Air France Airbus goes down

**Jesus Jones** · 02-06-2009, 07:33 AM

Seems odd there was no radio contact either.

**Bung** · 02-06-2009, 07:49 AM

No mayday sent indicates something catastrophic happened as they were too busy to send. Even has a one touch distress system so looks like she may have gone straight down from cruising altitude. They did report a depressurization. Flying through heavy turbulence in the ITCZ.

Terrible.

Interesting perspective here:

-- Miles O'Brien is a pilot, airplane owner and freelance journalist who lives in Manhattan. His blog is located here Miles O'Brien - Uplinks - True/Slant --
By Miles O'Brien
NEW YORK (Reuters.com) -- So what happened to Air France Flight 447? It is early and speculation at this juncture is often wildly wrong. And remember, there are usually several factors that conspire to bring an airliner down. But here is what we do know for sure. Keep this in mind as you process the often inaccurate reporting on aviation that is so prevalent in the mainstream media.
The Timeline - The flight, carrying 216 passengers and 12 crewmembers, left Rio de Janeiro at 6:03 p.m. Sunday EDT (7:03 PM local time). It flew beyond radar coverage 3 hours and 33 minutes later (at 9:33 p.m. EDT). A half hour later (10 p.m. EDT) - now four hours into the flight - the plane encountered heavy turbulence. Fifteen minutes later (10:15 p.m. EDT), now a long way out to sea, it transmitted an automated signals indicating the plane was in serious trouble.
"A succession of a dozen technical messages (showed that) several electrical systems had broken down," according to Air France CEO Pierre-Henry Gourgeon. He described the failures, which included (most ominously) the pressurization system as "totally unprecedented situation in the plane."
It was a dark and stormy night - in a place that is home to the world's worst thunderstorms. Just as it disappeared, the Airbus A330-203 was flying into a thick band of convective activity that rose to 41,000 feet. This equatorial region is known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone - it is where Northeast and Southeast Trade Winds meet - forcing a lot of warm, moist air upward - which condenses - an efficient thunderstorm producing machine.
The crew had "Sully-esque" seasoning - The Captain had 11,000 hours total time (1700 in the Airbus A330/A340). One Copilot had 3,000 hours total time (800 in the Airbus A330/340) and the other Copilot had 6,600 hours total time (2,600 in the Airbus A330/340).
The Airbus A330 has a good record - and this was the first crash of a twin-engine A330 in revenue service in its history. In 1994, seven employees of Airbus died when a 330 went down during a test flight. The accident report says it was a case of pilot error. The airplane that crashed last night - tail number F-GZCP - had no accidents or incidents in its history. It went into service on April 18, 2005 and had logged 18,870 hours. It was in the hangar in mid-April for routine maintenance. No serious squawks reported.
No reason to believe terrorism - While you cannot take the possibility of a bomb off the list just yet, no groups have claimed any responsibility for downing the plane. What good is a terrorist attack if the perpetrators don't, well, terrorize us?
So consider this as a possible scenario. The crew is flying toward a line of storms in the dark, out of range of land-based radar. They are equipped with on board weather radar however - and can use it to thread their way through the bad cells if need be.
It is quite likely the airplane was struck by lightning - it could have triggered lightning by the mere act of flying at Mach .8 through storm clouds. It is not impossible that could have triggered a fuel fire - but that is highly unlikely. In fact, it has been four decades since lightning alone caused an airliner crash in the US. A lot of time and effort is spent protecting airplanes from the clear and present danger (interesting piece here). And airliners get hit by lightning all the time - you don't hear about it because nothing bad happens. Remember, it is seldom just one thing that brings a modern airliner down.
And many of those airliners that get hit are so called fly-by-wire aircraft (meaning the controls in the cockpit are linked to the movable surfaces on the airplane by electrical wires and computers). Airbus pioneered FBW control systems in commercial airliners. And the engineers in Toulouse have gone out of their way to demonstrate their products are safe in stormy weather. There are four fully redundant electrical systems on an Airbus - and if the worst happens, a manual flight control system that allows the crew to fly the plane (barely) using the rudder, differential thrust on the engines and horizontal stabilizer trim.
Ironically, one of the systems most vulnerable to lightning strikes is the on-board weather radar located in the nose cone. It cannot do its job if it is shielded from lightning like the rest of the airplane is - and so it is more likely to go down when bolt strikes (which is, of course, when you need it most). So it is possible this plane was hit by lightning, knocking out the radar.
You can imagine the crew was suddenly preoccupied with multiple electric failures that left them in the dark, over the ocean and without weather radar as they hurtled toward some epic cumulus nimbus thunderheads. This would have been serious emergency that should prompt a pilot to do a 180 and head for the nearest suitable size slab of concrete.
But consider this possibility: most Captains on long hauls over the pond prefer to be on the flight deck for take-off and landing. Was the most seasoned aviator in his bunk when the weather hit the fans?
The fact that the airplane sent automatic warnings that it had an electrical problem means, by definition, that it was not a total, instant failure. But did things cascade from there? They might have found themselves inside a huge storm only able to control the airplane manually - which means minimally - with the rudder primarily.
And then there is the Aribus rudder. You may recall the crash of American Airlines flight 587 on November 12, 2001 as it departed New York's JFK airport. The plane encountered some wake turbulence and the copilot apparently stepped too hard on the rudder pedals - breaking off the graphite vertical stabilizer and rudder (the tail).
Even today's advanced - seemingly invincible airliners are no match for Mother Nature on a bad night. If a big airplane ends up in the teeth of a powerful thunderstorm, it could be torn to pieces in an instant.
We do know whatever happened on that airplane in its last few minutes was nothing short of horrifying. It is hard to imagine the kind of turbulence that would break up an airliner. My heart goes out to the passengers and crew.
Will we ever know what happened? This one will be hard. The wreckage will be likely strewn over a wide area - and locating the Flight Data and Cockpit Voice Recorders won't be easy since they are likely at the bottom of the sea - hopefully emitting their homing signals. But just knowing where to search will be difficult.
One thing which may help: those automatic messages indicating system failures - which are designed primarily to give mechanics a heads up about problems so they can turn a plane around on the ground faster - no doubt contained much more information than is now in the public realm.
Which brings me to one of my pet peeves: why not send steady streams of telemetry from airliners to the ground all the time - ala NASA and the shuttle? Imagine how invaluable that much data would be right now - given the distinct possibility this could remain an unsolved mystery.
We all need to know what happened to Air France 447. Is there something that makes the A-330 fleet unsafe in certain conditions? In the absence of real facts, will conspiracy theorists spin a tale of terrorism and government cover ups? Did the flight crew make crucial errors in judgment? Or was this an unavoidable scenario - bad luck with odds so long that nothing or no one is really to blame?

