Air france flight from Brazil to Paris
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GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Burmese Bandit
Senior Airman
- 474
- Dec 5, 2008
Sounds like a 'Twilight Zone' episode.
drgondog
Major
Terrorism not ruled out in Air France crash mystery - More food for thought!
June 9, 2009
Divers pull Air France tail fin out of Atlantic Ocean
A week after Air France A330's unexplained fatal dive into the Atlantic June 1, DEBKAfile reports from Paris that US, French and Brazilian investigators have begun going through the list of more than 200 passengers on the flight from Rio to Paris with a tooth comb. They are looking at the victims' countries of origin, family, social and denominational associations for possible clues to the mysterious disaster.
After the recovery of 24 bodies, some personal possessions and large sections of the doomed aircraft, there is still no understanding of what happened aboard the craft in the few short minutes before the crash when its automated monitoring systems transmitted a series of 24 error messages indicating the shutdown of critical systems.
As long as the fog surrounding the tragedy remains impenetrable, a man-made disaster cannot be ruled out. Both the French defense minister and Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved in the crash. This was short of an outright denial. But some terror experts are not excluding a terrorist attack.
Saturday, June 6, when the French and US president held a news conference at Caen, Barack Obama commented, apparently off the cuff: "…it's not clear yet what happened to the plane but the two countries want to find discover what caused the plane to be lost."
This sort of comment by a US president and America's active involvement in the investigation of a foreign air disaster when the plane is not of US manufacture and no Americans were aboard are unusual - unless a serious crime or terror is suspected. So too is Sarkozy's request to Obama for active US participation in the search without consulting with Air France.
Aviation authorities recall that another Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris was grounded temporarily on May 27 because of a telephoned bomb threat. The tri-border region where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet is home to a large Muslim population with a history of militancy.
Aviation experts were first puzzled by the time the airline took on June 1 – an hour and a half - to disclose that the plane had failed to land at Charles de Gaulle after dropping off radar screens. Later, Paris radio announced that there was no hope of survivors among passengers and crew, but offered no information to support this presumption. The delays, according to our Paris sources, indicated that French government and security officials were themselves scrambling frantically for information to establish the cause of the tragedy. They tried to impose a news blackout until they were wiser, but the dearth of facts only gave rise to wild rumors, such as a bolt of lightening or extreme turbulence. Both theories were quickly dismissed; large airliners are designed to withstand extreme weather conditions.
The French government came out with its first official statement only when it was forced to admit it was stumped.
Later, French investigators suggested that the cockpit was empty when the plane dropped without warning into the ocean. They offered no theories about whether the pilots had left the cockpit voluntarily or not.
The auto-pilot was also disengaged shortly before the stream of error messages went out.
In a detailed analysis published Tuesday, June 9, a BBC aviation expert wondered whether it was "an un-commanded disengagement prompted by some other systems failure, or whether the pilot took control in a valiant but ultimately failed attempt to rescue his aircraft."
Sophisticated American sonar equipment will be deployed Thursday to trace the black boxes in several hundred square kilometers of deep Atlantic Ocean 1,000 km north-east of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha islands. The locators can detect pings to a depth of 6,000 meters. They will be working against the clock since these signals begin to fade after 30 days. After July 1 the recorders will be lost.
If found in time, French deep-water unmanned subs aboard the oceanographic survey ship Pourquoi Pas will be lowered to retrieve the boxes from the ocean floor
Meanwhile, the recovered vertical stabilizer which must have sheared off the plane shows no signs of burn marks. One expert says this does not mean much since an explosion or fire in the fuselage would not necessarily reach the tail section.
Investigators are also looking at the possibility that external speed monitors iced over and gave dangerously false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm. The sensors aboard flight A330 had not been replaced as Airbus, the manufacturer, had recommended.
June 9, 2009
Divers pull Air France tail fin out of Atlantic Ocean
A week after Air France A330's unexplained fatal dive into the Atlantic June 1, DEBKAfile reports from Paris that US, French and Brazilian investigators have begun going through the list of more than 200 passengers on the flight from Rio to Paris with a tooth comb. They are looking at the victims' countries of origin, family, social and denominational associations for possible clues to the mysterious disaster.
After the recovery of 24 bodies, some personal possessions and large sections of the doomed aircraft, there is still no understanding of what happened aboard the craft in the few short minutes before the crash when its automated monitoring systems transmitted a series of 24 error messages indicating the shutdown of critical systems.
As long as the fog surrounding the tragedy remains impenetrable, a man-made disaster cannot be ruled out. Both the French defense minister and Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved in the crash. This was short of an outright denial. But some terror experts are not excluding a terrorist attack.
Saturday, June 6, when the French and US president held a news conference at Caen, Barack Obama commented, apparently off the cuff: "…it's not clear yet what happened to the plane but the two countries want to find discover what caused the plane to be lost."
This sort of comment by a US president and America's active involvement in the investigation of a foreign air disaster when the plane is not of US manufacture and no Americans were aboard are unusual - unless a serious crime or terror is suspected. So too is Sarkozy's request to Obama for active US participation in the search without consulting with Air France.
