Air France Flight 447

A TAP Portugal e a Infraero homenagearam de forma diferente a cidade do Rio de Janeiro e o Aeroporto Internacional Antônio Carlos Jobim, no dia 20 de janeiro.

The SPAF union (French Pilots) declared that the BEA’s refusal to assign blame to the speed probes is an attempt to shift focus from its own and Air France’s to address the known risk.

French law requires that serious safety problems be reported and investigated, a mandate with which both the BEA and Air France failed to comply.

On it’s website, SPAF News states:
(posted verbatim)
AF 447 : la contre-enquête dans les médias
Air France pilots warn of risky speed probes

Paris - Air France pilots have criticised investigators of the carrier’s fatal jet crash in June 2009 and warned planes should avoid icy weather until tests prove whether their speed sensors can withstand it, a report said on Sunday.
The weekly Journal du Dimanche cited extracts from a report to be submitted to judicial officials this week by two pilots, one the head of the pilots’ union SPAF, on the crash of flight AF447 from Rio to Paris that killed 228 people.

In a report last month, the French air accident investigation agency BEA said the jet’s Pitot speed probes gave false readings before it crashed into the Atlantic and called for better testing standards for such probes.
Until these are developed, however, “planes are still flying in weather conditions for which the speed sensors are not certified”, which runs “contrary to the safety requirements under current regulations”, the pilots’ report said, according to the newspaper.

Pilots’ unions and some of the relatives of victims of June’s crash have accused Air France and plane maker Airbus of ignoring longstanding problems with air speed monitors on its jets in the run-up to the June disaster.
The companies insist that their jets met all safety standards, but they have nevertheless replaced Pitots made by the French electronics company Thales with a different model produced by US firm Goodrich.

The report by the pilots, Henri Marnet-Cornus and SPAF president Gerard Arnoux, said this “would lower the level of risk”, but further faults were possible since the probes had not been tested for the effects of ice crystals.
The pilots had argued in an earlier report that the freezing of the Pitots had caused the Airbus 330 to crash. The BEA has said they were “one of the factors” in the crash, but not the sole cause.

The pilots also criticised what they called “the short-sighted approach of the BEA concerning the faultiness of the Pitot probes”, according to the newspaper.
They said planes should be banned for the moment from flying into patches of icy weather that could cause the speed probes to freeze up and probes should be certified for all weather conditions and all types of plane.

When Pitots are blocked by ice they send false speed measurements to the plane’s onboard flight computers, as was the case on the missing flight in June. It sent a string of automated error messages before plunging into the ocean. - AFP

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During a heavy rainstorm In 2005, an Air France flight missed the runway, crashed through a fence, ditched in the Etobicoke Creek ravine, and burst into flames.

ALL 297 passengers and 12 crew members survived.

33 people were hospitalized, and 23 people seriously injured.
And they were awarded a $12-million settlement to be distributed among 184 passengers who participated in a class action lawsuit (not to the 45 who opted out. I’m wondering how they feel hearing the decision that they will not be receiving any of that $175,000 (max) per person.) Air France has been ordered to pay 10 million (plus interest.) Airbus S.A.S. and Goodrich will pay $1.65-million.

So. The accident happened in 2005, the case was filed in 2006 and the settlement was awarded 1 week before 2010.

I wonder how this time frame feels to the families of those individuals lost in Air France Flight 447. Bear in mind that the above-mentioned settlement was awarded to people who survived.

Not that the case has literally gone before a jury yet. But in the investigation, pre-judgment is pending. The investigations and frictions continue. Theories circulate, even without the benefit of the input of the lost black boxes. Isn’t judgement supposed to be suspended until ALL the fact gathering is complete?

If nothing else, the crash of Air France Flight 447 has shown us the flaws in aircraft tools for speed measurement. The Thales brand Pitot tubes that were installed on the Air France Airbus have a tendency to ice over in certain conditions.

Perhaps before the crash, Airbus fly-by-wire aficionados may have become somewhat complacent depending on computer technology. Fly-by-wire fans forget that computers are fallible. Not just because they can’t make human, practical judgements, but also because we tend to forget how fragile precise digital mechanisms actually are. (Has no one noticed how digital appliances quit in conditions when their hardier mechanical predecessors endured? A flicker of electricity, a speck of dust can break, ruin, or reset a digital device.)

The tragedy served to remind us that there is danger inherent in flying in icy conditions and it is up to safety officials to modify the criteria to decrease the danger.

The FAA (U.S. Federal Aviation Administration) and EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency ) both sent directives out for airlines to replace Thales Pitot tubes on all Airbuses.

There is conflict between the BEA and the Brazilian examiners regarding whether or not the flight broke apart in the air or if it hit the water intact.