**tuktukdriver** · 02-06-2009, 08:57 AM

Originally Posted by watterinja

To be honest, I'm always amazed at arriving at the destination without incident.

Conservative engineer type who was taught that the design fatigue life for many airplane components was something in the order of 1000 cycles.

This reminds me of the SAA Helderberg disaster of former years.

Not true. I work in the industry and can tell you these things are over designed if anything. There is a lot of redundancy designed in as well. Most air accidents are due to pilot error or maintenance error, rarely fatigue. The Airbust that lost it's vertical stabilizer is the last one I can think of and that was a manufacturing problem as I recall. To early to tell but my guess is this was pilot error, did not take a flight path to avoid the storm.

**barbaro** · 02-06-2009, 09:00 AM

Originally Posted by jandajoy

Just in on Sky news.

An Air France Airbus out of Rio en route to Paris has gone down. Searches underway but Air France holds little hope. 200 plus onboard.

Was the pilot and crew French?

**Rural Surin** · 02-06-2009, 09:50 AM

Originally Posted by crippen

They are now talking about rapid 'de-pressurisation and massive structural failure' what ever that implies. Sky News

Torn apart.

**Thai Pom** · 02-06-2009, 10:20 AM

According to a couple of other sites, data was still being transmitted after the last position update. This data is sent to the ground automatically without any interaction from the flight crew. Airbus and Air France are said to be studying this yet unpublished information, I am sure we will know sooner rather than later.

RIP

watterinja · 02-06-2009, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by tuktukdriver

Originally Posted by watterinja

To be honest, I'm always amazed at arriving at the destination without incident.

Conservative engineer type who was taught that the design fatigue life for many airplane components was something in the order of 1000 cycles.

This reminds me of the SAA Helderberg disaster of former years.

Not true. I work in the industry and can tell you these things are over designed if anything. There is a lot of redundancy designed in as well. Most air accidents are due to pilot error or maintenance error, rarely fatigue. The Airbust that lost it's vertical stabilizer is the last one I can think of and that was a manufacturing problem as I recall. To early to tell but my guess is this was pilot error, did not take a flight path to avoid the storm.

Would you then know the fatigue design life for the critical structural components? The fatigue life curve (stress versus cycles) information would be very interesting. For many non-ferrous materials, there is no 'knee' in the S-N curve, implying that these components will fail under cyclic fatigue loading - over time. The common design life was around the 10^3 (1000) cycle range, as I understood.

If you could share your engineering design knowledge, it would be very interesting.

That they are designed as solidly as possible - of course, within reason, it's just that the face weight limits.

