Thread: Air France Airbus goes down

Debris 'not from Air France jet'
Debris recovered from the Atlantic by Brazilian search teams does not come from a lost Air France jet, a Brazilian air force official has said.
Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports that debris had been found, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered".
A wooden cargo pallet was taken from the sea, but the Airbus A330 had no wooden pallets on board.
Relatives have been told that there is no hope of survivors being found.
Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon and chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta briefed the passengers' relatives in a hotel near Paris Charles de Gaulle airport where they have been waiting for news.
Mr Gourgeon said the jet, which was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, broke apart either in the air or when it hit the sea.



"What is clear is that there was no landing," said a support group representative who was at the meeting, Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc. "There's no chance the escape slides came out."
In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of people gathered at a memorial service attended by the French and Brazilian foreign ministers.
"Those who are missing are here in our hearts and in our memories," said the French minister, Bernard Kouchner.
A memorial service was held in Paris on Wednesday.
Oil slick
Brazilian navy vessels have been combing the area, about 1,100km (690 miles) north-east of Brazil's coast.
Three more Brazilian boats and a French ship equipped with small submarines are expected to arrive in the area in the next few days.
Brig Cardoso said that fuel found in the sea probably did come from the plane, because it was not of a type used in ships.
However he said a large oil slick photographed in the area was more likely to have come from a ship.
He said the search effort would continue, with the main focus on finding bodies, but bad weather is forecast for the region on Friday.
'Clock ticking'
French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said the priority was looking for wreckage from the plane, before turning the search to flight data recorders.
"The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear," he said.
French officials have said the recorders, which could be deep under water, may never be found.

FLIGHT AF 447 TIMELINE
<li class="bull"> Plane left Rio de Janeiro at 1900 local time (2200 GMT) on 31 May <li class="bull"> Contact lost 0130 GMT <li class="bull"> Had been due to land at 1110 local time (0910 GMT) in Paris

Officials have warned that they are far from working out the cause of the crash.
Investigators are reported to be relying on a stream of automated messages sent out just before the crash, which suggested the plane's systems shut down as it flew through high thunderstorms.
Investigators have suggested that speed sensors failed or iced over, causing erroneous data to be fed to onboard computers. This might have caused the plane to fly too fast or too slowly through the storm, leading it either to break apart or stall and fall out of the sky.
A Spanish pilot flying in the area at the time of the crash was quoted by his airline, Air Comet, as saying he had seen an "intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds".
The paper said Airbus, the maker of the plane, would issue A330 jets with new advice on flying in storms.
Airbus declined to comment on the report, though an unnamed official told AFP news agency that it was normal to update airlines following an accident.




Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Americas | Debris 'not from Air France jet'

Published: 2009/06/05 00:41:50 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Print Sponsor

Air France jet's flight-control system under scrutiny - Los Angeles Times

>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Air France jet's flight-control system under scrutiny



[COLOR=#333333 ! important]Automated messages before the crash point to a failure of the system that flies the plane most of the time, experts say. Weather looks like less of a factor.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#999999 ! important]By Ralph Vartabedian
June 5, 2009 [/COLOR]
A sophisticated flight-control system that relies on electronic instruments and computers came under growing scrutiny Thursday as investigators tried to unravel the mysterious crash of an Air France Airbus 330 into the Atlantic.

A series of messages sent automatically by the jet moments before it plunged into the ocean late Sunday with 228 passengers and crew members aboard has raised speculation that the crash might have involved a malfunction of the automated system that flies the plane most of the time.



One of the messages reported that one of the plane's navigational control units had failed and that, almost simultaneously, the autopilot system had disengaged.

The sequence of events forced the crew of Flight 447 to fly the jet manually, a difficult task on an Airbus traveling at high altitude near its maximum speed, aviation experts said. Any significant change in airspeed could have caused the plane to lose lift or stability, both potentially deadly conditions.

Meanwhile, new analysis of the weather in the vicinity at the time of the crash appears to cast doubt on earlier reports that the plane encountered severe thunderstorms, lightning and wind gusts. Though there were storms, they were almost certainly less intense than those sometimes encountered above the United States, and lightning was at least 150 miles away, said Greg Forbes, severe-weather expert for the Weather Channel.


