I Was Young Then...: Air France

Showing posts with label Air France. Show all posts

Friday, June 26, 2009

Bodies of Air France captain, steward found

June 25, 2009 -- Updated 1445 GMT (2245 HKT)

Story Highlights

Search crews recover bodies of flight captain and steward from crash
All 228 people onboard flight 447 from Brazil to France were killed
None of names of bodies recovered have been released at request of families

A Brazilian diver floats on wreckage of Flight 447 earlier this month. The search for more debris continues.

(CNN) -- Search crews have recovered the bodies of the flight captain and a steward from the Air France flight that crashed off the coast of Brazil.

The two flight members are among the victims that have been identified, Air France said in a statement Thursday.

About a dozen victims have been identified among roughly 50 bodies recovered from the crash of Flight 447, which killed 228 people on June 1, authorities in Brazil said this week.

Crews continue to search for bodies, wreckage and flight-data recorders that apparently rest deep on the ocean floor. Data from the recorders may be crucial in helping investigators determine what caused the plane to crash.

Autopsies conducted on some of the 50 bodies found so far show they suffered broken bones, including arms, legs and hips, Brazilian authorities have told French investigators, according to Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the French accident investigation board.

Such injuries suggest that the plane broke apart in midair, experts have said.

Asked about that theory, Air France Chief Executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told France's RTL radio this week that he would not go that far.

"What I know is that the investigators would like to know the causes of death," Gourgeon said. "That knowledge of causes of death will better clarify what exactly happened. Were the victims killed before the impact, or during impact?"

Searchers have found dozens of pieces of debris in the water and think they know the general location of the wreck, but Arslanian said this week that there is a chance the entire aircraft may never be found.

Air France plans to pay relatives of the victims an initial compensation equivalent to about $24,500, or 17,500 euros, for each victim, Gourgeon has said.

The airliner said this week that it has been in touch with about 1,800 relatives of the people who died when the Airbus A330 crashed, but that it has been difficult tracing the relatives of all 228 victims.

"The modern world is different and we often have only a cell phone, and as you can imagine, this cell phone is unfortunately in the aircraft," Gourgeon said. "So we probably (will put in) more hours to access all the relatives."

The company is also providing families with counseling, he said.

The were 32 different nationalities present on Flight 447.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Air France crash probe to release initial report on July 2

Posted: 26 June 2009 0357 hrs

Debris of the Air France aircraft lost in midflight over the Atlantic Ocean is seen on board a Brazilian Navy Corvette

PARIS - The French agency probing the mid-Atlantic crash of an Air France jet said Thursday it would release an initial report on its findings on July 2.

The Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) leading the technical inquiry into the June 1 crash said it would present the report at a press conference at its headquarters in the Paris suburbs.

Flight AF 447 went down around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) off Brazil's northeast coast as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board.

The cause of the disaster is not known. Speculation has swirled about whether the plane broke up in the air, perhaps from strong turbulence, or on hitting the water.

Air France said earlier that the plane's pilot and one of its stewards have been identified among the bodies pulled out of the sea.

Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau told the French Senate on Thursday that 51 bodies had been recovered so far.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

French sub chases Air France black box signal

Posted: 23 June 2009 1644 hrs

Debris of the Air France aircraft lost in midflight over the Atlantic Ocean is seen on board a Brazilian Navy Corvette

PARIS: A French mini-submarine has been launched after a "very weak" signal was detected from the flight recorders of the Air France jetliner that crashed in the Atlantic, Le Monde reported Tuesday.

But the French bureau investigating the crash said the black boxes of Flight 447 had not been found and that research teams "check out any sound" that might lead to them.

The Nautile submersible set out on Monday after French navy vessels detected a "very weak signal" several hundred kilometres off the coast of Brazil, Le Monde reported on its website. No source was quoted in the report.

Owned by Ifremer, the French oceans research institute, the Nautile is capable of operating at a depth of six kilometres (3.7 miles) and was used by research teams who explored the wreck of the Titanic.

"No flight recorders have been located to this day," said a spokeswoman for the BEA aviation investigating bureau.

"This is not the first time that we have heard noise. We check out all of these noises. The research effort continues," she said.

The homing beacons on the devices will only operate for around another week.

