PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - EgyptAir 804 disappears from radar Paris-Cairo
Old 22nd May 2016, 09:12
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Gary Brown
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Originally Posted by roulishollandais
Some of you don't like ACARS who told the AF447 drama in real time !
Patent ? Money ? Private conception of public science ?
Not at all. ACARS is not designed as an accident investigation tool, but as an advance warning system for maintenance issues that may need to be dealt with by engineering on arrival. Because of this it has some inherent limitations in circumstances such as these. You say ACARS told the story of AF447 in real time. No - it told some of the story, didn't tell crucial parts of it (because it was not designed so to do - stall-inducing pilot control inputs, for example), and also reported incidents somewhat out of order of occurrence, and in bursts (again, quite "correctly" from its design and purpose).

Which leads to a question. How confident are we that the present ACARS reflects the actual timing of the events it was transmitting? Or that it will necessarily have transmitted prior events (perhaps decompression) before losing power? As I recall, much of the AF447 ACARS discussion focused on similar issues, until all (or most....) was eventually clarified by the FDR and CVR.
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