Dozens of headlines read: Autopsies suggest Flight 447 broke apart in sky; plane broke up in mid-air; Air France Jet Probably Broke Apart In Midair: Official

Dozens of headlines read: Jet Was Intact As It Hit Water, and Doomed Air France plane hit sea intact: investigators.

One school of thought says the flight broke apart because it was going at such speed that the plane’s (composite) frame could not withstand the pressures.

Another school of thought suggests that the plane–or part of the fuselage– hit the water intact.

The amount of fragmentation, the type of fractures, whether or not clothing was intact are all factors in figuring out the conditions of the crash.

What is my opinion? I doubt it disintegrated spontaneously; but I am guessing that something crucial like the tail rudder may have broken in the air. And some pieces of the fuselage may have hit the water intact. But that’s opinion. Let’s hope they find the black boxes in February.

The cause of the crash which killed all 228 passengers has not been determined.

Large parts of the plane, including the flight recorders, have not been found

The new search will begin in February of 2010, and cover about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off Brazil’s coast, for a duration of three months. The search will consist of underwater sweeps and make use of sonar technology and robotic subs.

View the BEA report here:
Download the English version in PDF format

This document presents an update on the progress of the technical
investigation as of 30 November 2009. It adds to the first Interim report
published by BEA on 2 July 2009.

In accordance with Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil
Aviation, with EC directive 94/56 and with the French Civil Aviation
Code (Book VII), the investigation has not been not conducted so as to
apportion blame, nor to assess individual or collective responsibility. The
sole objective is to draw lessons from this occurrence which may help to
prevent future accidents.

Conclusions drawn Include:

On the basis of this work, le BEA recommends that EASA and ICAO:
1. extend as rapidly as possible to 90 days the regulatory transmission
time for ULB’s installed on flight recorders on airplanes performing
public transport flights over maritime areas;
2. make it mandatory, as rapidly as possible, for airplanes performing
public transport flights over maritime areas to be equipped with
an additional ULB capable of transmitting on a frequency (for
example between 8.5 kHz and 9.5 kHz) and for a duration adapted
to the pre-localisation of wreckage;
3. study the possibility of making it mandatory for airplanes
performing public transport flights to regularly transmit basic
flight parameters (for example position, altitude, speed, heading).
In addition, the BEA recommends that ICAO:
4. ask the FLIRECP(19) group to establish proposals on the conditions
for implementing deployable recorders of the Eurocae ED-112
type for airplanes performing public transport flights.

Aviation news is running rampant with conjecture about what the BEA will say in 2009’s final report on the AF 447 loss, but one thing is sure.

It is NOT the final report.

Three more months of searching will begin in February 2010. How can there be a “final” report as glibly mentioned in the Washington Post?

The only thing definitive is that the findings are not definitive. The cause can only be attributed to a chain of events, most likely originating in the failed pitot tubes freezing over, sending misinformation, causing acceleration, confusing the pilots, and confounding the fly by wire technology of the Airbus.

It is conjectured that the mostly fruitless search of 2009 will result in a mandate for more, longer-lived beacons being affixed to planes—a sad testament on our ability to anticipate failure rather than impending success.

Absent finding working black boxes, without a reconstruction of the events, there will never be closure. There will never be definitive answers. There will never be an end to the open-ended ongoing nightmare of the victims’ families.

The BEA should not allow the word final to appear on the upcoming report. We owe it to the families; at the very least, we should be able to offer them answers. We have a long way to go before anyone can say “final.”

Jean-Paul Troadec, director of France’s Investigation and Analysis Bureau, announced to family members of the 58 Brazilians victims that the search for the elusive Black Boxes from the lost Air France Flight 447 will resume in February.

This phase will involve underwater sweeps. Researchers studying currents and underwater topography have tried pinpoint the area. For up to three months, sonar and robot submarines will be searching a specific location 1,000 kilometers off of Brazil’s coast.

It is heartening to see some kind of resources directed toward continuing to search. But family members have been waiting–waiting and wondering why there was an interim in the search, why not enough information about the investigation has been reaching the families when 178 bodies are still unaccounted for.

The US is going to assist in this phase of search efforts, as well as Britain, Germany, Russia and Brazil, and private companies.

Speculative Forensics.
We cannot draw conclusions.

We can only speculate.

The black boxes have not been found.

The investigation is inconclusive–except that there were probably multiple concurrent or sequential causes. We can ask the following questions:

Was it the pitot tubes? Was it the turbulence? Was it the weather? Was it pilot error? Was it fly by wire/computer error?

There are still lessons unlearned from AFF 447.

For the BEA, it is another ongoing report hanging like a sword of Damocles over Airbus, Air France and possibly the future of inter-continental aviation.

We await the promised mid-December report.

For the families, waiting for answers since 1 June 2009, the suffering goes on.

128 page BEA report on af447.pdf