"I have no confirmation for the time being" that the flight-data recorders have been found, said Captain Christophe Prazuck, spokesman for the army general staff.

The Air France Airbus A330 carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris came down in the Atlantic on June 1. The cause of the disaster has not been established.

Fifty bodies have been recovered from the crash zone, along with hundreds of pieces of the plane.

The Nautile was taken to the debris zone on board the French maritime research vessel Pourquoi Pas and was to be deployed once the ping from the black boxes was detected.

Other than the Pourquoi Pas, the French nuclear submarine Emeraude and two high-sea vessels equipped with sonars are taking part in the deep-sea search for the vital data and voice recorders of Flight 447.

The boxes - in reality bright orange - would help investigators piece together the final minutes of the ill-fated flight that went down during a storm as it was flying through turbulence.

No distress call was received from the pilots, but there was a series of 24 automated messages sent by the plane in the final minutes of the doomed flight.

French investigators probing the crash have said that the airspeed sensors, or pitot probes, had been feeding inconsistent readings to the cockpit.

Conflicting airspeed data can cause the autopilot to shut down and in extreme cases the plane to stall or fly dangerously fast, possibly causing a high-altitude breakup.

But the BEA, along with Airbus and Air France, have said there is as yet no firm evidence linking the speed monitors and the crash of the jetliner.

Air France has upgraded all sensors on its long-haul fleet as precautionary measure after protests from pilots.

The crash was the worst in Air France's 75-year history.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Official: No black box signals from Flight 447

Image via Wikipedia

06/23/2009 | 05:30 PM

PARIS — A French official says sounds detected by search teams in the Atlantic depths are not those of Flight 447's black boxes.

The aide to France's top transport official, Jean-Louis Borloo, says the "black boxes have not been detected." The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to be publicly named.

She said Tuesday that French military ships searching in the area where the plane crashed have "heard sounds" but that those were not signals from the flight's voice or data recorders.

Earlier Tuesday, French newspaper Le Monde reported that French ships had detected a "very weak signal" from the black boxes.

The boxes are key to determining what happened to the Air France plane that plunged into the ocean May 31, killing all 228 aboard. - AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

11 bodies from Air France disaster identified

Posted: 22 June 2009 0507 hrs

Crew members of a Brazilian Air Force Super Puma helicopter unload corpses of Air France airflight 447 passengers.

SAO PAULO: Eleven of the 50 bodies recovered from an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic three weeks ago have been identified by fingerprints and dental records, Brazilian officials said on Sunday.

The bodies were identified as "10 Brazilians and one foreigner," officials in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco said in a statement.

Five of the Brazilians were male, the other five were female and the foreigner was male, it added.

The officials, part of a task force that also includes Brazilian police and forensic specialists conducting autopsies in the city of Recife, did not give further details about those identified.

They said the families of the identified Brazilians had been visited personally on Friday and Saturday by police officers who broke the news.

The embassy of the foreigner who was identified was also notified.

A special morgue in Recife has received 49 of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash site 1,000 kilometres off Brazil's northeast coast. The 50th body was due to be delivered by ship on Monday.

There were 228 people from 32 countries onboard the airliner, which went down June 1 off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The cause of the disaster - the worst in Air France's history - was not known.

Seventy-two French citizens, 59 Brazilians, 26 Germans and passengers from 29 other countries were on the flight.

Identification was initially being attempted using fingerprints, scars, surgical or dental characteristics, and tattoos on the bodies.

If those failed, DNA tests were to be carried out in a Brazilian police laboratory in Brasilia based on samples taken from relatives.

After bodies were identified, they were to be released to the families for burial, the statement said.

The Brazilian officials said they were still waiting for records and other information to identify bodies of foreigners.

"The lack of pre-mortem data explains the small number foreigners identified," they said in the statement.

Brazilian authorities leading the search for bodies and debris have fading hopes of finding any more remains. On Saturday, a sophisticated plane with on-board radar that found the first traces of the downed plane was taken off the operation.

A separate French operation looking for the plane's black boxes was continuing, with a French military nuclear submarine scouring the crash zone.

