India's flight 182 out of the sky – killing all 329 people, most of them Canadians, on board – the Boeing 747s two recorders were recovered from a depth of more than 2,000 metres off the Irish coast. It took less than three weeks to find and recover the two recorders.

After the Swissair crash off Peggy's Cove, N.S., in 1998, the Canadian navy used a submarine to detect the locator beacons, which were then recovered by salvage experts.

The Air France crash location is far more remote but may be no deeper than the Air India crash site. If the electronic beacons can be detected, recovery should be possible.

The two recorders – one tapes the last 30 minutes of cockpit conversation and the other contains 25 hours of flight instrument and systems data – should allow investigators to reconstruct a precise and detailed picture of the last minutes of Flight 447.

Although the pilots' last communication with air traffic control was routine, the cockpit voice recorder should reveal whether they knew they were flying into a string of massive thunderstorms. Such storms are common in the tropics and pilots usually thread their way around and between them, using special weather radar to detect the massive columns, even at night.

Some meteorologists, who have reviewed the satellite data from Sunday night and plotted the track followed by Flight 447, believe the aircraft may have flown straight into a huge storm

“The satellite imagery indicates that numerous cumulonimbus towers were rising to at least 51,000 feet, and were embedded in extensive stratiform anvils with tops of 35,000 to 45,000 feet,'' said Tim Vasquez, of Weather Graphics.

Flight 447 was flying at its assigned cruise altitude of 35,000 feet. Pilots are taught never to fly through – or over – thunderstorms, which can rapidly rise. In a detailed analysis, Mr. Vasquez says a particularly violent storm was located only a few kilometres west of the aircraft's estimated track shortly before the last cryptic computer messages were received, indicating something had gone terrible wrong.

But although the storm line was big, it was not unusual for the area.

Mr. Vasquez, a former military forecaster who has plotted courses for Air Force One, said, “It's my opinion that tropical storm complexes identical to this one have probably been crossed hundreds of times over the years by other flights without serious incident.''

He, too, is waiting to hear what the pilots were saying.

“We can almost certainly count on some unexpected surprises once the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] is recovered,'' he said.

France, which will lead the investigation because it was a French-registered aircraft that crashed in international waters, said it was sending a ship capable of deep-water exploration to the area.

Search aircraft spotted two widely separated debris fields. That might normally suggest a break-up at altitude with bits of the aircraft swirling down at different rates, but the several days between the crash and the discovery of the floating debris makes extrapolation more difficult.

The debris was found 650 kilometres northeast of the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, along the flight's intended routing from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/wor ... le1164623/

Deep-sea challenge of Air France debris http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8082025.stm Graphics of Marine Salvage Technologies included


Lost jet data 'may not be found'

Aeronautical engineer Dr Guy Gratton on the search for flight recorders

One French and four Brazilian navy ships are on their way to the area but the Brazilian navy says weather conditions are poor. The flotilla includes divers and a French mini-submarine that can explore to a depth of 6,000m (19,680ft).

French government minister Jean-Louis Borloo said the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders were believed to be at a depth of up to 3,700m (12,100ft), within reach of the submarine, but warned they would be hard to find.

"We have never recovered black boxes that deep before. The sea currents are powerful that far down," he said.

Three merchant vessels are already in the area after being diverted to help with the operation.

Without [the recorders] it will be very difficult to reach established fact, but we can reach a possible explanation

The recorders can send signals for about 30 days. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8080669.stm

[Category 5]

:uarrow: They are saying that the black boxes emit signals for 30 days.I think if the authorities make a great effort,those boxes can be located,by the way of mini submarines as 30 days is plenty of time.

Side scan sonars might help find the wreckage easier. IIRC thats how they found the Titanic

[Dionne]

I know we have students in here. This would be a good one for an aspiring engineer.

Do some research. I'm beginning to question design. Start with incident rates and manufacturers. See if you can find a resource that will give you the age (flight hours, take-offs and landings) of each aircraft.

Look for patterns.

From what I have read, there was somewhere around (+/- 20,000 hours of flight experience between the pilot and 2 copilots.