**Mr R Sole** · 02-06-2009, 10:45 AM

Very sad indeed for the relatives...could give a monkeys that there were executives on board!!...don't see the relevance of that??? they were surely all just petrified people praying to what ever god they believed in to get them through it?! or Atheists just screaming 'FUC* I don't wanna die'

Either way the plane was no doubt at cruising altitude so unless the crew tried to get the plane lower very quickly...then hopefully if there was de-pressurization then maybe alot of people passed out...if not it's a long slow way down....to a sea full of these guys

Just hope they were dead before meeting this lot.

Sorry but it's true

**jandajoy** · 03-06-2009, 03:45 AM

Tales of tragedy behind Air France disaster

By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici for AM

Posted 28 minutes ago
Updated 22 minutes ago

Search for wreckage: An Air France Airbus similar to that lost over the Atlantic

The story behind the disappearance of Air France Flight 447 is looking increasingly grim, with reports that the Brazilian air force has spotted debris including plane seats floating in two separate parts of the Atlantic Ocean.
There has been no confirmation that it is wreckage from the missing plane and weather conditions are hampering the international search effort.
It is now a race against time to find the black box flight recorders which should continue to emit signals, even in water, for only 30 days.
There were five Britons on Flight 447. Included among them was Alexander Bjoroy, an 11-year-old who was travelling alone on a British passport.
He went to boarding school in England and had been holidaying with his parents in Brazil during half-term break.
He was a student at Clifton College in Bristol, where head teacher John Milne held a special assembly to reflect on the tragedy.
"Alexander joined the prep school in January 2009, and was a well-liked and respected boarder. He will be sorely missed by pupils and staff. Our deepest sympathies and condolences are with Alexander's family at this time," Mr Milne said.
Sixty-one-year-old structural engineer Arthur Coakley was also among the 228 people on the flight which left Rio De Janeiro bound for Paris.
His wife, Patricia Coakley, spoke to Sky News.
"He shouldn't have been on that flight, he should have been on the earlier flight," she said.
"He was really excited about coming home, seeing the children, and we're going on holiday to Corfu, where we have lots of Greek friends... I hope Art was asleep, and I hope he wasn't frightened."
The Airbus A330 went missing over the southern Atlantic Ocean somewhere between Brazil and the West African coast shortly after the plane sent an automatic message reporting an electrical fault.
Overnight, the Brazilian air force said they found what appeared to be parts of the wreckage.
They spotted small white fragments, plane seats, a life vest, a turbine as well as oil and kerosene floating in the Atlantic 650 kilometres north east of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha Island.
But what they are most desperately searching for is the black box flight recorder which holds the key to establishing exactly what happened to the doomed flight.
Experts say it is probably on the ocean floor which, in the area where the search is being conducted, is between 3,000 and 7,000 kilometres deep.
John Perry Fish is the vice-president of American Underwater Search and Survey, a company that specialises in retrieving hard to reach items. He has experience in locating black box flight recorders in water.
"Cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder are equipped with pinger beacons which, as soon as they're submerged in water, emit a pulse once per second," Mr Fish said.
"This pulse can be detected by a directional beacon receiver, and it can tell you what direction the pingers are, and the pingers of course attached to the data recorders."
The debris found in the Atlantic will need to be analysed. That will not happen until boats make it back to shore.
For the families waiting for news at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, that could mean waiting at least another day to find out what happened to their loved ones.

**Bobcock** · 03-06-2009, 06:28 AM

3,000 and 7,000 kilometres deep

Now that is deep

**spliff** · 03-06-2009, 08:32 AM

They have found the crash area:

Brazil says debris from crash jet

Brazilian and French teams have been searching the Atlantic Ocean

Debris spotted by planes in waters 650km (400 miles) off Brazil's coast belongs to a missing French airliner, the Brazilian government has confirmed.
Defence Minister Nelson Jobim said he had no doubt the debris was from the Air France jet carrying 228 people.
A Brazilian search plane saw a band of wreckage along a 5km (3m) strip, Mr Jobim told reporters in Rio de Janeiro. There was no report of survivors.
Flight AF 447 was heading from Rio to Paris when it was lost early on Monday.

See a map of the plane's route
The discovery of the debris confirmed "that the plane went down" in the area, Mr Jobim said.
He gave few details of the wreckage, saying only that it included metallic and non-metallic pieces.
Earlier, Brazil's air force said it had spotted an airplane seat, an orange buoy and signs of fuel.
Mr Jobim's words will come as grim confirmation of the worst for the families waiting for news both in Paris and Rio, the BBC's Gary Duffy reports from Brazil.
Jean-Louis Borloo, the French minister for transport, said the chance of finding anyone alive was now "very, very small - even nonexistent".
If it is confirmed that all 228 people on Flight AF 447 are dead, it will be the worst loss of life in Air France's history.
Ships on hand
Naval boats are due to arrive in the crash zone on Wednesday, while three merchant vessels are already in the area, the Brazilian defence minister said.