It was trying to detect homing beacons that are expected to fade within a week. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Air France bodies had broken bones, official says

June 19, 2009 -- Updated 1619 GMT (0019 HKT)

Story Highlights

Bodies had fractures to arms, legs, hips, and few had clothing, French official says
Condition of bodies points to mid-air rupture of Air France flight, experts say
Brazilian medical examiners gave information about bodies to French investigators

French Senator Gerard Larcher throws a tribute wreath into waters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Thursday.

PARIS, France (CNN) -- At least some of the bodies recovered from the Air France crash this month had broken bones, Brazilian authorities have told French investigators, evidence that suggests the flight broke apart before hitting the ocean.

Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, the French accident investigation board, said Thursday that Brazilian medical examiners had given that information to his agency.

Asked whether the information included reports that the recovered bodies from Flight 447 had fractures to arms, legs and hips, and few had any clothing, Arslanian said yes.

All of that, aviation experts have said, points to a mid-air rupture of the plane at about 35,000 feet.

There is still no explanation of what brought down the Airbus A330, which was en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France when it crashed in the Atlantic on June 1.

Arslanian pleaded Thursday for the media and the public to stop speculation about the cause of the Air France crash.

A Brazilian diver floats on wreckage of Flight 447 spotted Wednesday.

A major Brazilian newspaper reported this week that 95 percent of the bodies so far had shown fractures in the legs, arms and hips similar to injuries found in people who fall from great heights. The newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo cited unnamed officials who are part of the investigation.

Another clue is the low incidence of cranial trauma, the newspaper reported. If the aircraft had nose-dived into the ocean, victims would have more head injuries, the paper said.

A large number of bodies also had red lesions in their mucous membranes, which the paper said is usually associated with asphyxia, or lack of oxygen.

Another major Brazilian newspaper, the Jornal do Brasil, cited information from an unnamed person from the Brazilian military who has access to the teams working in the recovery of the plane. This person told the paper that bodies were found "mutilated" with no clothing, a strong indication of violent depressurization caused by a structural rupture.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Manufacturer optimistic of finding AF447 flight data recorder

June 18, 2009 -- Updated 1843 GMT (0243 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Maker of flight data recorder aboard AF447 has "100 percent" recovery rate
Top executive says finding flight data recorder could reveal cause of air crash
Plane wreckage believed to be on Atlantic seabed, around 4,500 meters deep
Device's underwater locator beacon has limited battery life

A Brazilian diver floats on wreckage of Flight 447 spotted Wednesday.

(CNN) -- A top executive for the company which built the flight data recorder aboard Air France Flight 447 says he hopes his firm's 100 percent recovery record from air accidents will be maintained despite concerns the device may be lost at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Although some debris has been retrieved, air crash investigators remain in the dark about what caused the airliner to plunge into the sea off the coast of Brazil with 228 people onboard earlier this month. The wreckage is believed to be about 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash.

A French nuclear submarine and other vessels are searching for the flight data recorder by attempting to trace its locator beacon, which sends acoustic pulses, or "pings," to searchers.

The U.S. Navy has contributed two high-tech acoustic devices -- known as towed pinger locators -- which have been attached to French tug boats and can search to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet.

Honeywell Aerospace's Paolo Carmassi -- the firm's president for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India -- told CNN that retrieving the flight data could help solve the mystery of the plane's fate and said his company had never lost a black box involved in an accident.

"We believe that our technology is well-positioned to, in this case, contribute to solve the big question around this particular accident," Carmassi said.

"We have a 100 percent recovery rate of all the black boxes that we have installed that unfortunately may have been involved in accidents so we hope that we will be able to maintain our record and be able to shed some light on what happened."

But Carmassi acknowledged it was hard to estimate how much battery life the locator beacon had left.

"There is a certain duration which depends on the particular environmental conditions, whether it's underwater or on land, whether it's at 10 meters or 4,000 meters; so it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly the duration," he said.

Yann Cochennec, an aviation expert with Air et Cosmos magazine, told CNN that a recorder had been retrieved from the seabed in 2004 after an Egyptian charter flight crashed into the Red Sea shortly after leaving Sharm el-Sheikh.

But he said the depth of the Atlantic, strong currents and bad weather would make retrieving the recorder from the Air France wreckage far more difficult.