Forbes said an examination of weather data for Sunday, including satellite images, indicated updrafts of perhaps 20 mph, far from the initial reports of 100 mph.

"I wouldn't expect it to be enough to break apart the plane," Forbes said.

Though experts generally agreed Thursday that weather alone did not explain the crash, USC aviation safety expert Michael Barr said the investigation was still wide open.

"You can never disregard any possibility until you can prove what happened," Barr said. "The key here is to determine what the crew could have done after the initial event. Or was there nothing they could have done and they were just along for the ride?"

Air France executives said the plane had sent out a series of messages indicating technical failures, confirming news reports in Brazil and data that U.S. aviation experts had already gained access to.

A series of serious electronic breakdowns occurred on the Airbus over a four-minute period before the jet plunged into the sea, said Robert Ditchey, an aeronautical engineer, pilot and former airline executive.

The sequence started with an autopilot failure and a loss of the air data inertial reference unit, a system of gyroscopes and electronics that provides information on speed, direction and position. That system has been involved in two previous incidents that caused Airbus jetliners to plunge out of control, though the pilots were able to recover.

The automated messages then indicate that a fault occurred in one of the computers for the major control surfaces on the rear of the plane. Such a failure would have compounded the problems, particularly if the pilots were flying through even moderate turbulence.

The last message indicates that multiple failures were occurring, including pressurization of the cabin. Such a message would have reflected either a loss of the plane's pressurization equipment or a breach of the fuselage, resulting in rapid decompression.

All of these issues would have made the plane difficult to control.

When cruising at high altitude, a plane must fly within a fairly small window of speed, said Robert Breiling, an aviation safety expert in Florida. If speed drops even slightly, the plane can lose lift. If the speed is too high, it causes instability over the control surfaces.

"Flying a big jetliner at high altitude without autopilot, you have your hands full," Breiling said.

Ditchey said the Airbus software would have left the crew with a very small margin of error, where even minor buffeting could have boosted the risk of losing control.

"As they got into a degraded regime, they probably got into a bigger and bigger pickle," Ditchey said.

ralph.vartabedian [at]latimes.com

Some very strange storied developments have emerged from this event.

Originally Posted by Rural Surin

Some very strange storied developments

meteor

Did a meteor bring down Air France 447? | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

In T.W.A. 800 Crash, Don't Discount Meteor - The New York Times

There is NO evidence the plane was " Flying too slow or too fast," or for a mid -air collision, bombing, meteor strike, alien attack, etc., etc..

What there IS evidence of , ( and this may be there ever is ...) All automated problem activated radio reports (ACARS) info leads to systemic degradation of sensors feeding the flight computer. Likely from icing up.

Professional speculation ...

[AF447 - Page 14 - PPRuNe Forums ]

...then has it the Auto Pilot turns off as it will in extreme conditions and suddenly a pilot is in the dark, getting false or conflicting info from faulty sensors, in a storm flying an aircraft very high up in thin atmosphere where margins of speed errors can vary by as little as 10 kph.



As for the pilots " sighting ..."

Remember aside from an impossible distance , there were many many storms and cloud formations between the two positions too.

From PPruNe http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/376433-af447-6.html
Page 6, post # 103 Member, " Lost in Saigon"
>>>>>>>

The Air Comet flight was over 2,000 km away. They could not have seen AF447. This is from the closed thread: http://www.pprune.org/4974157-post912.html

LIM (12°01'19"S 77°06'52"W) 07°00'00"N 49°00'00"W 2028 nm
07°00'00"N 49°00'00"W LIS (38°46'53"N 09°08'09"W) 2875 nm

RIO (22°54'S 43°14'W) CDG (49°00'35"N 02°32'52"E) 4950 nm

07°00'00"N 49°00'00"W 03°17'24"N 30°24'00"W 100° 1135 nm

That is too far to see anything






<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<






Here's what the plane was going through, many flights have gone through the same, or worse it just happened the flight data sensors failed ...


( Not likely the Comet pilots saw through this mess, either ..)



