JD
Please answer a simple question - how do the people get their life vests out when they are strapped into their seats in heavy turbulence? Even if they were in the seat back pouches why would they unless the plane was known to be about to ditch?
Maybe some people did. We will never know. But if a person restrained in a seat fitted a jacket and didn't inflate it, then their body would still have sunk with their seat.
I am not saying that everyone would have put a jacket on. But I am a bit surprised that none of 51 people recovered had a jacket on. Not if they had been secured in a seat. Assuming they were still conscious, at some point some of the people on board would likely have realised that this was more than just turbulence and that they were going to crash. In the middle of the night over the middle of the ocean. And none of them thought to put a jacket on?
So either they were not able to (unconscious, or G-loads that prevented them from reaching their jackets). Or maybe the 51 recovered were not in a seat at all.
There had been suggestions early on in the original discussion that the plane may have ditched (possibly following a turn away from the weather), but the lack of a Mayday, the damage suggesting a high vertical speed, and the absence of life jackets I think together rule this out.
This then leaves 2 general scenarios with respect to how quickly everything unfolded.
1. Pax were all belted in, either because of increasing turbulence, or because of an aircraft problem. For whatever reason the situation subsequently deteriorated and the aircraft crashed.
2. Sudden and catastrophic loss of control. Pax not all seated as they were only in light turbulence prior to this. These pax were not able to get to a seat (nor a life jacket on), and these were the bodies recovered. Those pax that were belted in sank with their seats.
Either way, bear in mind that there were almost certainly more pax that (for whatever reason) did not sink with the aircraft than there were bodies found. Spotting a body at sea is not easy at all. It is almost certain that some bodies were simply not found despite best efforts. So either a lot of people were not restrained, or if everyone was restrained than a lot of bodies worked themselves free of the seat before the seat sank.
228 people - 216 pax, 3 flight crew, 9 cabin crew. They found 51 bodies, and were able to ID 50 of these. Of these 50 - 1 pilot (Captain - possibly having rest period), 4 flight attendants, 45 pax. You probably wouldn't expect to recover either of the pilots on the flightdeck if they were restrained. So they found 4/9 cabin crew, 1 pilot (perhaps not on the flightdeck) and 45/216 pax. That's a bid odd - certainly not impossible, but a little surprising. I would have to go back to high school maths to work out the odds, but the cabin crew are certainly over-represented among the recovered. Perhaps the sort of ratio you would normally expect to find unrestrained mid-flight - cabin crew working, some pax up and about, some pax seated but unrestrained, and some pax restrained.
By itself, you could easily accept this as a statistical quirk. One or two fewer CC, and the ratio would be the same as the pax. But, the cabin crew harnesses are not a lap belt only. They fit over the shoulders and join the lap belt at a common buckle.
http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp...90601e2.en.pdf page 16
And I think it pretty unlikely that a body would work itself free from one of the crew seats. Certainly not 4/9.
Also, 3 crew seats were found - empty, belts not secured, and not that broken up (suggesting not supporting a person at impact).
And so IMO you really have to conclude that the cabin crew at least were not secured at impact.
So I think this all points to sudden and total loss of control not preceded by anything more than light turbulence. It doesn't really point to either structural failure of the aircraft, or some form of stall due to pitot problems / faulty airspeed readings. All it suggests (fairly compellingly I believe) is that whatever happened was sudden and very severe.
A couple of additional thoughts:
1. Despite all the advances in technology, we had a better idea where to find the Titanic than we do AF447 almost 100 years later. I know the much greater speed of aircraft makes the "circle" much larger, and I know that it flew (one way or another) from 35000 before it hit the water. But maybe we need better real time tracking of aircraft position - especially overwater, and in this age of heightened terrorism threat.
2. I know this has been mentioned previously, but the recorders have proven that they are not designed to be recovered from deep water. There are lots of possible solutions to this deficiency - everything from more powerful if less frequent pingers, to some system where they break free from the wreckage. AF447 alone surely dictates that this be addressed.