The flight data recorder -- sometimes called a "black box" -- is actually an orange, metal cylinder weighing about 13 pounds. Inside is a stack of memory chips designed to survive high temperatures, strong impact and tons of pressure.

The devices record virtually every detail about how an aircraft is working, including cabin pressure, speed and altitude, remaining fuel and whether that fuel is flowing properly. They have played a crucial part in air crash investigations since they were first fitted to commercial aircraft in the 1940s.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Air France probe 'a little bit closer' to answers, investigator says

June 17, 2009 -- Updated 1954 GMT (0354 HKT)

Story Highlights

Investigators are analyzing evidence, seeking clues, chief of French agency BEA says
Nature of damage to plane parts, injuries to victims may give clues, analyst says
Sensitive listening devices used to search for Air France Flight 447 data recorders
"It's as if it fell in the Andes," search mission leader says of jet that crashed in Atlantic

The tail fin of the Airbus A330 that crashed in the Atlantic is unloaded this week in Recife, Brazil.

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Investigators are "getting a little bit closer" to determining what caused an Air France airliner to disappear into the Atlantic Ocean, but there are no answers yet, a French investigator said Wednesday.

The Airbus A330 crashed June 1, killing all 228 people aboard. Fifty bodies and a few parts of the plane have been recovered. Searchers are especially interested in finding the aircraft's flight data recorder, assumed to be resting at the bottom of the ocean.

"I understand that the families [of the victims] want to know what happened," Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of the BEA, the French accident investigation board, said at a news conference in Paris.

"The only message I can give them is that at the moment ... we are working as quickly and intensely as possible in order to one day find out what happened and what we may do in order to make aviation safer."

It is "virtually certain" that authorities will not be able to recover all the parts of the plane, Arslanian admitted.

Air France Flight 447 went down in stormy weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

The exact location of the crash is not known because the plane was not within any controller's radar when it disappeared, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders have not been recovered, and ocean currents have moved the bodies and debris that have been found.

A large number of French, Brazilian and American ships are searching the waters, and the BEA has asked the European Space Agency to provide satellite imagery of the search area, said Olivier Ferrante, chief of the BEA search mission.

Investigators are looking at the possible role of airspeed sensors known as pitot tubes, among other factors, but Arslanian cautioned reporters not to speculate about what happened.

"It is far too early to imagine scenarios one way or another," he said.

Theories range from electrical failure caused by a lightning strike to terrorism.

"As an investigator, until you know exactly what caused it, you need to leave everything on the table," Capt. John Cox, a longtime pilot with expertise in global air safety, told CNN.

Foul play is possible, "but there's been nothing that shows me that it would be a prime suspect," he said.

Investigators on land have been studying the aircraft fragments that have been gathered, but Arslanian offered no information on their findings.

Investigators are likely to test for explosive residue, said CNN security analyst Mike Brooks, who as a member of an FBI response team has participated in air disaster investigations.

"If there was an explosion onboard, then super-heated gases would make little pinprick holes," and some of the bodies would have burns, Brooks said last week.

As for the bodies, Brazilian officials have conducted all the autopsies, and the French officials were not able to discuss the results.

"It's a very, very gruesome and arduous task, but they're going to have to look at mechanism of injuries," Brooks said. "How did these people die?"

The types of injuries the victims suffered will tell investigators a lot about what happened to the plane, he said.

But the focus for investigators and search teams in the Atlantic remains finding the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders, which send out an electronic signal for at least 30 days after a crash.

Searchers are using sensitive audio equipment to listen for the recorders' beacons, Ferrante said.

The mountainous ocean floor in the search area ranges from 3,280 to 15,091 feet, BEA officials said, making the search for the recorders -- and the rest of the plane's debris -- difficult.

"It is as if it fell in the Andes," the BEA's Ferrante said.

Even if the recorders are recovered, the mystery may not be solved, Arslanian cautioned.

"I cannot say to you that when we have them we will have everything, we will know everything," he said. "And I cannot say that if we don't have them, then the inquiry is stopped."

