Curiously, only the thinnest information about the search and recovery effort for the the AF447 FDR/CVR and hull has been disseminated to the public. With the French BEA tasked to lead the investigation under ICAO rules for incidents occurring in international airspace/waters, a hugely expensive joint effort has been orchestrated using assets and expertise from France, Brazil, United Kingdom, United States, and Holland. The Brazilians have been providing imagery and consistent daily updates about the recovery effort for debris and remains found on the surface (
http://www.fab.mil.br/portal/voo447/) and BEA are providing occasional press releases (
News) including a "Sea Search Operations" summary document created on 17/06/09 (
http://www.bea.aero/anglaise/actuali...search.ops.pdf).
But the granularity of official data is remarkably bland, hardly even suitable for media infographics and newsbites and certainly inadequate for reasoned analysis: never a lat/long reference; never a note about hull search areas and sensor towing depths; never a factual description of the ACARS "maintenance messages."
Officially "validated" facts on 17/06/09 per BEA (
News):
# The airplane was in cruise at flight level 350 (about 10,500 metres).
# No messages indicating problems were received on the air traffic control radio frequencies.
# Close to the planned route of the airplane above the Atlantic there were significant convective cells characteristic of the equatorial regions;
# The last position message from the airplane was broadcast by the ACARS automatic system at 2 h 10 UTC.
# Between 2 h 10 and 2 h 14 UTC, 24 maintenance messages were transmitted by the ACARS, including 14 between 2 h 10 and 2 h 11.
# Analysis of these messages shows inconsistencies between the various speeds measured. Most of the messages appear to result from these inconsistencies; they correspond to the loss of several flight assistance systems.
That's it! The official sum of "validated" information on 17/06/09. Thin. At every opportunity, BEA cautions "avoid any hasty interpretation or speculation".
With such thin data, what else is there but speculation?
On the upside, what this and the Techno AF447 PPruNe threads have proven is that details can be flushed from the most fuzzy material. And all the speculation offered on these threads is, indeed, REALLY valuable, from possible meteor strikes (glowing dots reported on the sea surface) to faulty AOA processing algorithms. To finally solve this puzzle and generate credible answers about why this event occurred, ALL these speculations will be "weighted" and fed into an equation, where they will end up being ignored or adding value to a solution. Most commendable to this thread's participants, in almost 2000 posts there has been little interest in blame, simply a driving need to know what happened to upset this aircraft. That's being professional.