The South Atlantic Anomaly And The Disappearance Of Flt 447

Just thought I would give a very basic update on the developments..

This news story was posted 5 hours ago by bloomberg.

Air France Plane Part Is Recovered by Merchant Ship in Atlantic




The last I had heard only 3 or 4 of the bodies had been recovered. So until now I didn't see anything else mentioning anyone recovering other bodies. But this news story sais this...



But, then again, they basically recovered body parts.. Not bodies. I just didn't see any mention of this before in the other news stories. I just thought it was odd.

They said late last week that the black boxes were probably located in an area of ocean shallow enough for them to be recoverable. I'm not exactly sure about depth though and we won't know for sure until they are found.

They said in the news last week that they believed they had discovered the general area of the crash site (based on where the bodies and the tail were recovered a couple days prior? Who knows.). But if they knew where the crash site was, wouldn't they have found the beacon signal by now? Honestly, I'm not so sure they have any idea where the crash site is.

This is, obviously, problematic. The beacon signal won't last forever. The data on the recorders should remain intact and undamaged. But that won't matter if they can't find them. We're talking depths over 10,000 feet here which would make any effort to find them nearly impossible after the beacon ceases to operate.

I found this amazing story just a minute ago..
I really hate to say this. But this one is right out of the movie "Final Destination"... At least that's the first thing I thought of when I saw the name of the news story. Ironically, it actually mentions the movie.

Woman Missing Air France Flight Dies in Car Crash Days Later



-ChriS

[edit on 14-6-2009 by BlasteR]

Yes! that was extremely intriguing! Also, what's more is the hows and whys of the crash. Surprisingly, whilst various reasons for computer/avionics failure have been hazarded, but NO one has even mentioned the possibility of EM interference that may have resulted in frying all electronics on board. But then they would have had to concede to the existence of transient magnetic anamolous areas. And that isn't a good idea.

Cheers!

If there is a beacon signal transmitting how come there is a problem finding the data recorder.? Is the transmission range to small??

daz__

reply to post by daz__

---

If I remember correctly, the density of the water at those depths, due to the weight of the water creating the extremely high amounts of pressure, deadens the signal considerably. Sonar can only penetrate the ocean to certain depths, I know this, but I am not sure when the signal is coming from below. Ocean depth creates a very strange environment.

reply to post by poet1b

---

Thank for the info. I did imagine something like that. You see the search plane almost on the ocean surface while in search mode. must be a dangerous job. They should make those black boxes with more powerful transmitters for cases like this.

daz__

reply to post by mikesingh

---

You are right. What's also interesting is that there is now evidence in the form of the automated messages the plane apparently sent out just before crashing. They're saying that the automated messages prove something was amiss with the instrumentation. But noone knows what yet. The only theory right now as to what might have caused this is the pitot tube(s) icing over. At least that's what's being talked about in all the MSM stories. But these are sophisticated aircraft with intricate and redundant hardware and instrumentation. A pitot tube with some ice on it destroys one of the most sophisticated modern passenger jets out there?

Also, Airbus is saying that nothing is wrong with the pitot tubes and that although they can't rule out the possibilty of icing under certain weather conditions, the tubes themselves are fine. But I think they went back and replaced all the pitot tubes on all the aircraft anyway just as a precautionary measure.

There is now evidence from the autopsies being conducted on the recovered bodies that shows that the plane actually broke apart in mid-air due to how the bones are broken in the corpses. What they're saying is that Usually when a passenger jet such as this crashes into the ocean the aircraft hits the water with so much force it basically pulverizes occupants and breaks the bodies into limbs and smaller pieces. But these bodies are largely intact save for a few broken bones.

IMO, The most likely scenario is that the plane decompressed and started to break apart. The bigger question is why. I guess you can't ever really rule out human error. We've seen multiple passenger jets crash over the years and hundreds of people be killed just because some aircraft mechanic didn't follow the book when replacing the engine, the rudder, etc.. It DOES happen. And as long as people are willing to take shortcuts to save time and money, stuff is going to get overlooked, missed, and generally neglected whether it be purposefully or inadverntantly. This is one aspect of airplane crashes that can't fully be avoided in the future. People are just less predictable than a rivet or a bolt.

-ChriS

Being that pitot tubes are used on virtually every type of aircraft, and there has never been an aircraft brought down from pitot tube failure, except maybe in some test aircraft, or very long ago, at least none that I have heard of, the pitot tube explanation really doesn't hold water. I find it hard to believe there are not other sources of airspeed for a modern aircraft to make a reasonable estimate of airspeed in order to maintain stable flight.

This has dropped off the news, but I'll bet the investigation will go on for a long time. Wasn't this a fairly new aircraft? Usually you aren't going to see a newer aircraft going down due to some maintenance error. When aircraft have gone down due to maintenance problems, usually there is a record of problems with that particular aspect of the aircraft, and needing a higher rate of scheduled replacement.