Air France 447 - AFR447 - A detailed meteorological analysis - Satellite and weather data
>>>>>>>>>>>

And finally this image shows a zoomed image at 0215Z when AF447 made its last transmission:



Figure 6. View of AF447 track using GOES imagery, 0215Z 1 June 2009. GOES-10 is located at the 60 deg meridian.





The resulting satellite photos clearly show an active mesoscale convective system (MCS) across the flight path. About 90% of the cloud material seen on the closeup images are actually multiple levels of convective debris fields from dying storms and activity that occurred previously during the day, with extensive cirrus fields. The active thunderstorm areas are actually defined not by the bright coloring but by small-scale mottled areas of cold cloud tops. Compare with this structural diagram below of a similar tropical MCS in the same area in 1977.

Temperature trends suggested that the entire system was at peak intensity, developing rapidly around 2300-0100Z and finally dissipating many hours later around dawn. From a turbulence perspective, the cold spots described above would be the areas of highest concern as they signal the location of an active updraft producing new cloud material in the upper troposphere.

I've taken a look at some of the new METEOSAT data posted by Scott Bachmeier and it refines some of what we've seen on GOES. The mesoscale convective system is made up of numerous cell clusters. Due to the northerly winds aloft the downdraft areas are carried southward. As a result, the MCS has organized into a configuration with a dominant stratiform area to the south and updraft area on the north side.


Figure 7. View of AF447 track using METEOSAT-9 imagery, 0200Z 1 June 2009. This satellite is positioned over west Africa at the 0 deg meridian. The image shows slightly different characteristics since the satellite is positioned east of the MCS rather than west of it. The image is also 15 minutes earlier. (Special thanks to Scott Bachmeier and SSEC at the University of Wisconsin; also to EUMETSAT for making the image possible)


<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Sub joins search for Air France wreckage

By Nick Olle and wires
Posted 2 hours 47 minutes ago
An intensive air and sea operation is yet to recover any bodies or debris from the Air France plane that vanished earlier this week.
Twelve planes, a helicopter and three navy ships are already sweeping the suspected crash zone off Brazil's north-east coast and now a French nuclear submarine is being sent to join the search.
It is believed the 228 passengers and crew on board the plane died in the crash.
According to the French defence minister, the nuclear-powered submarine has surveillance equipment that could help locate the plane's black box flight recorders.
Officials say none of the debris salvaged from the Atlantic waters was from flight AF447.
Identifying wreckage from the plane would allow investigators to refine the search area as they race against the clock to find the flight recorders, which only emit signals for 30 days.
The head of air traffic control for the area, Brazilian Brigadier Ramon Cardoso, has told reporters "we have not made any recovery of material."
Some items spotted floating in the vicinity were "not relevant," he said.
Brazilian officials said items picked up Thursday turned out on closer inspection to be nothing more than trash, probably from ships.
But positive sightings in the waves of a seat from a plane and cables and other components on Tuesday and Wednesday convinced searchers they were in the right spot.
Crash clues

Mr Cardoso said those objects might have since sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where the plane's black boxes are also believed to be.
Without clues from the wreckage or the data in the black boxes, speculation climbed over what caused the accident.
French Defence Minister Herve Morin has told reporters in Paris he had not ruled out a terrorist attack on the plane, although he had not heard of any threats or claims of responsibility being made.
French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said "we must do everything we can to find the flight recorders" but admitted "time is against us."
The operation is being hampered by difficult weather conditions, with poor visibility and large waves complicating the search.
Meanwhile, the former inspector-general of the United States Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo, says she believes the plane's speed devices failed in bad weather.
"The engines would have been revving up and down, there would have been a lot of fluctuation, a lot of porpoising of the plane and then at one point in the four minute spiral down to earth, they lost pressurisation," she said.
Plane-maker Airbus had issued a notice warning crews on its aircraft worldwide what to do when speed indicators give conflicting read-outs, suggesting a link with data alerts sent by the ill-fated Air France plane shortly before it met its end.
- ABC/AFP

i've heard it said that one does not survive such crashes

Sad news about the AF 447 flight that went missing. R.I.P.


