Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
It was public : there was an article in the Liberation newspaper in France in 2020 mentioning those flights , it said one apparently even went to Guyane to recreate the tropical conditions . The "interesting one " is supposed to have occured near Mt De Marsan in France in the Airbus test area . and was seen on radar by Civil ATC and mentioned on an ATC forum. . Then a serie of posts /rumors on a French Aviation forum ( Radiocockpit, now closed) mentionned this flight, one arguing they were close to evacuate ( this test A340 has an in-fligh evacuatuion door ) Rumors or exagerrations perhaps, but it would have been easy for Airbus to stop them , as some of their staff were on the AF447 thread on this peraticular forum at the time , all defending Airbus , but they did not on this occasion . More I do not know. .
To start with, I am not working for Airbus and have no relationship with them.
If you refer to the original Radiocockpit (rcoco), it has never been known as a reliable source of information, and it was closed much before 2020 (I would say about 2006-2007). The next Radiocockpit (radiocockpit.fr I think) was closed in about 2014.
"Seen on radar by Civil ATC" and what? Was the Civil ATC then aware of the nature of the test flight? Seeing a deep descent and a low altitude recovery - it it was that - on a radar does not mean that it was the "replay" of AF447. It could have been any other test that Airbus needed to carry out.
I appreciate that we are on a Rumours site but some facts may be checked a bit time to time.
By the way, were these flights known by the AF447 families and referred to during the various legal/court sessions?
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