I heard a public radio station talking about this and the Host for that was Laura Egrime...( not sure on spelling) , she said basically that she smells a rat.

reply to post by poet1b

---

I agree with you on that. And the pitot tubes icing over is much less likely when you have multiple pitot tubes.

Between June 12 and June 26, 51 bodies had been recovered. The search for bodies ended on Friday, June 26..
blog.seattlepi.com...

I did find a file with the unofficial ACARS automated messages sent out by the aircraft that night. You can find that here:


An engineer decoded the messages in an interview with "International Analysis Group" (IAG). It is a 20 minute long interview in podcast format that can hear by clicking [url=http://www.iag-inc.com/premium/acars.m3u]HERE .



It is now clear that the bodies that had been recovered had minimal clothing, no burns and were mostly intact save for a few broken bones (as I said before). What you would almost expect to see from a sudden decompression event.

The search area is a challenge of its own. Minimum depth in THIS illustration, displaying the search area for the black box, is 864 meters. Maximum depth is around 4,606 meters.

Innovation Analysis Group posted up all its Flight 447 content (for free) as a public service.
You can find all of that here: www.iag-inc.com...

Some of the files are podcast discussions with experts and public officials as they chime in on their take of what happened. It is now being considered that the pitot tubes may have failed after water ingress. And since we know that there were storms in the area that night, this could have been an issue. But you would think such a problem would have been discovered before now. I'm almost wondering if the water ingress is more a problem these days because of electronics and sensing equipment inside the pitot tubes, themselves. But wouldn't this have been a problem in the past? Alot to consider.

A day or two ago, this news story was posted on "Aeronautical International News" website.

NTSB Chases New Leads in Air France Flight 447 Crash Probe

In this news story it is mentioned how the NTSB believes similar issues to what may have downed fligh 447 may have caused 2 other Airbus A330's to have instrumentation failures during cruise flight. In particular, TAM Airlines Flight 8091 flying from Miami to Sao Paulo on May 21.. And a Northwest Airlines A330 flying from Hong Kong to Tokyo on June 23. Both aircraft landed safely.



-ChriS

[edit on 2-7-2009 by BlasteR]

Since i promissed i wouldn't break T&C because i don't agree with ATS staff for temp-banning MikeSighn, i think i found a loophole through which i can express my anger without getting banned unless bumping a thread is considered a violation of the T&C....

So as a member of the ATS in-house resistance party i'm gonna shamelessly bump each and every thread Mike made (that's lot of bumping!!) every day untill Mike's return and would like to ask everybody to look into this and form an opinion about wether or not the actions taken by ATS staff were just....

Here's the thread i'm talking about...

As GoldenFleece put it :



Peace

reply to post by BlasteR

---

Interesting reports, it sounds like these Airbus A330's have some sort of problem that needs to be fixed, but Outside Air Temperature is completely unrelated to pitot static tubes. Pitot tubes provide air speed, and that is all.

Static ports give altitude, and I would think that aircraft are still required to have accelerometers independent of the electronic system, and the combination of these three should allow the pilots to fly the aircraft, even in the dark. In addition, I would think that GPS and other radio based systems would be able to be monitored and also help to establish critical flight information.

Even if the aircraft's electrical system failed, there is always an isolated emergency power bus which keeps essentials in operation. The one thing that could have kept the pilots from flying the aircraft is catastrophic failure of the hydraulic system. I am not sure that pilots could control such a craft without hydraulic assist.

Here is the latest from Air France investigators as of September 1, 2009

www.impactpub.com.au...
France to launch new search for missing AF447 black boxes


and

www.fleshandstone.net...
Is the AF447 disaster investigation hiding something?

They say it will take another 18 months to find out what led to total loss of control of the plane. They have not recovered the black boxes and doubt they will find them although they are going to keep trying this fall.

Contrary to earlier speculation, they do believe the accident was not primarily caused by failed speed sensors because most of the malfunctions lasted only a few seconds and the pilots “did not react to them”.

They further believe the plane hit the water intact and that it did not break up in the air.

Others challenge this finding. If the plane had hit the water intact, most of the bodies on it would most likely have been damaged beyond recognition by the enormous forces which would have completely pulverised the plane. The fact the bodies were found relatively intact and in two distinct groups, many unattached to their seats, which may indicate that the plane broke up suddenly at high altitude, throwing passengers into the air. The Brazilian authorities who picked up the bodies also said that many of them had been stripped of all or most of their clothing and that they showed signs of multi-limb fractures.

Both of those elements seem to indicate that those bodies fell from a great height outside the plane. Many instances of multi-limb fractures and loss of clothing have been documented on people known to have fallen from a great height into water.

It gets curiouser and curiouser....