Aviation authorities recall that another Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris was grounded temporarily on May 27 because of a telephoned bomb threat. The tri-border region where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet is home to a large Muslim population with a history of militancy.
Aviation experts were first puzzled by the time the airline took on June 1 – an hour and a half - to disclose that the plane had failed to land at Charles de Gaulle after dropping off radar screens. Later, Paris radio announced that there was no hope of survivors among passengers and crew, but offered no information to support this presumption. The delays, according to our Paris sources, indicated that French government and security officials were themselves scrambling frantically for information to establish the cause of the tragedy. They tried to impose a news blackout until they were wiser, but the dearth of facts only gave rise to wild rumors, such as a bolt of lightening or extreme turbulence. Both theories were quickly dismissed; large airliners are designed to withstand extreme weather conditions.
The French government came out with its first official statement only when it was forced to admit it was stumped.
Later, French investigators suggested that the cockpit was empty when the plane dropped without warning into the ocean. They offered no theories about whether the pilots had left the cockpit voluntarily or not.
The auto-pilot was also disengaged shortly before the stream of error messages went out.
In a detailed analysis published Tuesday, June 9, a BBC aviation expert wondered whether it was "an un-commanded disengagement prompted by some other systems failure, or whether the pilot took control in a valiant but ultimately failed attempt to rescue his aircraft."
Sophisticated American sonar equipment will be deployed Thursday to trace the black boxes in several hundred square kilometers of deep Atlantic Ocean 1,000 km north-east of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha islands. The locators can detect pings to a depth of 6,000 meters. They will be working against the clock since these signals begin to fade after 30 days. After July 1 the recorders will be lost.
If found in time, French deep-water unmanned subs aboard the oceanographic survey ship Pourquoi Pas will be lowered to retrieve the boxes from the ocean floor
Meanwhile, the recovered vertical stabilizer which must have sheared off the plane shows no signs of burn marks. One expert says this does not mean much since an explosion or fire in the fuselage would not necessarily reach the tail section.
Investigators are also looking at the possibility that external speed monitors iced over and gave dangerously false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm. The sensors aboard flight A330 had not been replaced as Airbus, the manufacturer, had recommended.
vikingBerserker
Lieutenant General
This just keeps getting odder and odder.
drgondog
Major
I'm still trying to find a reference to a discovery that two persons on that flight were Muslims on the highly classified terror lists and the theory that the pilot may have taken manual control to prevent a takepver... with speculation that Paris was the target for a hijacking.
Was thinking about that. I am not so sure it's going to be a great help to put a sub in that area. Not so much because the sonar doesn't work but because the depth a sub can get to (I'm guessing the max is about 1,000ft) and the depth of the wreckage (about 15K feet) mean there are a ton of layers of waters between the pinger and the sonar. Need to have the sonar in or close to the same layer to get the sound.
At least that is what I think is the situation. Somebody who actually was a sonar tech (I was an OS) would know it for sure.
syscom3
Pacific Historian
Theres nothing complicated about a mini-sub cruising under the thermoclines with a tethered listening device "dipping" deep.
I also was amazed on how fast the French authorities came up with the excuse the black boxes are too deep and probably never will be found. And that was before they even tried looking for them. It was like they DONT want them to be found.
Matt308
Glock Perfection
Where is He Whom Does Not Skim when you need him. Not that it matters for these depths Timshatz, but I think your max depth is likely way too conservative. In 1989 Russian held the world max depth record for a military submarine of 1000m. The Russians actually claimed over 4200ft. Pretty damn impressive for 30yo technology in either case.
But you are right about the depth. And compound that with geological impediments (undersea mountains, cliffs, etc) and/or the recorders covered in heavy debris only compound the points you make. Meanwhile time is running out for the ULD batteries.
But you are right about the depth. And compound that with geological impediments (undersea mountains, cliffs, etc) and/or the recorders covered in heavy debris only compound the points you make. Meanwhile time is running out for the ULD batteries.
Drgondog,
The last I heard on this is that it was a coincidence. They had the same names as someone on the watchlist, but weren't the actual people. That was on radio, so sorry, I can't give a reference for this either.
seesul
Senior Master Sergeant
Yep, I heard the same.
seesul
Senior Master Sergeant
seesul
Senior Master Sergeant
Here you go Bill:
DEBKAfile - Two radical Muslims identified on crashed Air France flight
Never Yet Melted Muslim Radicals Aboard Doomed Air France 447
FOX News Radio - 2 Radical Muslims Believed To Be Onboard Air France Flight?
Terror Names Linked To Doomed Flight AF 447: Two Passengers Shared Names Of Radical Muslims | World News | Sky News
Two terror suspects were on crash jet AF447 | The Sun |News
Air France Airbus A330: Radical Muslims Islamic terrorists bring down flight AF447? - Bild.de
drgondog
Major
Thx Seesul - the Debka article is the one I seem to recall
Matt308
Glock Perfection
No. What kind? Writeups are VERY common and "grounded" can mean different things depending upon the context. Reportable incident or dispatch issue? Aircraft have electrical "issues" all the time that are typically dealt with via redundancy and MEL relief. A reportable incident is different.
