Air France jet vanishes

That was my favorite episode.


Gremlins

 

People have picked on William Shatner over the years but he has delivered some good performances.

 

After the furor dies down maybe the Woods Hole Institute can nose around down there.

 

My money would indeed be on Bob Ballard after the Titanic, the Bismark, and those remarkable ancient vessels in the Black Sea.

 

Chief Pilot and one Flight Attendant have been found.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009285515_apbrazilplane.html

 

stupid question guys, but would a 406 mhz ELT go off on an aircraft that breaks up in flight?

you would think the G rating for an impact would be triggered if there was enough energy to tear apart the aircraft. i know the water impact would have ruined it.

sorry if this has been answered already. been a long week .....

 

It's not a stupid question.
What is the range of an ELT and why didn't anyone hear it, unless?
The ones in 777's have a float attached but your point about high 'G' impact may negate that feature.

 

It's sure been silent for a while.... I wonder what's going on at this point.

 

The French are cooking a story about alien abduction?


Don't mean to make light of the loss of life but it looks more and more like the data they have is what a determination is going to be based on.

 

Flight Data Recorders have to be able to withstand impacts of up the 3400 "g"s. No inflight break-up stresses even remotely approach that number, and normally crashes into the ground do not either, because there is structure crush and ground penetration to keep down the"g" forces. The transponder or pinger, however, is a different question, and appears to be much more vulnerable from photos.

3400 'g's is equivalent to stopping from ~300 mph in ~15', a very sudden stop.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

The ELT in a 777 is mounted in the crown of the fuselage, far forward of the traditional locations of the Boxes. Anything could happen

 

With all due respect for the departed, (and trust that this is not meant to be gruesome) - if you can find the body of the Captain and the first flight attendant (and IDENTIFY them both) - then very possibly this plane broke up catastrophically at altitude, and then just fluttered down in pieces at very low G levels.

Which means also that a serious and arbitrary investigation of the accident will someday reveal the flight recorders, and also the true cause of this tragedy.

Which also means that I am not exactly filled with trust on the structural integrity of this design.

 

And I DO believe this will happen. There is just no way they are going to call off the search after the Boxes go quiet.

 

Well, by previous estimates - about Wednesday would be the 30 days the pingers are supposed to last, sometime midweek next would be about as far as one could hope, no?

After that, it will certainly boil down to the marine research people and robotics...and becomes just that more difficult.

 

Interesting bit of news regarding the flight control computers (with an unsolicited explanation of the accident's cause)

"Suspicion over the air data systems on the Airbus 330 and 340 series has increased after the disclosure that the aircraft had experienced 36 episodes similar to the one that brought Flight 447 down as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris"


from the Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6612165.ece

 

The French are reporting that the plane did not break up in flight.

Sounds like wishful thinking.

 

I agree. They don't want it to look like it broke up in flight. They are saying that a lot of the parts that they are finding indicate that the fuselage hit the water in a flat attitude. Well, if the tail broke off in flight it could easily have had major parts that were still connected and the airplane could have come down in a flat attitude.

I think all you can say at this point is that a big piece of the airplane landed in a flat attitude, and you can probably say that it didn't go straight in nose down, but I have a hard time seeing how you would get the indications that they got during the (loss of cabin pressure and other things) if it wasn't breaking up, or at least a big part or two broke off.

When an aluminum airplane hits something solid it breaks into a lot of pieces. Those pieces slice and dice anything in there. To be recovering bodies that are pretty much intact makes me think that they weren't in the plane when it hit the water.

If it didn't break up in flight the debris field will be a lot smaller, and hopefully easier to find.

IMHO Airbus really doesn't want to find out if they have a structural problem, they would much rather blame it on the weather, so it is not in their interest to find the boxes or find out that they have a problem....

 

Lots of conflicting information out there - this reports that the French are saying it plunged vertically into the sea at "very high speed" - and that the "airframe was intact and did not break up in the air"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31707331/ns/world_news-europe/

I dont see how you would be recovering many identifiable bodies (including the captain, who is sitting right in front) if that were the case. Also we don't know why there were literally MINUTES of auto-alarms going off on various systems...and of course there is a broken off vertical tail found floating in the water...about all they have of the wreckage.

Anyway, at 30 days, the black boxes really are down there in Davy Jones locker now - unless some advanced submarine search team can locate them visually or by active sonar.

 

Earlier reports on the crash victims recovered said they were consistent with injuries caused by airloads, not by impact. This pretty much proves the aircraft broke up in flight. Looks like the French intend to cook the books on this one.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

+++ - and this is going to do nobody (including the French themselves) any good.

 

Without incontrovertible evidence there's no real upside to admitting their planes are dangerous.

 

But think how bad it will look if (when) this repeats itself.

 

indeed......

".....examination of floating debris indicated that the plane hit the surface of the ocean on its belly, at very high speed and facing in the direction of its intended flight........ “visual examination of the debris shows that the plane hit with the bottom of its fuselage with very strong vertical acceleration.” Shelves in the galley had compressed to the bottom, he said, among other evidence.........

 

So we could probably say that they simply don't know and are really just shooting in the dark.

 

When an airplane breaks up at 500MPH+ the air loads can and will flatten malleable components AND force objects like galley parts to compress or to disintegrate. Forces come in all directions relative to the objects when a high velocity disassembly occurs. With bodies spread all over hundreds of miles of ocean, airplane pieces spread all over and the pilot's body INTACT and separated from cockpit, tell me how that could be the result of a straight-in impact. And Taz says that evidence shows that the bodies recovered show signs of fatal air loads. I was stationed at two air bases on or near the water and occupants of aircraft that crash at high angles into water don't usually separate from the equipment and if they do, they aren't in very good shape.
The French are obviously desperate to divert the attention from the airplane.
Switches