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Autopsies suggest Air France jet broke up in sky

Image by MATEUS_27:24&25 via Flickr

By STAN LEHMAN and EMMA VANDORE, Associated Press Writers

AP - Thursday, June 18

SAO PAULO - Autopsies have revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, injuries that _ coupled with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic _ strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air, experts said Wednesday.

With more than 400 bits of debris recovered from the ocean's surface, the top French investigator expressed optimism about discovering what brought down Flight 447, but he also called the conditions _ far from land in very deep waters _ "one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation."

French investigators are beginning to form "an image that is progressively less fuzzy," Paul-Louis Arslanian, who runs the French air accident investigation agency BEA, told a news conference outside Paris.

"We are in a situation that is a bit more favorable than the first days," Arslanian said. "We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism. ... (but) it is premature for the time being to say what happened."

A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press on Wednesday that fractures were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.

"Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures _ arm, leg, hip fractures _ it's a good indicator of a midflight break up," said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. "Especially if you're seeing large pieces of aircraft as well."

The pattern of fractures was first reported Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, which cited unnamed investigators. The paper also reported that some victims were found with little or no clothing, and had no signs of burns.

That lack of clothing could be significant, said Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, D.C., who is a former accident investigator. "In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away."

Casey also said multiple fractures are consistent with a midair breakup of the plane, which was cruising at about 34,500 feet (10,500 meters) when it went down.

"Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall - even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect," Casey said. "Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess."

When a jet crashes into water mostly intact _ such as the Egypt Air plane that hit the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from New York in 1999 _ debris and bodies are generally broken into small pieces, Ciacco said. "When you've had impact in the water, there is a lot more fragmentation of the bodies. They hit the water with a higher force."

Lack of burn evidence would not necessarily rule out an explosion, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

If something caused the lower fuselage to burn or explode, "passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage" and the plane would still disintegrate in flight," Goglia said. "These are scenarios that cannot be ruled out."

Searchers from Brazil, France, the United States and other countries are methodically scanning the surface and depths of the Atlantic for signs of the Airbus A330 that crashed May 31 after running into thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 people aboard were killed.

Still missing are the plane's flight data and voice recorders, thought to be deep under water.

French-chartered ships are trolling a search area with a radius of 50 miles (80 kilometers), pulling U.S. Navy underwater listening devices attached to 19,700 feet (6,000 meters) of cable. The black boxes send out an electronic tapping sound that can be heard up to 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) away, but these locator beacons will begin to fade after just two more weeks.

U.S. Air Force Col. Willie Berges, commander of the American military forces supporting the search, said the black boxes emit beacons at a unique frequency, virtually guaranteeing that any signal detected would be from the pingers.

"The question becomes if the black box is with the pinger, because they can get separated," Berges said. "If a signal is located, the French would then send down a robotic vehicle that is in the area to look at it, confirm that it is the black box and bring it up."

Without the black boxes to help explain what went wrong, the investigation has focused on a flurry of automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact; one suggests external speed sensors had iced over, destabilizing the plane's control systems.

Arslanian said most of the messages appear to be "linked to this loss of validity of speed information." He said when the speed information became "incoherent" it affected other systems on the plane that relied on that speed data. But he stressed that not all the automated messages were related to the speed sensors.

The automated messages were not alarm calls and no distress call was picked up from the plane, he said.

Air France has replaced the sensors, called Pitot tubes, on all its A330 and A340 aircraft, under pressure from pilots who feared a link to the accident.

Arslanian said a French doctor from the BEA was not allowed to participate in autopsies done so far on some Flight 447 bodies by Brazilian authorities, and those autopsy results have not been released to the BEA. He said he was "not happy" with this situation.

However, he added that French judicial authorities, who are conducting a parallel criminal probe, were present at the autopsies.

Brazil's Federal Police and state medical authorities in Recife who are overseeing the autopsies said in a statement that two French investigators, a dental expert and a doctor, had been following the examinations as observers since June 10.

The French are leading the crash investigation, while the Brazilians are leading the rescue operation.

___

Vandore reported from Le Bourget, France. Associated Press writers Greg Keller in Le Bourget and Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro also contributed to this report.

From Yahoo! News; see the source article here.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Was it a rudder issue?

