Originally Posted by
bearfoil
It is unfortunate that BEA included the statements at all. It struck me as precipitous and committed them to a course of analysis that ended up causing doubt about their motives.
Possibly, although the conclusion is still the same in the second report, and there may have been supporting information
not included in the first report but available to the investigators. I think they have dropped the phrase "en ligne de vol" becuase they got so much criticism / misunderstanding for it (at least from non-french speakers). The second report says:
"a positive attitude, a low bank and a high rate of descent."
Which looks a lot like "en ligne de vol" explained in more words for the english speakers.
All the impact damage evidence in the report (including to the VS) points away from in-flight breakup, as does oxygen system state (no depressurisation) and the autopsy results (not available at time of first report).
An a/c absent a Vertical Stabilizer sees "En ligne de Vol" only occasionally,
To me, unless they falsified both the recovery position and the damage to the VS, this a/c clearly crashed with its VS intact, and that was a legitimate conclusion at time of first report.
Pingers and side scan? Awesome. What of the CAUSE?
The loss of airspeed indication shows all was not well with the a/c. Maybe something else went wrong first - we don't know. We don't know the actions of the crew either, and may never know, but there is no indication they did anything worng, and definite indication that they had a plane with a significant failure (pitot/static problems have caused several hull losses).
I'm not sure I like "these pitots are a bit rubbish, use some other ones instead" as a conclusion (also almost seems too convenient - shift the blame to a minor component mfr.) - but again, that may be all we end up with. Unless the side scan and pingers do turn out to be awesome...