TIMELINE

Flight AF 447 left Rio at 1900 local time (2200 GMT) on Sunday
Airbus A330-200 carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew
Contact lost 0130 GMT
Missed scheduled landing at 1110 local time (0910 GMT) in Paris

Timeline of Flight AF 447
Air disasters timeline
Mystery of Air France flight
What's being said on the web

If any bodies are found, they will be transported by ship to the nearest airport, on Brazil's archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, he was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
The defence minister warned that the recovery of the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders could be difficult because of the depth of the ocean.
"It could be at a depth of 2,000m or 3,000m [6,500ft-9,800ft] in that area of the ocean," he said.
He made the announcement after visiting relatives of those aboard the flight, who were being looked after in a Rio hotel by teams including psychological and medical personnel.
France is also sending a research ship equipped with two mini-submarines to the disaster area.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the search teams over the Atlantic were "in a race against the clock in extremely difficult weather conditions".
Distress call mystery
Most of the missing people are Brazilian or French but they include a total of 32 nationalities. Five Britons and three Irish citizens are among them.

Our only certainty is that the plane did not send out any distress call

Francois Fillon
French prime minister

Grief and fear in Brazil
In pictures: Search continues
Did storm down missing plane?

On Tuesday, the French National Assembly held a minute's silence for those on board the plane, and thanked countries involved in the search.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend a religious service for the families and friends of the missing passengers and crew at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Fillon told the French parliament that the cause of the plane's loss had still to be established.
"Our only certainty is that the plane did not send out any distress call but regular automatic alerts for three minutes indicating the failure of all systems," he said.
Experts remain puzzled that there were no radio reports from the Airbus and they say that such a modern aircraft would have had to suffer multiple traumas to plunge into the sea, the BBC's Adam Mynott reports from Paris.

**anon501** · 03-06-2009, 08:40 AM

very sad

**panama hat** · 03-06-2009, 09:15 AM

Originally Posted by Bobcock

3,000 and 7,000 kilometres deep

Now that is deep

Indeed . . . perhaps metres should be used instead of kilometres . . .

Although plane crashes are a relatively rare occurrence it does bring home to us who fly often that plane crashes, unlike car crashes, are usually deadly.

**good2bhappy** · 03-06-2009, 10:02 AM

horrific ending

watterinja · 03-06-2009, 10:53 AM

RIP to those who passed away.

**shaggersback** · 03-06-2009, 11:23 AM

[quote=panama hat;1073011][quote=Bobcock;1072918]

3,000 and 7,000 kilometres deep

10,911 metres , Mariana Trench (between Japan and PNG) Around 11 kilometres deep and the deepest part of any ocean.

3000 - 7000 k deep ? If it were the case the black box would be easier to retrieve from Mars.

**good2bhappy** · 03-06-2009, 11:31 AM

it was a typo!

**shaggersback** · 03-06-2009, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by good2bhappy

it was a typo!

JING AWWWW ?

**good2bhappy** · 03-06-2009, 11:41 AM

thought that was jing Lor?

**Mr R Sole** · 03-06-2009, 12:38 PM

There seems to be some reports that they may have found some wreckage???? OH DEAR...anyone else got any news?? just checking google now.

**phuketbound** · 03-06-2009, 12:49 PM

How very sad..rip. My heart goes out to the family members.. my worst nightmare.

**S Landreth** · 03-06-2009, 12:52 PM

Brazil navy races to pull Air France wreck from sea

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 3 (Reuters) - Brazilian navy divers rushed on Wednesday to reach the wreckage of an Air France jet and start the grim job of pulling debris from the Atlantic Ocean, where the plane with 228 people went down in the the airline's worst disaster in its 75-year history.

link: Brazil navy races to pull Air France wreck from sea | Reuters

**matsalleh** · 03-06-2009, 01:06 PM

Originally Posted by Mr R Sole

There seems to be some reports that they may have found some wreckage???? OH DEAR...anyone else got any news?? just checking google now.

Check here: Three mile path of wreckage discovered - ClipSyndicate - Truveo Video Search

**good2bhappy** · 03-06-2009, 01:32 PM

no survivors spotted

**Norton** · 03-06-2009, 01:47 PM

Originally Posted by good2bhappy

no survivors spotted

No chance. Finding the wreckage a tall order as well. They are currently dropping acoustic sensors all around the wreck area in hopes of locating the black boxes which generate an acoustic ping for up to 30 days. If they are lucky enough to find them, a deep sea vehicle can be used to retrieve. The data recorder will help identify the cause of the crash but afraid we can say goodbye to anyone on board the aircraft.

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