I don't know the details, it's something that's appeared amongst circles throughout the European civil industry. I was told the rough story while sweating my bollocks off in a 330 avionics bay, good times. the issue kept the aircraft grounded a good few days, apparently... it wouldn't have been mentioned had it been able to fly with MEL or redundant systems.
I'm sure more details will arrive at my earhole while in another situation where I'm really not interested.
I'm sure more details will arrive at my earhole while in another situation where I'm really not interested.
Matt308
Glock Perfection
You can still have a "grounded" airplane due to redundant system failures not satisfying the MMEL. So without further info, we'll just have to wait and see what your...er... earhole... comes up with.
seesul
Senior Master Sergeant
(CNN) -- A top executive for the company which built the flight data recorder aboard Air France Flight 447 says he hopes his firm's 100 percent recovery record from air accidents will be maintained despite concerns the device may be lost at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Although some debris has been retrieved, air crash investigators remain in the dark about what caused the airliner to plunge into the sea off the coast of Brazil with 228 people onboard earlier this month. The wreckage is believed to be about 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash.
A French nuclear submarine and other vessels are searching for the flight data recorder by attempting to trace its locator beacon, which sends acoustic pulses, or "pings," to searchers.
The U.S. Navy has contributed two high-tech acoustic devices -- known as towed pinger locators -- which have been attached to French tug boats and can search to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet.
Honeywell Aerospace's Paolo Carmassi -- the firm's president for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India -- told CNN that retrieving the flight data could help solve the mystery of the plane's fate and said his company had never lost a black box involved in an accident.
"We believe that our technology is well-positioned to, in this case, contribute to solve the big question around this particular accident," Carmassi said.
"We have a 100 percent recovery rate of all the black boxes that we have installed that unfortunately may have been involved in accidents so we hope that we will be able to maintain our record and be able to shed some light on what happened." Video Watch what clues investigators are looking at »
But Carmassi acknowledged it was hard to estimate how much battery life the locator beacon had left.
"There is a certain duration which depends on the particular environmental conditions, whether it's underwater or on land, whether it's at 10 meters or 4,000 meters; so it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly the duration," he said.
Yann Cochennec, an aviation expert with Air et Cosmos magazine, told CNN that a recorder had been retrieved from the seabed in 2004 after an Egyptian charter flight crashed into the Red Sea shortly after leaving Sharm el-Sheikh.
But he said the depth of the Atlantic, strong currents and bad weather would make retrieving the recorder from the Air France wreckage far more difficult.
The flight data recorder -- sometimes called a "black box" -- is actually an orange, metal cylinder weighing about 13 pounds. Inside is a stack of memory chips designed to survive high temperatures, strong impact and tons of pressure.
The devices record virtually every detail about how an aircraft is working, including cabin pressure, speed and altitude, remaining fuel and whether that fuel is flowing properly. They have played a crucial part in air crash investigations since they were first fitted to commercial aircraft in the 1940s.
Manufacturer optimistic of finding AF447 flight data recorder - CNN.com
Although some debris has been retrieved, air crash investigators remain in the dark about what caused the airliner to plunge into the sea off the coast of Brazil with 228 people onboard earlier this month. The wreckage is believed to be about 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash.
A French nuclear submarine and other vessels are searching for the flight data recorder by attempting to trace its locator beacon, which sends acoustic pulses, or "pings," to searchers.
The U.S. Navy has contributed two high-tech acoustic devices -- known as towed pinger locators -- which have been attached to French tug boats and can search to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet.
Honeywell Aerospace's Paolo Carmassi -- the firm's president for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India -- told CNN that retrieving the flight data could help solve the mystery of the plane's fate and said his company had never lost a black box involved in an accident.
"We believe that our technology is well-positioned to, in this case, contribute to solve the big question around this particular accident," Carmassi said.
"We have a 100 percent recovery rate of all the black boxes that we have installed that unfortunately may have been involved in accidents so we hope that we will be able to maintain our record and be able to shed some light on what happened." Video Watch what clues investigators are looking at »
But Carmassi acknowledged it was hard to estimate how much battery life the locator beacon had left.
"There is a certain duration which depends on the particular environmental conditions, whether it's underwater or on land, whether it's at 10 meters or 4,000 meters; so it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly the duration," he said.
Yann Cochennec, an aviation expert with Air et Cosmos magazine, told CNN that a recorder had been retrieved from the seabed in 2004 after an Egyptian charter flight crashed into the Red Sea shortly after leaving Sharm el-Sheikh.
But he said the depth of the Atlantic, strong currents and bad weather would make retrieving the recorder from the Air France wreckage far more difficult.
The flight data recorder -- sometimes called a "black box" -- is actually an orange, metal cylinder weighing about 13 pounds. Inside is a stack of memory chips designed to survive high temperatures, strong impact and tons of pressure.
The devices record virtually every detail about how an aircraft is working, including cabin pressure, speed and altitude, remaining fuel and whether that fuel is flowing properly. They have played a crucial part in air crash investigations since they were first fitted to commercial aircraft in the 1940s.
Manufacturer optimistic of finding AF447 flight data recorder - CNN.com
