Air France Flight AF 447 - "Confirmed" went swimming.

[Ron2K]

My information is based on what I hear on other forums as well as my own observations; I acknowledge that I may not be entirely correct.

[Ron2K]

'Numerous faults' on crashed jet
2009-06-30 12:12

Paris - French inspectors had noted numerous faults on the Yemenia jet that crashed on Tuesday with 153 people on board and the company was being closely monitored by EU authorities, France's transport minister said.

"The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC (French civil aviation authority) and a certain number of faults had been noted," Dominique Bussereau.

"The plane had not since then reappeared in our country," he told i-tele news.

"The company was not on the blacklist (of airlines banned from European airspace) but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to soon be heard by the security committee of the European Union," he said.

Activists in Marseille said on Tuesday that passengers are packed in like cattle on flights between Yemen and the Comoros on planes that fail to meet safety criteria.

The campaign group called "SOS voyage aux Comores" (SOS Comoros Travel) called on French authorities to act to stop a repeat of the crash.

"Flights between Sanaa (in Yemen) and Moroni (in the Comoros) are carried out by cowboy operators," spokesperson Farid Soilihi told AFP at the airport in the southern French city which has 80 000 Comoran residents.

"They treat people like cattle, they pile them in, they don't respect timetables, there are always technical problems," he said.

He added that his group had last year held a protest march at Marseille airport to denounce conditions on these flights.

The Yemenia flight started in a Paris airport on Monday when an Airbus A330-200 aircraft took off for Marseille and then on to the Yemeni capital Sanaa. There passengers changed to an Airbus A310 and departed for the Comoros via Djibouti.

The twin engine plane crashed early on Tuesday off the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean.

Airbus said the crashed plane was made in 1990 and had been operated by Yemenia since 1999.

It had accumulated approximately 51 900 flight hours in some 17 300 flights, the France-based planemaker said in a statement which added that the firm was sending a team of experts to help with the crash probe.

Airbus said 214 A310s were in service with 41 operators across the globe.

- SAPA

Source

[wizardofid]

My information is based on what I hear on other forums as well as my own observations; I acknowledge that I may not be entirely correct

Kindly point me to which forums I would like to correct them as well....!!!

[Ron2K]

I'll drop you a PM as soon as I have time to find original posts (which will probably only be the weekend).

[Prime]

Air France - Ama Glug Glug?

[doo_much]

Air France crash 'black box site found in Atlantic'

The flight recorders from an Air France plane which crashed in the Atlantic last year have been located to within a 5km zone, a French official has said.

But Gen Christian Baptiste told AFP that retrieving the boxes from the ocean floor might be impossible.

All 228 people on board the flight from Rio to Paris died in the crash.

The cause remains unknown. The plane's airspeed probes had given false readings, but officials believe other factors must also have contributed.

Finding the boxes, which record flight data and cockpit conversations, should allow investigators to finally explain the mystery of why the plane came down.

It appears the location zone has been traced using images obtained during the first phase of searching for the wreckage, when the flight recorders were still emitting a signal.

Complex operation

French government and military officials have urged caution, saying there is no guarantee the flight recorders will be found.

"It's like trying to find a shoe box in an area the size of Paris, at a depth of 3,000m (9,800ft) and in a terrain as rugged as the Alps," French navy spokesman Hugues du Plessis d'Argentre told AFP.

A fresh search was launched earlier this year involving US and Norwegian ships with sonar probes and robots, in what officials described as "one of the most complex undersea operations ever".

The area covered by the high-tech vessels will now be reduced from 1,500 sq km (580 sq miles) to just 3-5 sq km (1-2 sq miles), in a remote area far off the coast of Brazil.

Air France flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared on 1 June 2009 in stormy weather, killing all those on board.

Source

[Ron2K]

New York - A group of oceanographers from Cape Cod is again teaming with the French in the fourth search for an airliner that crashed in the sea during a 2009 storm.

Air France Flight 447 was heading from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board when it crashed hundreds of kilometres off north-eastern Brazil in June 2009.

The plane and its flight recorders have not been found in three previous search missions, preventing investigators from determining the cause of the crash.

Finding the cause took on new importance this month when a French judge filed preliminary manslaughter charges against Air France and the plane's manufacturer, Airbus. Experts say without the flight data and voice recorders, authorities will not likely be able to determine who was at fault.

On Tuesday, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth joined with French authorities to search a 10 100-square-kilometre area where the plane is believed to have gone down. The search is scheduled to extend into July.

Searchers will use three autonomous underwater search vehicles, each of which can stay underwater for up to 20 hours while using sonar to scan a mountainous area known as the Mid-Ocean Ridge. Researchers download the data, and a vehicle with a high resolution camera is sent to check out an area if scientists see evidence of debris.

"There is no better team or technology available to handle this mission," said search leader David Gallo, a director of special projects at Woods Hole.

"The terrain will be extremely rugged and the search will be difficult, but this is something that we have been doing as a part of our mission to explore and understand the global oceans."

The French investigations bureau, BEA, plans to post weekly progress reports on its website.

Source

[Siemens]

...Jacob no doubt.

[Ron2K]

FDR recovered on May 1st.

The investigation team localized and identified the memory unit from the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) at 10 h UTC this morning. It was raised and lifted on board the ship Ile de Sein by the Remora 6000 ROV at 16h40 UTC.

Source (and images)

(EDIT: CVR was recovered yesterday.)

[Sojourn]

Phenomenal that they found this needle in a haystack. I am very impressed.
Next question is, will the data on those recorders clear Airbus and their alleged faulty meters.

[Anakha56]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/05/16 ... lashdot%29

Air France 447 Black Boxes Readable
Posted by Soulskill on Monday May 16, @05:24PM
from the key-evidence dept.

An anonymous reader writes

"It's not a lengthy press release, but it's good news: the memory cards for the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the Air France 447 crash in 2009, recently recovered from the sea floor almost two years later, are readable. The data was recovered over the weekend and includes the full two hours of cockpit recording. Apparently it will take weeks for analysis of the data, but it looks like the challenging recovery effort is paying off in a big way. Hopefully detailed answers about the cause of the crash will follow."

[Siemens]

We will have to wait for season 3

[Stuart]

What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447?

Two years after the Airbus 330 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, Air France 447's flight-data recorders finally turned up. The revelations from the pilot transcript paint a surprising picture of chaos in the cockpit, and confusion between the pilots that led to the crash.

Read more

[StarBound]

So they did everything by the book? I'm taking some manual non electronic stuff with me next time I fly.

[doo_much]

Sad

A series of errors by pilots and a failure to react effectively to technical problems led to the crash of Air France Flight 447, France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis said Thursday in its final report on the disaster.

Source.

[Tribble]

Very