Does anyone know if this AirAsia Airbus had Thales pitot tubes that were scheduled to be replaced by Goodrich pitot tubes? I believe Air France had been replacing these. Just wondering; it's my understanding, per the final Air France 447 BEA report (Page 198), that pitot tubes played a part in the crash of this aircraft:
Thus, the accident resulted from the following succession of events:
Temporary inconsistency between the airspeed measurements, likely following
the obstruction of the Pitot probes by ice crystals that, in particular, caused the
autopilot disconnection and the reconfiguration to alternate law;
5 - CHANGES MADE FOLLOWING THE ACCIDENT
5.1 Air France
5.1.1 Aeroplane maintenance and equipment
A330/A340 Pitot probes
ˆ
Acceleration in the replacement of Thales “AA” probes by “BA” probes, initiated
on 27 April 2009. By 11 June 2009, all the probes had been replaced.
ˆ
Following an Airworthiness Directive issued by EASA, replacement of Thales “BA”
probes by Goodrich probes in positions 1 and 3, from 4 to 7 August 2009.
ˆ
Air France internal decision: replacement of Thales “BA” probes by Goodrich
probes in position 2, from 18 January to 8 February 2010.
. . . and, an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article published 12/28/14:
After Flight 447, European air-safety regulators issued safety directives mandating replacement and upgrades of pitot-tube systems on Airbus jetliners, including A320s. In October, they issued a new mandate giving operators two years to make certain modifications, because initial replacement parts didn’t demonstrate the necessary “level of robustness to withstand high-altitude ice crystals.” It isn’t clear whether the AirAsia aircraft was covered by that mandate.
The link to the BEA Final Air France 447 report is:
http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp...p090601.en.pdf
The link to the WSJ article is:
Missing AirAsia Flight Stirs Old Debates Over Safety - WSJ (You may not be able to read the entire WSJ article, since they like to try and "encourage" you to subscribe to their online editions. Therefore, I included the relevant paragraph information.)
My apologies if this has been discussed on this thread before. I tried searching for it, but couldn't find it.