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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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