AF447 SAR effort
Hi Guardian 11
I'm not a pilot. But I have a question to the FAB (Brazilian Air Force); The last tower contact with cindacta 3 was 22:33 right? At 2:20 FAB started to search for the lost aircraft. My question is; why did it take 4 hours for them to realize that?
Perhaps to better understand the problem, it would be best to review the timeline leading up to the mishap...
At 2233LT, AF447 performed a VHF contact with CINDACTA III (SOLANT ACC), reporting INTOL, indicating that it expected to report TASIL at 2320LT;
At 2248LT, AF447 exited CINDACTA III radar coverage. At the time the flight was cruising at FL350 and 453kts - as per the flight plan;
At 2314LT, AF447 issued a number of ACARS messages to AF maintenance center;
At 2320LT, AF447 failed to report its passage by TASIL and entry into Dakar ACC.
Failure to report waypoint passage at the expected time does not entail the immediate launching of a SAR operation. Unless, of course, a distress call is made or an ELT transmission is detected - and neither occurred. Under those circumstances, there is a standard waiting period before placing SAR resources on alert status. At the moment I cannot recall the duration of that waiting period, but I very faintly recall a 90min period - but I might be in error.
Hence, should memory be serving me correctly, the Brazilian SAR system would only be placed on alert footing at around at 00:50LT. Once placed on alert status - and in the absence of solid information as to where the event took place - you can add an hour for mission planning and preparation.
As for resorting to Mirage 2000s, bear in mind that these are based at SBAN - which entails a 1.880 km flight to SBNT - easily a 2:30hr flight. They would have to land at SBNT, refuel and then take-off to fly some 1.200 km to the general area where the mishap might have taken place. Although I do not have the Mirage 2000C performance charts at hand, I think it would be safe to say that a pair of Mirage 2000Cs would be unable to execute a meaningful search pattern, in the dark of night, for more than 10min before reaching "bingo fuel"...
Cheers