Air France A330 - Missing over Atantic

FYI
AP said:
By The Associated Press
PARIS (AP) -- Air France has told families of passengers aboard Flight 447 to abandon any hope of survivors.
A counsellor present at a meeting with Air France's CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon says he told the families that the plane broke apart either in the air or when it slammed into the ocean's surface.
Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel family members, said Thursday "what is clear is that there was no landing. There's no chance the escape slides came out."
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http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/...ir+France+tells+families+no+hope+of+survivors
 
Occam's Razor: Isn't the simplest hypothesis that they let the AP fly them into a thunderstorm at full speed and the airplane broke apart at altitude?
 
Same as when the Colgan flight went down near Buffalo... why can't people just let this stuff get figured out first?
 
aliens hit it with a bomb. only reasonable explanation. case closed.
 
no scott the spanish pilots said there was a flash of WHITE light. it couldn't have been the green death ray this time.
 
Well, the white light was the magnesium used in Airbus airframes, which as we all know burns exceptionally hot and emits a bright white light. The magnesium lobby is to blame, not the aliens.

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
Here's a pretty straight forward explanation of what went wrong from the messages received.

Best,

Dave

At 3.10am, the messages show the pilot was presented with a series of major failures over a four-minute period before catastrophe struck, according to automatic data signals cited by the Sao Paulo newspaper, le Jornal da Tarde.
At this time, the automatic pilot was disconnected – either by the pilot or by the plane's inbuilt security system, which flips to manual after detecting a serious error.
It is unclear whether the pilot wanted to manually change course to avoid a dangerous cloud zone – an extremely difficult manoeuvre at such high altitude.
At the same moment, another message indicates that the "fly-by-wire" electronic flight system which controls the wing and tail flaps shifted to "alternative law" – an emergency backup system engaged after multiple electricity failures. This system enables the plane to continue functioning on minimum energy but reduces flight stability. An alarm would have sounded to alert the cabin crew to this.
Two minutes later, another message indicates that two essential computers providing vital information on altitude, speed and flight direction ceased functioning correctly.

For the rest, go to the article.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-15-minutes-to-save-doomed-flight-AF-447.html
 
Pilots often slow down when entering stormy zones to avoid damaging the aircraft, but reducing speed too much can cause an aircraft's engines to stall.
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I didn't know that....:rolleyes:
 
flyersfan31 said:
Pilots often slow down when entering stormy zones to avoid damaging the aircraft, but reducing speed too much can cause an aircraft's engines to stall.
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I didn't know that....:rolleyes:
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Happens to me everytime I pull the mixture back all the way after I've slowed waaay down into my parking space.
 
Dave Siciliano said:
Looks as if NTSB is going to participate in this. Bill English has been assigned to this for those of you that know him.
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The engines were GE units built in the US (Cincinnati). Therefore the NTSB will be involved as a matter of protocol.
 
If accurate, this is an unexpected twist:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/04/plane.crash/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

The Brazilian air force said Thursday night that debris picked up near where officials believe Air France Flight 447 crashed Monday into the Atlantic Ocean was not from the plane.

The news came after the Brazilian navy began retrieving debris Thursday that it believed was wreckage from the flight, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean.

On Wednesday, searchers recovered two debris fields and had identified the wreckage, including an airplane seat and an orange float as coming from Flight 447. Officials now say that none of the debris recovered is from the missing plane.

Helicopters had been lifting pieces from the water and dropping them on three naval vessels.
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Dave Siciliano said:
Yea, it's hard to believe anything they say. One pundit said they are now back to 'square one'.

Bu bu butt, we know that can't be true because they're using triangulation :rofl:
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Maybe they were using scalene instead of equilateral :rofl:
 
N801BH said:
Yeah. like what are the chances they go to the last reported position, find an aircraft seat and then say it ain't from Air France.. Ya got to be kiddin me. My guess is that Scarebus Industries does NOT want the black boxes found and delaying the search will allow for the pinger to run out of batteries. :nonod::frown2: IMHO.

Ben.
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Sure. Why not. It makes as much sense as most of the other wacky theories out there.:mad2:
 
N801BH said:
Yeah. like what are the chances they go to the last reported position, find an aircraft seat and then say it ain't from Air France.. Ya got to be kiddin me. My guess is that Scarebus Industries does NOT want the black boxes found and delaying the search will allow for the pinger to run out of batteries. :nonod::frown2: IMHO.

