I don't know if anyone else has read this anywhere, but apparently Air France has disclosed that just 3 days afterwards they found that another of their aircraft had its fire detection/prevention cables "mailiciously cut"...
I can't remember who the source was.


It takes some serious knowledge to be able to sabotage an aircraft like that.. so perhaps sabotage on this AF-447 isnt out of the question after all...

To re-iterate my view on this, it wasn't ANY form of lightning, High Intensity Radiated Frequency, Solar Flare or EM related. I believe that the unltimate demise of the aircraft was in structural failure after pulling a maneuvre WELL outside of its flight box.

Sabotage is an interesting question though, to know which parts of your wiring harness relate to which system requires training, if someone really sabotaged a fire control system you can imagine that there was probably something that would assist in causing a fire on that aircraft too.. if the system is no longer able to sense the fires then it wont report it, certainly not back to the maintanence hangars.. This means that by cutting the wires and cleverly placing your timed incendiary you can trigger an in flight fire that could take out the rest of the electrical controls (which would be noticed by the system) but the resulting loss of AP, and on board fire would likely have the flight crew so busy that they wouldnt even have the time or thought to transmit any emergency messages (which devices could equally be sabotaged)... Your plane is thrust out of its cruise altitude with limited controlability into a storm front, with a malicious electrical fire... I think that is a pretty brutal set of circumstances..

To Carson from Scott: Air France Accident
Writer / Reporter below says: Hey!! If it ain't Boeing I ain't going. Please forward for comments.
__________________
With Boeings, you can’t even shoot the tail off them with a magazine full of cannon and .50 cal.
BAT
(Interesting speculation on the use of composite materials in the Airbus rudder and elevator assemblies…..)
JD
___________________
Subject: Air France Accident: Smoking Gun Found
A Brazilian Naval unit reportedly found the complete vertical fin/rudder assembly of the doomed aircraft floating some 30 miles from the main debris field. The search for the flight recorders goes on, but given the failure history of the vertical fins on A300-series aircraft, an analysis of its structure at the point of failure will likely yield the primary cause factor in
The breakup of the aircraft, with the flight recorder data (if found) providing only secondary contributing phenomena.
The fin-failure-leading-to-breakup sequence is strongly suggested in the attached (below) narrative report by George Larson, Editor emeritus of Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine.
It's regrettable that these aircraft are permitted to continue in routine flight operations with this known structural defect. It appears that safety finishes last within Airbus Industries, behind national pride and economics. Hopefully, this accident will force the issue to be addressed, requiring at a minimum restricted operations of selected platforms, and grounding of some high-time aircraft until a re-engineered (strengthened) vertical fin/rudder attachment structure can be incorporated.
Les
--------------------------(George Larson's Report)---------------------
This is an account of a discussion I had recently with a maintenance professional who salvages airliner airframes for a living. He has been at it for a while, dba BMI Salvage at Opa Locka Airport in Florida. In the process of stripping parts, he sees things few others are able to see. His observations confirm prior assessments of Airbus structural deficiencies within our flight test and aero structures communities by those who have seen the closely held reports of A3XX-series vertical fin failures.
His observations:

"I have scrapped just about every type of transport aircraft from A-310,
A-320, B-747, 727, 737, 707, DC-3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, MD-80, L-188, L1011
and various Martin, Convair and KC-97 aircraft. Over a hundred of them.
Airbus products are the flimsiest and most poorly designed as far as
airframe structure is concerned by an almost obsession to utilize composite
materials. I have one A310 vertical fin on the premises from a demonstration I just performed. It was pathetic to see the composite structure shatter as it did, something a Boeing product will not do. The vertical fin along with the composite hinges on rudder and elevators is
the worst example of structural use of composites I have ever seen and I am
not surprised by the current pictures of rescue crews recovering the complete Vertical fin and rudder assembly at some distance from the crash site.

The Airbus line has a history of both multiple rudder losses and a vertical
fin and rudder separation from the airframe as was the case in NY with AA. As an old non-radar equipped DC4 pilot who flew through many a thunderstorm in Africa along the equator, I am quite familiar with their ferocity. It is not difficult to understand how such a storm might have stressed an aircraft structure to failure at its weakest point, and especially so in the presence of instrumentation problems.

I replied with this:

"I'm watching very carefully the orchestration of the inquiry by French
officials and Airbus. I think I can smell a concerted effort to steer
discussion away from structural issues and onto sensors, etc. Now Air
France, at the behest of their pilots' union, is replacing all the air data
sensors on the Airbus fleet, which creates a distraction and shifts the media's focus away from the real problem.
It's difficult to delve into the structural issue without wading into the
Boeing vs. Airbus swamp, where any observation is instantly tainted by its
origin. Americans noting any Airbus structural issues (A380 early failure
of wing in static test; loss of vertical surfaces in Canadian fleet prior to
AA A300, e.g.) will be attacked by the other side as partisan, biased, etc. "
His follow-up:

One gets a really unique insight into structural issues when one has
first-hand experience in the dismantling process. I am an A&P, FEJ and an ATP with 7000 flight hours and I was absolutely stunned, flabbergasted when I realized that the majority of internal airframe structural supports on the A 310 which appear to be aluminum are
actually rolled composite material with aluminum rod ends. They shattered.

Three years ago we had a storm come through, with gusts up to 60-70 kts., catching several A320s tied down on the line, out in the open. The A320 elevators and rudder hinges whose actuators had been removed shattered and the rudder and elevators came off.
Upon closer inspection I realized that not only were the rear spars
composite but so were the hinges. While Boeing also uses compositematerial in its airfoil structures, the actual attach fittings for the elevators, rudder, vertical and horizontal stabilizers are all of machined aluminum."
-----------------(end of narrative)---------------
Who is Carson Dane?

I fail to see the relevance of your above blatantly anti-Airbus article.
The A330 had been around since around '97. The A300 was back in '69, likewise the initial A320 is from back in the 80's.
Comparing the structural properties of composites used in these craft is a waste of time because technologyu has moved on so much.
Apart from the A300 all the examples he cites are from aircraft in a breakers yard at the end of their lives with the actuators removed!
If he cared to do his research he would know that on an A320 the only thing holding the horizontal stabilizer in position is the HUGE screw actuator that he removed, the hinges are exactly that, hinges, and are not designed to be load bearing, ditto with the rudder flaps.
Obviously because of his blatant scare-mongering he isnt mentioning Boeing aircraft and the myriad of faults that occur in those.

Anyone remember that Greek 737, Air Stelios i think, that had everybody die because the warning for depressurisation was the same as the take-off config warning, so the pilots took off and set autopilot and then within minutes everybody had suffocated because the plane depressurised and the pilots didnt know.
There is also the 747's that have their engines drop off mid flight. 777's have recently had their share of problems.

But of course if you are on Boeing's payroll, Boeing's are obviously the better plane..

Objectively both manufacturers make good aircraft, currently Boeing's fleet is in need of a technological injection (represented by teh much delayed 787) but that aside they both make equally good airframes.

For any specific route one maufacturers aircraft might be better than the others, which is why airlines generally speaking buy from both. If one manufacturer was better, this wouldnt be the case.

It's a duopoly for a reason.

Yeah, CloudySkye, it's cool: I don't work for the aircraft industry. Rather, I was just passing along what had been forwarded to me - pro boeing to say the least, but also something new to the topic to share, not having a strong personal opinion about it one way or the other.

Which leaves the question. If it wasnt signals from the Black Box from the sea bed, what the hell is it?