Multiple google references, this is from

Bodies Found from downed Air France flight AF447


June 7th, 2009 - 12:31 am ICT by John Le Fevre -





Brazilian authorities say they have finally located debris and bodies from Air France flight AF447, went missing over the Atlantic last Monday.
Brazilian Air force spokesman Colonel Jorge Amaral said two bodies and a suitcase containing a ticket for the flight were taken from the water at 0814 Brazilian time (1114 GMT) and experts on human remains are on their way to examine them.


The bodies were found close to an area where a massive air and sea search continues, 650 km (400 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil.


All 228 passengers and crew on board AF 447 are believed to have been killed when the plane disappeared during an 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Earlier this week the Brazilian defense minister confirmed that debris and a fuel trail from the missing Airbus A300-200 had been found, but further examination showed the items recovered to be refuse from passing ships.

Evidence Air France broke apart midair - Yahoo!Xtra News




Bodies recovered in the Air France disaster show multiple fractures in the legs, hips and arms, a Brazilian official said on Wednesday. Experts said such injuries suggest the plane broke up in the air.
A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press that autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far showed the fractures. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.
The description of the bodies and large pieces of the plane recovered point to the jet breaking apart in the air, said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the US National Transportation Safety Board.
"Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures - arm, leg, hip fractures - it's a good indicator of a midflight break up," Ciacco said. "Especially if you're seeing large pieces of aircraft as well."
On Wednesday, the O Estado de S Paulo newspaper - citing unnamed investigators - reported the pattern of fractures and said some of the victims were found with little or no clothing. The newspaper earlier reported the bodies also showed no signs of burns.
Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, DC, who is a former accident investigator, said the lack of clothing could be significant: "In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away."
He also said multiple fractures are consistent with a midair breakup of the plane.
"Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall - even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect," Casey said. "Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess."
When a jet crashes into water mostly intact - such as the Egypt Air plane that hit the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from New York in 1999 - the debris and bodies are broken into small pieces, Ciacco said.
"When you've had impact in the water, there is a lot more fragmentation of the bodies. They hit the water with a higher force," he said.
Lack of burn evidence would not necessarily rule out an explosion somewhere outside the passenger cabin, said John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board.
If something caused the lower fuselage to burn or explode, "passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage" and the plane would still disintegrate in flight," he said. "These are scenarios that cannot be ruled out."

Originally Posted by Plan B

passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage

I am rather glad to hear that.

Just flown from Dubai to Bangkok on A380. Strange route:- all over land. Surely somebody is not worried?????

Originally Posted by passengers

Originally Posted by Plan B

passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage

I am rather glad to hear that.

You're safe! Crew . . . not so safe.

Originally Posted by Plan B

Evidence Air France broke apart midair - Yahoo!Xtra News


"When you've had impact in the water, there is a lot more fragmentation of the bodies. They hit the water with a higher force," he said.

When they run thru pre-flight rhetoric 'life jackets' during a 'water landing', will be think of the above.

Originally Posted by Plan B

Evidence Air France broke apart midair - Yahoo!Xtra News




Bodies recovered in the Air France disaster show multiple fractures in the legs, hips and arms, a Brazilian official said on Wednesday. Experts said such injuries suggest the plane broke up in the air.
A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press that autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far showed the fractures. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.
The description of the bodies and large pieces of the plane recovered point to the jet breaking apart in the air, said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the US National Transportation Safety Board.
"Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures - arm, leg, hip fractures - it's a good indicator of a midflight break up," Ciacco said. "Especially if you're seeing large pieces of aircraft as well."
On Wednesday, the O Estado de S Paulo newspaper - citing unnamed investigators - reported the pattern of fractures and said some of the victims were found with little or no clothing. The newspaper earlier reported the bodies also showed no signs of burns.
Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, DC, who is a former accident investigator, said the lack of clothing could be significant: "In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away."
He also said multiple fractures are consistent with a midair breakup of the plane.
"Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall - even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect," Casey said. "Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess."
When a jet crashes into water mostly intact - such as the Egypt Air plane that hit the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from New York in 1999 - the debris and bodies are broken into small pieces, Ciacco said.
"When you've had impact in the water, there is a lot more fragmentation of the bodies. They hit the water with a higher force," he said.
Lack of burn evidence would not necessarily rule out an explosion somewhere outside the passenger cabin, said John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board.
If something caused the lower fuselage to burn or explode, "passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage" and the plane would still disintegrate in flight," he said. "These are scenarios that cannot be ruled out."