Divers from the Brazilian Navy recover a portion of the rudder of the missing Air France Flight 447.
AFP

RIO DE JANEIRO - A burst of automatic messages sent by Air France Flight 447 before it crashed includes one about a problem with a rudder safety device but lacks decisive clues as to what sent the jet plunging into the Atlantic Ocean two weeks ago, an aviation expert said on Saturday.

The industry official, who has knowledge of the Air France investigation, told AP that a transcript of the messages posted on the website EuroCockpit is authentic but inconclusive.

One of the 24 automatic messages sent from the plane minutes before it disappeared on May 31 with 228 on board points to a problem in the "rudder limiter", a mechanism that limits how far the plane's rudder can move. The flight was headed from Rio de Janeiro to Paris through an area of fierce thunderstorms.

The nearly intact vertical stabiliser - which includes the rudder - was fished out of the water earlier this week by Brazilian searchers.

"There is a lot of information, but not many clues," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to discuss the matter.

The official said jets like the Airbus A330 that crashed automatically send such maintenance messages about once a minute during a plane's flight. They are used by the ground crew to make repairs once a plane lands. If the rudder were to move too far while travelling fast, it could shear off and take the vertical stabiliser with it, which some experts theorise may have happened based on the relatively limited damage to the stabiliser.

The industry official, however, said the error message pertaining to the rudder limiter did not indicate it malfunctioned, but rather that it had locked itself in place because of conflicting speed readings.

Investigators have focused on the possibility that external speed monitors - called Pitot tubes - iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.

"The message tells us that the rudder limiter was inoperative," Mr Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant, said last week. "It does not give you any reason why it is not working or what caused it, or

what came afterward."

Unless the flight data and black boxes are found, the exact cause of the accident may never be known. AP

From TODAY, World –Monday, 15-Jun-2009

Seeking a black box alternative

Image via Wikipedia

Aviation expert suggests real-time data transmission

AGENCIES

PARIS - Whether or not the black box from Air France Flight 447 is found, the crash has shown that new technology is needed to record a flight's last moments in real-time, an aviation expert said.

Mr Pierre Jeanniot, former Air Canada chief executive and former head of the International Air Transport Association, helped pioneer flight data recorders 40 years ago, but says "black boxes" are now obsolete.

"Real-time data transmission from the cockpit by satellite is a lot less costly than it was 10 years ago. It is now possible to transmit everything directly during the flight if there is a problem."

Mr Jeanniot said an automatic system for data transmission of flight information by satellite exists and should now become the norm in the industry.

The new advanced technology would eliminate the need for costly and often futile searches for black boxes at the bottom of the ocean or deep in the jungle, using helicopters, submarines and mobilising rescue teams.

More importantly, the valuable data would help grieving families.

"Can you imagine how hard it is for families to be left not knowing what happened for months, sometimes years?" said Mr Jeanniot.

The head of the Air France pilots' union, Mr Gerard Arnoux, said modern planes were already transmitting data by satellite and that this was the "absolutely intelligent thing to do".

But the head of a smaller pilots' union, Mr France Alter, said the system raised confidentiality issues.

"If everything is being recorded, the voice of pilots who are talking about their lives or other matters, what do you do with this information and how can you be sure that the airline is not going to gain access to it?" asked Mr Christopher Presenti.

Meanwhile, a Brazilian ship recovered three more bodies from the Atlantic on Friday, bringing the body count to 48.

From TODAY, World – Weekend, 13/14-Jun-2009

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Air France search enters third week, focus on black boxes

Posted: 15 June 2009 0602 hrs

Journalists look at debris of the missing Air France flight 447 after being recovered from the ocean.

RIO DE JANEIRO: The search for bodies and remnants of a lost Air France airliner enters its third and possibly final week on Monday with the focus now on locating the "black box" recorders that could hold the key to its plunge into the Atlantic.

The fate of flight AF 447, which vanished on the night of May 31 to June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, has not been explained though data indicating the presence of defective speed sensors raised the first alerts of a crash.

But on Sunday, EADS, the mother company of the aircraft's builder Airbus, called for "prudence."

"It's the convergence of different causes that led to such an accident," said Louis Gallois, EADS president and chief executive, on the eve of the Paris air show at Bourget.

