Air France jet vanishes

+++++...just read back to the first of this thread, and we will see that many were VERY skeptical of this investigation from the git-go.

Nothing that has happened since has restored my faith in the investigators nor the Airbus in question.

 

So lets make a wager that in the next 30 days there is going to be a "revelation" that explains everything.

 

I'll bet not.

 

I would have to agree there as a lot of regulatory agency's will say whoa that was to fast whats the deal.

 

Like I said, somebody (other than the BEA) is going to keep going down there until they find the boxes.

 

yes they are......

 

I have a gut feeling that AF447 lost the vertical tail in the turbulence of a cumulonimbus and disintegrated and that they can find the pieces with sonar and submersibles. The premature and baseless statements by the French are an insult to the intelligence of the flying community and a cruel lie to the general public. Again, if the airplane had dove into the ocean as they claim, the body of the pilot and flight attendant along with all the rest would be at the bottom of the ocean and unrecognizable. Then the claim that it hit belly first after a long dive is total fantasy. Any damage to the components retrieved that they claim happened when the airplane hit belly first flies in the face of saying that the vertical tail came off when the airplane hit nose first. Ah YES! I remember the 35,000 foot nose first dive belly flop manuever.
Switches

 

Same here.

If you have been flying very long, and keeping up with the press on aircraft accidents, you get used to such crappola from the uninformed media. (remember all the speculation on the JFK jr. crash?) However, in the U.S., we have been sort of spoiled by the careful competence of our own N.T.S.B. in almost all cases.

This AF447 saga reeks of incompetence, arrogance, deceit, and complete disdain for the truth on the part of the investigating committee. And there is a story of stories for the media, which they are ignoring.

 

I am hearing of a lot of reluctance of the Brazilians and French to share information with each other, especially autopsy reports.

 

What we need here is the Glomar Explorer,
USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193) is a large ship currently being used as a deep-sea drilling platform. The vessel was built for a secret operation, "Project Jennifer", by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to recover a sunken Soviet submarine, K-129, which was lost in April 1968. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Glomar_Explorer_(T-AG-193)
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That thing was parked about 10 miles from here for years right next to a bridge I cross regularly. Looks a little different now. It has big claws designed to grab a Sub hull and raise it. I don't think they have the dexterity to grab a FDR.

 

As directly quoted from the BEA report mentioned earlier in this post:
In relation to towed acoustic devices, the BEA approached the US Navy. The latter has two
towed pinger locator (TPL) hydrophones and uses them regularly to search for civil or military
aircraft crashed at sea.
The US Navy TPLs can operate at up to a depth of six thousand metres. They operate on a
waveband between 5 and 60 KHz which includes the frequency transmitted by the
underwater locator beacons. The average detection range of the TPLs is estimated at two
kilometres at least.
To optimize the use of this equipment, the BEA chartered two available ships from the Dutch
subsidiary of Louis-Dreyfus Armateurs. These two tugs are the "Fairmount Expedition" and
the "Fairmount Glacier".
The BEA also chartered the oceanographic ship "Pourquoi Pas ?" from IFREMER together
with its specialized exploration and intervention resources, the "Nautile" submarine and the
“Victor 6000” ROV, which are able to operate at a depth of up to six thousand metres. These
vehicles can also map the site of the accident.
Gary Bobileff

 

They couldn't even raise the entire hull. It broke in half part way up.

It was a poor attempt at a joke about nearly impossible recovery attempts.

 

At least they are utilizing technology to it's fullest. It ain't over yet..................

 

I understand they recoverd much more than was admitted. Conducted a large burial at sea with the remains they found too. Video taped it as a record.

 

Air France's CEO issued this statement about using weather radar.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/07/09/329492/air-france-reviewing-weather-radar-use-after-af447-crash.html

 

Using radar to avoid weather is so simple you can teach a 10 year old to do it in a very short period of time. The color weather radars now used make it even simpler. Having used B&W radars to avoid weather for 20+ years, it is not a big deal. Plus you can always tell when it is time to give up and simply turn back or go the really long way around the weather.The few simple rules like watching wind direction and not flying downwind of cells are also easy to remember.

Lots of smoke and mirrors going on here.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Terry I could not agree further. just makes you wonder what was going on in that cockpit at that time?? Perhaps this???

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=47d_1202124772 Note NSFW

 

I do have to admit that would limit my interest in weather radar. Probably not enough to die, though. Given a chance, I could do pretty well on the weather radar and still enjoy the show.

Very healthy and friendly passenger.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

IIRC she was an off duty flight attendant

 

Any news lately?

 

That is being covered up as quietly and quickly as possible by the French and Airbus. Unless some body other than those involved finds the FDR it will remain a mystery. According to the French, it dove down and then made a miraculous belly landing that dispersed bodies and wreckage over an area of 150 square miles. I'm not holding my breath on this one.

 

Bob.......

According to some of the Brasilian news sources that I have read a number of the recovered bodies showed flailing injuries such as those that would occur during a rapid explosive decompression, infight break up, and entering the windstream at 500 MPH.

I too share your deep sense of scepticism at the "offical" explanation.........it is a joke.

 

Thanks. I hope that someone sneaks down there and finds the FDR . That vertical fin and the clean separation is suspicious as hell as well as the wide dispersion of the results.

 

Legally a lot better to have the incident be labeled "weather related" or chalked up to a "bad airspeed reading" that they already had a fix for as opposed to the airplane being determined to be structurally deficient.....

I have a real hard time with a design that fails in the manner of the vertical stabs on these airplanes. There are pics of B52's with half the tail gone and the airplane still flew home (probably not well, but at least it stays pointed in the right direction). With the Airbus series, the weakest link is at the bottom of the tail and if it fails it comes clean off and the airplane goes down....

We have always had a failure hierarchy in the design of compressor and turbine rotors, the blade was not as strong as the area below the blade platform (called the neck) and the neck was less strong than the disk lug. The reason for that is that if you had an FOD event, if you lost anything, the worst thing you lost was a single blade, or part of one. In which case you might have high vibration, but the engine didn’t explode and bring down the airplane.

I would have thought that a similar criteria would have had to have been applied to major airframe parts (like a tail) in that if you have too great an aerodynamic loading, then maybe half the tail would break off, but at least you will end up with enough left to allow you to continue to fly. Clearly no such criteria has been applied in this case.

It is a lot easier at this point to blame it on “software” and simply make a software change and announce that it is fixed, than it is to AD the entire fleet to put new tails on them. And believe me I know exactly what it costs to release a new set of software for something like this, since I’ve actually gone thru the process of certifying software with the FAA....