Yeah, scenarios woven around conjecture based on opinion revolving around nothing as that is what is known about the crash, bodies fracturing hitting water , bodies " Flail " injuries from falling out high up. Etc, etc etc.

No wonder the Brazilian " official " won't give its name...

From what I have read, the vertical stabilizer was found 18 miles from one of the two debris fields. The two debris fields were 50 miles apart. I'm no expert but it sounds like the vertical stabilizer came off which caused the rest of the airframe to probably split due to violent rolling in the storm. The wings and the horizontal stabilizers would have been fighting each other and twisting the airframe. Why all this happened we may never find out without the black box. Airbus has lost a plane due to losing a vertical stabilzer before, even though it was a different model of plane. I'm sure the engineers at Airbus know more than has been let out.

Originally Posted by MustavaMond

There was an east African airliner that- having been forced to run out of fuel by a hijacker, landed on water, about half the passengers lived, more would have but they inflated the life jackets BEFORE getting out of the plane and many were trapped, drowned against the ceiling. They probably didn't listen to the flight safety, " rhetoric " either.

That would have been a fairly successful water landing but one of the engines hit a coral reef causing the plane to break up.

Just heard from a friend at Airbus (unconfirmed as yet) that the "pings" from the FDR and/or the CVR have been detected in 5000M of water. Lets hope they can recover them and find out what really happened i.e. put away the speculators once and for all. The industry needs to know the truth.

As do the families of course

Air France "black box" signals located
Tue Jun 23, 2009 2:06am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - Signals from the flight data recorders of the Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located, Le Monde newspaper said on its website on Tuesday.

An Air France spokeswoman said she could not confirm the report.

Le Monde said French naval vessels had picked up a weak signal from the "black boxes" and that a mini submarine had been dispatched on Monday to try and find them on the bottom of the rugged ocean floor.

The "black boxes" may contain vital information that could help explain what happened when the Airbus A330 aircraft crashed into the sea en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1.

(Writing by James Mackenzie, Editing by Ralph Gowling
Air France black box signals located: report | U.S. | Reuters

can we still post theories - this one looks good

if the rudder fell off the Air France plane they were fcuked

Rudder hinges.
Airbus has notoriously
American Airlines Flight 587 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [wikipedia.org]
underbuilt the rudder hinges on the A300 (and, no doubt, the A330) in the
interest of lightness and efficiency. They have chosen to rely on the
automated flight control system to limit loads on the structure, instead of
building the necessary robustness into that structure.
This is great when flight conditions are all peachy, but in a thunderstorm, at
night, with sensors (iced-up pitot tubes?) that are prone to failure, well
then you have a failure scenario that the designers never built into their
simulations, and the rescue/recovery teams in the south Atlantic find the
rudder 37 miles from the rest of the wreckage.