"We do not know whether the Pitot tubes (the sensors that measure airspeed) played a role in the accident. No one knows," Gallois said.

Air France and France's Bureau of Investigations and Analyses, BEA, which is in charge of the investigation, have also refused to link the crash to the Pitot sensors.

The company, however, has accelerated replacement of the sensors on its Airbus A330-A340 aircraft, under pressure from pilots and after several incidents in 2008 were linked to airspeed sensor malfunctions.

Airbus president Thomas Enders indicated that teams from the manufacturer were with BEA investigators in Brazil and on ships searching for debris from the aircraft.

As of Saturday night, the Brazilian and French navies had recovered 49 bodies as well as pieces of the aircraft, including a large fragment of its tail.

Most of the bodies have been transported to Recife, on Brazil's northeastern coast, where a team of doctors is examining them to establish their identities.

Laid out in an enormous hangar at the Recife air base, the pieces of the aircraft indicate that its descent was sudden and that it was not caused by an explosion on board, according to experts consulted by the Brazilian press.

These opinions are supported by a photograph that shows seats reserved for the crew folded up, suggesting that crew members were taken by surprise by the disaster.

Among the 228 victims were people of 32 nationalities, including 72 French nationals, 59 Brazilians and 26 Germans.

The French government's special emissary, Pierre-Jean Vandoorne, met with relatives of the victims Saturday in Rio de Janeiro.

"Their principal concern is to recover the bodies and understand the causes of the catastrophe," Vandoorne told AFP. He was scheduled to meet Sunday in Recife with the Brazilian military officials in charge of the search.

For the past two weeks, a French-Brazilian flotilla has been combing an enormous expanse of the high seas 1,350 kilometres from Recife.

However, even though sailors initially reported that they were navigating through "a sea of (aircraft) pieces," sightings of debris have become rare, possibly because they sink or are dispersed by the currents.

The Brazilian military has begun talking about an end to the search, with Brigadier Ramon Cardoso saying it will continue "at least until June 19." A reassessment will be made on June 17, he said.

Meanwhile, the search for the two "black boxes," which may be on the ocean floor at a depth of 3,500 metres, should intensify.

The French nuclear submarine "Emeraude" already has begun patrolling the area where the plane went down in hopes that its ultra-sensitive sonars will pick up signals emitted by the flight recorders.

Two other ships brought in by France are supposed to work with two "pinger locators," sonars installed on a kilometres-long cable supplied by the US military.

The French underwater exploration vessel "Pourquoi pas" also arrived in the area of the search with a submarine and a robot. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Doomed Air France flight crashed suddenly, say experts

Posted: 14 June 2009 0420 hrs

A partition with crew seats recovered with other wreckage

RECIFE, Brazil: Debris recovered so far from Air France flight 447 seems to indicate the jet plunged suddenly into the Atlantic Ocean and did not explode in the sky, Brazilian experts said Saturday.

Almost two weeks after the Rio-Paris flight disappeared at sea, former pilot Ari Germano told O Globo newspaper that he was "struck" by at least one of the photographs released Friday by the Brazilian Air Force.

According to Germano, who has written a book about air crashes, the images suggested that the Airbus A330 passengers were caught by surprise and the tragedy unfolded so rapidly that the crew did not have the time to react.

In the photographs, the seats in the crew area were folded with the seatbelts hanging down, which "suggests that the crew was moving about the passenger cabin. If there had been an alert or a warning about a pending risk, the crew would have been seated," he said.

"They did not have the time to do anything," added the former pilot, who also recognized an orange first aid kit that was left intact.

Dozens of pieces of debris recovered by the Brazilian Navy have been brought to an airport hangar in the northeastern city of Recife.

A French navy ship on Friday recovered six more bodies, bringing to 50 the number of bodies found in the wake of the crash of the plane, which went down over the ocean on the night from May 31 to June 1 with 228 people on board.

Captain Ronaldo Jenkins, a security consultant with the National Union of Air Carriers (SNEA), told Globo that he had identified a safety vest and part of the plane's internal covering, which showed no trace of fire or smoke, suggesting no explosion.

