Air France Flight 447

113 victims died in the Concorde jet that crashed in Gonesse France on July 25, 2000. After 10 years of investigation, a court may be ruling in a manslaughter case in December all though culpability is still not satisfactorily established.
The crash may have been caused by a titanium strip that fell off [...]

We really would prefer to have brand new good news about the search for flight 447 every day, so that we could present good news every single day, instead of bad news once a month. However, since the June announcement that the search was over, the Air France Flight 447 news has been slim pickings. [...]

Spiegel Online has not forgotten the victims of Flight 447.
They’re running an article, The Curse of Flight AF445
Victims’ Families Distraught at Air France’s Thoughtlessness on the latest faux pas of Air France.
Air France decided to be big about it, and send the victims surviving families tickets to the June 1 grand unveiling of the Paris [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

The next Bermuda Triangle?
In the same general area as the ill fated Flight AF447 from Rio to Paris, killing all 228 people on board, we recently wrote about another plane which experienced 30 minutes of traumatic turbulence.
Flying the same route, another Airbus F-GZCK (AF Flight 445) —carrying 12 crew and 203 passengers—experienced severe turbulence [...]

Those of you who pay attention to this kind of thing heard about the recent occurrence when a flight from Rio to Paris carrying 203 passengers, 3 pilots and 9 flight attendants encountered such violent, extreme and prolonged turbulence (30 minutes worth) that they sent out a Mayday (received, in fact, by a AF flight [...]