>> Yesterday while coming up from Hong Kong to Tokyo , a 1700nm
>> 4hr. flight, we experienced the same problems Air France had while
>> flying thru bad weather.
>> I have a link to the failures that occurred on AF 447. My list is
>> almost the same.
>> http://www.eurocockpit.com/images/acars447.php [eurocockpit.com]
>>
>> The problem I suspect is the pitot tubes ice over and you
>> loose your airspeed indication along with the auto pilot, auto
>> throttles and rudder limit protection. The rudder limit protection
>> keeps you from over stressing the rudder at high speed.
>>
>> Synopsis;
>> Tuesday 23, 2009 10am enroute HKG to NRT. Entering Nara Japan
>> airspace.
>>
>> FL390 mostly clear with occasional isolated areas of rain,
>> clouds tops about FL410.
>> Outside air temperature was -50C TAT -21C (your not supposed to get
>> liquid water at these temps). We did.
>>
>> As we were following other aircraft along our route. We
>> approached a large area of rain below us. Tilting the weather radar
>> down we could see the heavy rain below, displayed in red. At our
>> altitude the radar indicated green or light precipitation, most
>> likely ice crystals we thought.
>>
>> Entering the cloud tops we experienced just light to moderate
>> turbulence. (The winds were around 30kts at altitude.) After about
>> 15 sec. we encountered moderate rain. We thought it odd to have
>> rain streaming up the windshield at this altitude and the sound of
>> the plane getting pelted like an aluminum garage door. It got very
>> warm and humid in the cockpit all of a sudden.
>> Five seconds later the Captains, First Officers, and standby
>> airspeed indicators rolled back to 60kts. The auto pilot and auto
>> throttles disengaged. The Master Warning and Master Caution
>> flashed, and the sounds of chirps and clicks letting us know these
>> things were happening.
>> The Capt. hand flew the plane on the shortest
>> vector out of the rain. The airspeed indicators briefly came back
>> but failed again. The failure lasted for THREE minutes. We flew the
>> recommended 83%N1 power setting. When the airspeed indicators came
>> back. we were within 5 knots of our desired speed. Everything
>> returned to normal except for the computer logic controlling the
>> plane. (We were in alternate law for the rest of the flight.)
>>
>> We had good conditions for the failure; daylight, we were
>> rested, relatively small area, and light turbulence. I think it
>> could have been much worse. The Capt did a great job fly and staying
>> cool. We did our procedures called dispatch and maintenance on the
>> SAT COM and landed in Narita. That's it.
>>

LE BOURGET, France (AFP) - The Air France jetliner that crashed in the Atlantic between Brazil and West Africa with 228 people on board hit the ocean intact and did not break up in mid-air, the French bureau leading the investigation said Thursday.
A month-long probe into the June 1 disaster also found that defective air speed monitors on the Airbus A330 were "a factor but not the cause" of the crash, the worst in Air France's history.
"The plane was not destroyed while in flight," said Alain Bouillard from the BEA accident investigation agency as it released its first report on the loss of Flight 447 from Rio de Janiero to Paris.
"The plane appears to have hit the surface of the water in flying position with a strong vertical acceleration," he said, adding that the Airbus came down in the water belly-first.
"The plane was intact at the time of impact," Bouillard told a news conference at BEA headquarters in Le Bourget outside Paris.
There had been speculation that problems with the Airbus' airspeed sensors, or pitot tubes, may have caused the plane to stall or fly dangerously fast, causing a high-altitude breakup.
But investigators said that they had ruled out a mid-air breakup after carefully examining the 640 pieces of debris that have been recovered from the crash zone hundreds of kilometres off Brazil's coast.
The airliner's fin was discovered still attached to part of its base structure, further strengthening the view that the plane was all in one piece when it hit the water.
No inflated life jackets were found among the debris, said Bouillard, adding that "the passengers were obviously not prepared for an emergency sea landing."
The lead investigator said the air speed sensors were "one of the factors but it's not the only one" that led to the crash as the plane flew through turbulence.
"It's a factor but not the cause.
"We are still some distance away from establishing the causes of the accident," he said.
French investigators have focused on the air speed sensors which fed inconsistent readings to the cockpit shortly before it plunged into the Atlantic.
No distress call was received from the pilots, but there was a series of 24 automated messages sent by the plane in the final minutes of the doomed flight, investigators say.
The BEA, along with Airbus and Air France, have repeatedly said there is as yet no firm evidence linking the speed monitors to the crash of the jetliner.
Air France nevertheless has upgraded all sensors on its long-haul fleet as a precautionary measure after protests from pilots.
The BEA was reporting on its first findings even though an intensive deep-sea search for the plane's flight recorders has yet to yield results.
Brazil decided on June 27 to call off the recovery operation but France has maintained its nuclear submarine, research vessel and other boats in the area on a final hunt for the black boxes.
The BEA has decided to continue the search for the flight recorders until July 10.
The homing beacons on the flight recorders emit signals for about one month after the crash and the BEA hopes that they will have a longer-than-usual shelf life.
French investigators complained that they had yet to see the results of autopsies being performed on the 51 bodies pulled from the disaster area, despite formal requests to Brazilian authorities.
The pilots of Flight 447 also failed to connect to the flight control center in Dakar, Senegal after leaving Brazil's zone, which meant that search and rescue operations could have been launched earlier, Bouillard said.