"On the photographs published in recent days, where we can see debris from the plane floating in the water and a restroom door, there were also no signs of fire," he added.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

French crash probe sees "no link yet" to airspeed sensors

Posted: 12 June 2009 1140 hrs

Brazilian Navy divers recover a part of the rudder of an Air France jet lost in midflight over the Atlantic.

PARIS: The French agency probing the crash of Air France flight 447 said Thursday it had yet to find conclusive evidence pointing to faulty airspeed monitors as the cause of the disaster.

Speculation surrounding the doomed Rio to Paris flight, which crashed with the loss of 228 people on board, has focused on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, known as pitot probes, which may have malfunctioned.

"There is as yet no link between the pitot and the causes of the accident," said a spokeswoman for the Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) leading the technical inquiry into the June 1 crash.

Air France's chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told reporters the devices would be replaced on all planes as a precaution, after the worst air disaster of the airline's 75-year history.

But he added: "I'm not convinced the probes were the cause of the accident."

Error messages emitted by flight 447 in the minutes before the disaster have suggested that the twin-engine airliner's computers were receiving contradictory airspeed readings.

Investigators say this has been a factor in other incidents in which pilots had to battle to control Airbus jets, and aircrews worldwide have been warned to review their procedures in case of false speed measurements.

And a company report seen by AFP Thursday, showed that Air France Airbus jets experienced at least five incidents last year in which airspeed probes malfunctioned.

"These are all serious incidents," said Guy Ferrer, an official from the Alter pilots union, which represents some Air France flight crews.

The BEA spokeswoman, however, said that agency director Paul-Louis Arslanian had said on Saturday that the team had yet to conclude that a malfunction of the probe led to the plane's demise.

"Problems, and incidents, have been identified. We are studying them," said Arslanian.

"But that's not to say that without replacements a plane is dangerous and with them it isn't," he said.

Gourgeon confirmed that Air France had stepped up a plan to replace and modernise the pitots in all its A330 and A340 long-haul jets.

"This programme has been accelerated because we know that during this accident there was a problem with measuring speed," he said.

"Airbus insists, and they're right, that the probes are safe. It's possible that icing incidents will be reduced with the new type of probes.

"Perhaps there won't be an improvement. We are talking with the crash investigators about this," he said.

Air France decided on April 27 to replace the pitot probes, but received delivery of the first improved models on May 27, less than a week before the crash. The doomed plane had not been updated.

"We began this programme because we thought it would diminish the number of non-catastrophic incidents," said Gourgeon.

The deep-sea hunt for the jet's black boxes intensified off Brazil, with a tugboat equipped with underwater listening devices joining a French nuclear submarine in the search.

If they find a signal, a mini-sub on board a French scientific ship will be deployed to recover the flight recorders, thought to be key to explaining why the jet went down.

The Air France chief however said the chances of finding the black boxes in waters thought to be as deep as 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) were slim.

The Brazilian navy said on Thursday the bodies of three more victims had been retrieved, bringing the total to 44.

Brazil said it was determined to bring back to shore as many bodies and pieces of debris as possible from the crash zone, some 1,100 kilometres (700 miles) from the coast.

In Paris, the family of a passenger signed up as a civil plaintiff in a manslaughter probe to gain access to files on the crash, a lawyer said.

"What the families want is just some legitimate answers to their legitimate questions, such as: the plane sent out its last message at 04:10 am and yet no one wondered until 06:30 am why there was no news of the crew. Why is that?" said lawyer Sophie Bottai.

Two other French families have separately filed suit for manslaughter.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Pages

Friday, June 26, 2009

Bodies of Air France captain, steward found

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Air France crash probe to release initial report on July 2

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

French sub chases Air France black box signal

Official: No black box signals from Flight 447

Sunday, June 21, 2009

11 bodies from Air France disaster identified

Friday, June 19, 2009

Air France bodies had broken bones, official says

Manufacturer optimistic of finding AF447 flight data recorder

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Air France probe 'a little bit closer' to answers, investigator says

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Autopsies suggest Air France jet broke up in sky

Monday, June 15, 2009

Was it a rudder issue?

Seeking a black box alternative

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Air France search enters third week, focus on black boxes

Doomed Air France flight crashed suddenly, say experts

Thursday, June 11, 2009

French crash probe sees "no link yet" to airspeed sensors

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