Three pilots don't all make the same mistake. Something went wrong fast.

[tropicana]

AIR FRANCE REVEALS BOMB THREAT
Wed Jun 3 2009

Air France says it received a bomb threat about a flight from Buenos Aires to Paris just days before one of its planes crashed into the Atlantic with 228 people on board.
Argentine police received an anonymous telephone warning on May 27 and searched the plane before passengers boarded but found nothing and it was allowed to take off with a delay of 32 minutes, a spokesman said overnight.
There appeared to be no link between the alert and the crash on Monday of the Air France flight between Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Paris, he said.



Wed Jun 3 2009

The crew of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700, flight WN-2197 from Oakland,CA to Burbank,CA (USA) with 53 passengers, decided to return to Oakland after the airplane was struck by lightning about 10 minutes into the flight while climbing through FL310. The airplane landed safely 25 minutes after the lightning strike.
The flight was cancelled, the passenger booked onto other flights.

-justin-

[wx247]

What tropicana posted is what I posted in my link earlier today. Makes you wonder...

[mf_dolphin]

I wonder if this aircraft had a composite stablizer like the Airbus 300 that went down in New York city shortly after 9-11? If I remember right, the stabilizer snapped off due to violent movements....

[MGC]

As I recall the NY crash was due to the pilot using too much rudder causing the vertical stabilizer to fail.

I can't see the pilots flying into a huge storm, thus I discount weather at a probable cause. With such a large debris field, to me it looks like the plane broke up aloft. It was a rather young plane so I doubt any kind of metal fatigue or corrision would have caused the crash. I would not be surprised if a fuel tank exploded or a bomb caused the event. Gotta start recovering wreckage and figure out what happened....MGC

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

I still think it was either pilot error or a problem with the computer system.

"Search crews flying over the Atlantic found debris from a crashed Air France jet spread over more than 55 miles of ocean on Wednesday, reinforcing the possibility it broke up in the air.

Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said the existence of large fuel stains in the water likely ruled out an explosion, undercutting speculation about a bomb attack.

"The existence of oil stains could exclude the possibility of a fire or explosion," he said at a news conference in Brasilia. "If we have oil stains, it means it wasn't burned."

"Newly spotted traces of the plane included a 12-mile (20-km) fuel stain and various objects spread across a 3-mile (5-km) area, including one metallic object 23 feet in diameter."

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/ ... PB20090604

[Brent]

I wonder if this aircraft had a composite stablizer like the Airbus 300 that went down in New York city shortly after 9-11? If I remember right, the stabilizer snapped off due to violent movements....

Yeah, that was caused by wake turbulence from another plane

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_A ... Flight_587

[Sanibel]

I've read a little about 587. I doubt it was a tail just snapping off - which is the first time that ever happened to a modern jet. Another pilot who took off around the same time said if tails just dropped off like that he'd quit flying. An off-duty police officer who was jogging and just so happened to be staring up at the plane saw a fireball emerge out the side of the fuselage before it nose-dived. It was probably the first shoe-bomber which is why you never saw any analysis of the passengers done on TV. I saw a NASA scientist's analysis of the drop and drift rate of the wake vortex and it wasn't strong enough or drifted far enough to rip 587's tail off. The pilot was most likely "overreacting" to an unexpected force exiting out his fuselage. I doubt a cop would make something like that up (as well as a firefighter who saw the same thing). A toll booth video caught a smoke trail off of 587. Google: USREAD587

[Rainband]

As I recall the NY crash was due to the pilot using too much rudder causing the vertical stabilizer to fail.

I can't see the pilots flying into a huge storm, thus I discount weather at a probable cause. With such a large debris field, to me it looks like the plane broke up aloft. It was a rather young plane so I doubt any kind of metal fatigue or corrision would have caused the crash. I would not be surprised if a fuel tank exploded or a bomb caused the event. Gotta start recovering wreckage and figure out what happened....MGC

the large debris field can also be explained by the oceans currents as well.

[Dionne]

On ABC News.....Air France saying a "cascade of system failures" happened.