Air France A332 Missing over Atlantic

[raihans]

what is the update for AF flight crash? any latest pictures?

[Lufthansa Cargo]

BEA: AF447 May Have Hit Ocean Intact
Thursday, July 02, 2009

AviationWeek.com

French accident investigators think Air France 447 may have hit the Atlantic Ocean intact, at high speed.

Accident investigators believe Air France Flight 447 impacted the Atlantic Ocean at high velocity in the direction of flight, and with the underside of the fuselage striking the sea first.

Visual examination of debris, including the tail fin and parts of the galley, suggest that impact pattern, as well as the conclusion that the Airbus A330-200 did not break apart in flight, says Alain Bouillard, lead investigator for the French air accident bureau (BEA). But investigators are still no closer to figuring out the sequence of events that led to the crash.

Bouillard notes that no signs of fire or an explosion have been detected.

The speed at impact and time the aircraft hit the surface are not established, nor is whether passengers were still alive when the aircraft impacted. Some clues to those questions may be in personal effects that still are held by the Brazilian police, as well as autopsies of the 51 bodies recovered. But the reports on the latter are not yet out.

Debris and 24 Acars fault messages the A330 broadcast just before all communication was lost remain the primary areas of investigation, with the cockpit voice and flight data recorders still not recovered more than one month after the June 1 crash. France will continue until July 10 to locate the black boxes through their beacon, but then will shift to using sonar and other systems to try to find debris. The next phase will run until mid-August, with a decision due then on whether to continue recovery operations. The search is focused largely on a 40-square-nautical-mile area.

The BEA report confirms the known problem with anomalous speed information, but investigators note they still have no data to suggest a pitot tube failure brought down the aircraft or that a mandatory replacement of the Thales-designed probes is needed. They merely note the tubes remain under examination as part of the entire chain of events that led to the crash.

One issue gaining some attention is why failure to properly hand off AF447 from Brazilian to Senegalese air traffic control authorities didn’t spark earlier attention. Bouillard notes it has nothing to do with the crash per se, but could have led to rescue operations beginning more promptly. As it was, those didn’t take place until Madrid and Brest ATC personnel sounded the alarm six hours later. The miscue is under review.

The crew of the mishap aircraft also tried to contact for a third time without success ATC at Dakar, around 2:01 a.m., or 13 minutes before the last Acars message was sent.

Source: Airliners.net / Aviation Week

[yousaf465]

Then again back to my question, "Why it took 7 days for bodies to come up to the surface and actual aircraft parts to surface also!!", if it disintegrated upon impact with water, wouldn't you think bodies and derbies would have been found floating with in day or so and not after 7 DAYS!!...

Things is not adding up with this one at this time....

I am talking pure physics, given the size, impact speed and most importantly, the angle of approach, the water surface is just like concrete. Try jumping into a swimming pool from 6-8 feet diving board on your belly/chest and you would realise what I am saying.

I think this could help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing

And here is photos of ditch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_943

and here is a Video of ditch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zuLP-QY ... re=related

[raihans]

Any update on the crash issue, last one i known that the search was withdrawn after more than 30 days passed

[raihans]

Search for AF330 recorders called off

France’s Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA) has announced that it has completed its second phase of trying to locate the flight data recorders from the Air France A330 which disappeared over the Atlantic at the beginning of June.

The search was conducted over a circular area, with a radius of 75 km, centred on the last known position of the aircraft.

BEA said in its statement that as “the searches did not make it possible to locate the airplane wreckage, the BEA will gather together a team of international investigators in the next few weeks to analyze the data collected with a view to a third search phase and to determine the requirements and means to undertake this”.

Source: IFALPA Daily News Service - Friday, 21 August 2009

[Lufthansa Cargo]

Its been a long time already, what are the chances that they are hiding something from us?

[zainmax]

The article describing the last 4-minutes of the Air France Flight 447.
The Death in the Atlantic.

Please follow the link below:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 80,00.html

[ConnieMan]

French Investigators will be re-starting search for "Black boxes" in next few weeks, they are detemind to find them and will search 80 miles of sea bed area with sonar and special deep sea submarines....Let see what happens as 4 min before impact article n diagram is just the theory and speculation at this time....VV

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 80,00.html

[riz]

why didnt they search with these equipments before .......

or if they did then why doing again ...

the salt water must have eaten all evidences by now......

[zainmax]

Search teams have located and recovered the flight-data recorder from the crashedAir France Airbus A330-200, a month before the second anniversary of the accident.
The crucial cylindrical memory unit, which had been missing when the chassis of the recorder was originally located, was found during a dive operation by a remote underwater vehicle on 1 May.
French investigation agency Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses states that the unit has been "raised and lifted on board" the recovery vessel Ile de Sein, which is supporting the search.
BEA says the device was located at 10:00UTC and retrieved at 16:40UTC.
There are no immediate details as to the condition of the flight-data recorder, or whether the information from the 1 June 2009 crash has been preserved.
BEA has not indicated whether it is has localised the cockpit-voice recorder from the aircraft, which crashed in the South Atlantic while operating flight AF447 between Rio de Janeiro and Paris.

[nopy99]

CVR found

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13264573

[amiqbal]

DFDR decoding report on dea website:
http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/vol.af. ... 011.en.pdf

[FULLTHRUST]

So amiqbal - what is the truth - what actually happened? Is there anything that PIA pilots should learn!!!

[haroon_ek]

I yesterday saw a comment on BBC news that the plane stalled. Since I am amateur and I wasn't able to figure out this claim in the document, but can anyone summarize if it is true that the speed sensors failed inflight and the plane really stalled in air?