Ben.
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Last time I checked, it wasn't our NTSB doing the investigation.

That said, look for a pretty decent answer that doesn't involve "The plane broke apart due to lack of maintenance. The NTSB has determined probable cause to be Pilot Error."
 
SkyHog said:
Last time I checked, it wasn't our NTSB doing the investigation.

That said, look for a pretty decent answer that doesn't involve "The plane broke apart due to lack of maintenance. The NTSB has determined probable cause to be Pilot Error."
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Yup. they said that when the verticle stabilizer broke off a scarebus plane in NYC in 2001. If I remember correctly that plane was flying below VA airspeed too. Had to be pilot error.:nonod::nonod::frown3:
 
N801BH said:
Yup. they said that when the verticle stabilizer broke off a scarebus plane in NYC in 2001. If I remember correctly that plane was flying below VA airspeed too. Had to be pilot error.:nonod::nonod::frown3:
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He shouldn't have pressed the rudder all the way (even though they hadn't been trained not to yet)
:mad3:

And I quote (in anger):
the in-flight separation of the vertical stabilizer as a result of the loads beyond ultimate design that were created by the first officer's unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs. Contributing to these rudder pedal inputs were characteristics of the Airbus A300-600 rudder system design and elements of the American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program.
 
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I am in agreement with you. What I cannot get loaded in my small brain is VA= a pilot should be able to introduce any control imput and not break the plane. Correct?:confused:
 
N801BH said:
I am in agreement with you. What I cannot get loaded in my small brain is VA= a pilot should be able to introduce any control imput and not break the plane. Correct?:confused:
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Within reason anyway. If the pilot slams the yoke to the stops hard enough while stationary on the ground, something will break.
 
N801BH said:
I am in agreement with you. What I cannot get loaded in my small brain is VA= a pilot should be able to introduce any control imput and not break the plane. Correct?:confused:
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No.

"Va criteria apply to the structure of the wing, and to a lesser extent to the horizontal tail, but do not apply in the same way to the vertical fin of a normal or utility category airplane."

"Va is a calculated airspeed based on the actual gross weight of the airplane and the wing’s response to a 50-foot per second wind gust, or movement of the elevator. There are certification limits for the loadings caused by the gusts of turbulence, for maneuvering with the flight controls, and the combination of gusts and maneuvering. Va is at the corner of the combined gust and maneuvering limit. What we were taught, and believed, about not being able to break the airplane with the controls when flying at or below Va is mostly true when it comes to the elevator, but the elevator may break."

Article here: http://www.flyingmag.com/columnists/527/the-myth-of-maneuvering-speed.html?print_page=y
 
Thanks Dan for taking your time to post that article. I do still learn stuff after all these years. Tonight I am searching for sites that list all vertical stabilizer failures.. So far I cannot find a single Boeing, McDonald Dougless or any other manufacturer of transport aircraft who has suffered a failure. Anyone out there who remembers one ?? Thanks in advance.

Ben.
 
This Airbus/Boeing debate is in pretty poor taste right now. Neither one is less safe than the other and I'm sure neither Boeing nor Airbus is happy about what happened here. Would it be possible to focus in the facts as we learn more?
 
At the risk of being obvious, I have not seen any posts which suggest that the loss of the AF flight was in any way related to the source of the airframe. Could you be thinking of anothe board, perhaps?

While we have absolutely no concrete evidence upon which to base any conclusions, I am betting on weather.

The A330 has, with a huge number of flight hours behind it, an impeccable safety record. I'd be very, very surprised if any airframe-design elements contributed to this event.
 
SCCutler said:
I'd be very, very surprised if any airframe-design elements contributed to this event.
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What confuses me is this "alternate law" thing.

You're flying along, accidentally go into a thunderstorm, get severely bumped around and struck by lightning - And the airplane makes itself LESS stable? :hairraise:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
What confuses me is this "alternate law" thing.

You're flying along, accidentally go into a thunderstorm, get severely bumped around and struck by lightning - And the airplane makes itself LESS stable? :hairraise:
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Or, more likely, a system is damaged and it then fails over to an alternate system, aka Alternate law.
 
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