The plot thickens.

"The plane appears to have hit the surface of the water in flying position with a strong vertical acceleration,"

It hit the water with strong vertical acceleration?

^ downwards acceleration - dropped down in a death spiral.

Originally Posted by baldrick

can we still post theories - this one looks good

if the rudder fell off the Air France plane they were fcuked

Rudder hinges.
Airbus has notoriously
American Airlines Flight 587 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [wikipedia.org]
underbuilt the rudder hinges on the A300 (and, no doubt, the A330) in the
interest of lightness and efficiency. They have chosen to rely on the
automated flight control system to limit loads on the structure, instead of
building the necessary robustness into that structure.
This is great when flight conditions are all peachy, but in a thunderstorm, at
night, with sensors (iced-up pitot tubes?) that are prone to failure, well
then you have a failure scenario that the designers never built into their
simulations, and the rescue/recovery teams in the south Atlantic find the
rudder 37 miles from the rest of the wreckage.

>> Yesterday while coming up from Hong Kong to Tokyo , a 1700nm
>> 4hr. flight, we experienced the same problems Air France had while
>> flying thru bad weather.
>> I have a link to the failures that occurred on AF 447. My list is
>> almost the same.
>> http://www.eurocockpit.com/images/acars447.php [eurocockpit.com]
>>
>> The problem I suspect is the pitot tubes ice over and you
>> loose your airspeed indication along with the auto pilot, auto
>> throttles and rudder limit protection. The rudder limit protection
>> keeps you from over stressing the rudder at high speed.
>>
>> Synopsis;
>> Tuesday 23, 2009 10am enroute HKG to NRT. Entering Nara Japan
>> airspace.
>>
>> FL390 mostly clear with occasional isolated areas of rain,
>> clouds tops about FL410.
>> Outside air temperature was -50C TAT -21C (your not supposed to get
>> liquid water at these temps). We did.
>>
>> As we were following other aircraft along our route. We
>> approached a large area of rain below us. Tilting the weather radar
>> down we could see the heavy rain below, displayed in red. At our
>> altitude the radar indicated green or light precipitation, most
>> likely ice crystals we thought.
>>
>> Entering the cloud tops we experienced just light to moderate
>> turbulence. (The winds were around 30kts at altitude.) After about
>> 15 sec. we encountered moderate rain. We thought it odd to have
>> rain streaming up the windshield at this altitude and the sound of
>> the plane getting pelted like an aluminum garage door. It got very
>> warm and humid in the cockpit all of a sudden.
>> Five seconds later the Captains, First Officers, and standby
>> airspeed indicators rolled back to 60kts. The auto pilot and auto
>> throttles disengaged. The Master Warning and Master Caution
>> flashed, and the sounds of chirps and clicks letting us know these
>> things were happening.
>> The Capt. hand flew the plane on the shortest
>> vector out of the rain. The airspeed indicators briefly came back
>> but failed again. The failure lasted for THREE minutes. We flew the
>> recommended 83%N1 power setting. When the airspeed indicators came
>> back. we were within 5 knots of our desired speed. Everything
>> returned to normal except for the computer logic controlling the
>> plane. (We were in alternate law for the rest of the flight.)
>>
>> We had good conditions for the failure; daylight, we were
>> rested, relatively small area, and light turbulence. I think it
>> could have been much worse. The Capt did a great job fly and staying
>> cool. We did our procedures called dispatch and maintenance on the
>> SAT COM and landed in Narita. That's it.
>>

Problem with Wiki is anyone can post anything and make it look like fact, like Boeing shareholders , dissing Airbus to profit from rising stock .

Having said that I do believe Ab has put far to much reliance on compurterized systems and garbage in sensor readings leave pilots with nothing but garbage out information when a suddenly disengaged ap tells them to to fly the plane.. in the dark, no horizon info , high altitude at speed... recipe for disaster..

Yeah, if they lost it, the v/s probably did come off in flight ... but that wasn't he " Cause" of the crash anymore than the act of taking off was...Did they manage to get the plane level-ish before impact? Or did it just happen to be that way at that precise moment.