Great statement. Even more so when one considers the A320's record. Close to 30 years in service, no history of any major designs failures which would result in immediate death and I include the windshield heating in that statement.

Heating short circuits and arcing are common on many aircraft types. It does not however bring jets down.

Drinks are also spilt all the time and we do not see disasters each week.

wheelsright

A few points
It's early yet.
At this point, I'd suggest betting for getting the CVR and FDR rather than against. It's early yet. The search effort is still underway.
AF 447 was in more than 12,000 feet of water. Once the site was found (after what, 2 years?) a great deal of information was gleaned from what the were able to obtain and examine with a variety of technology. A lot depends upon how well the investigation is run, and how much assistance and advice from experts in recent crashes over water the Egyptians will accept. (Your point about the difficulties in being able to isolate wiring issues once the aircraft is in parts and has been underwater for a while is understood).

I recall the volumes of criticism BEA received over the AF 447 accident. Well, don't you wish they were running this one?

It's pretty simple really. They can't control terrorism but they spend their entire careers learning and practicing how to control technical failures. If it is a technical fault they can assume their hard work and training may give them a chance to bring the aircraft home if it happens to them, if it is terrorism they have just been confronted with the fragility and randomness of life/death. Basically they just want to live.

Massive deny of everything: all informations are wrong
 

That the only link about MS804 provided by Egyptair (on Fr page).
And their link for "plus d'informations" will simply loop into the same communiqué.
http://www.egyptair.com/fr/about-egy...ris-cairo.aspx

http://takata1940.free.fr/0_Egyptair.jpg

Wheelsright
 

I did say that the drink spill incident was on a very early aircraft that had Kapton wiring.

Kapton wire was one of the great cock ups of the industry as it had some very bad habits if there was a wiring fault, following a number of incidents the industry at considerable cost removed all the Kapton wire from service.

The last place I saw Kapton wire fitted was in a B738NG IFE system in about 2000. Even then the IFE was locked out until the whole IFE loom assembly was removed and replaced with something a lot better.

Due to the date of construction I am sure that you would not find any Kapton wire on this ( or any other ) Airbus manufactured after about 1995 and any fitted to earlier aircraft should have been removed by now.

Experience tells me that the aircraft had big electrical issues and the Airbus electrical fire and smoke removal non normal check lists go around in circles so it is not an easy situation to contain but the reason that the problems started is only going to become clear when the accident investigators have finished their work.

Reuters:
"Egypt's head of forensics denied reports that an initial examination of human remains belonging to victims aboard the EgyptAir jet that crashed in the Mediterranean pointed toward an explosion, state news agency MENA said on Tuesday.
Everything published about this matter is completely false, and mere assumptions that did not come from the Forensics Authority"

Huge relief

Lonewolf: "I recall the volumes of criticism BEA received over the AF 447 accident. Well, don't you wish they were running this one?"

Does anyone with knowledge of ICAO / UN protocols know how professional a country's investigators have to be before they're allowed to take the lead? It's accepted that most African countries don't have the capability and would ask another state to help. In other words how to remove that responsibility from a state that is sure to find only what suits them (MSR990 ....)

what seems confirmed is that, so far, they found no forensics trace of explosive despite half the press claiming it.

"Allowed" by whom?

It's their aeroplane and they are the ICAO "National Competent Body" responsible for overseeing its airworthiness and operation.

Unless you want to lodge an appeal to one of the Grand Lizard Overlords I'm not sure anyone is in any position to be an uber-authority that could stop them.

PDR

Indeed, "It was terrorism" is a nice, open-and-shut case. Nobody above a certain pay grade gets blamed and nothing gets improved. Even better, such claims can motivate other kinds of political and economic decisions. It's very convenient.
It's right up there with those other news commonplaces, like "Airplanes don't just fall out of the sky." Yeah, they do, but very, very rarely. You're looking at an event that "just doesn't happen." So what, among all these unlikely scenarios is the most likely?
Making it worse is the ratio of media exposure to data available. It's always been bad, but since CNN discovered that MH370 doubled their ratings, "aviation crash mysteries" command worldwide attention. The lack of data is actually an advantage, since television news bits don't like to go over 30 seconds these days. The enormous pressure means that people who have even less knowledge than many of those posting here suddenly find themselves in a position of power with respect to news outlets. And we get ignorant "leaks" about bombs and right turns. At least the idiot who said it had to be an explosive was honest about his grounds for thinking that.

So all we have at the moment is a field of wreckage and a series of ACARS messages, transmitted over a couple minutes. Now, those messages could mean anything. What they do say is "electrical fault, smoke in the lavatory, smoke in the avionics bay." And, if you were not to posit anything else but those messages, you'd expect the people up front to start shedding non-necessary electrical systems.
As we've seen, an Airbus, at night, in Alternate Law is already a challenge for some pilots. The rest is a balance between how bad the situation was and how badly it was handled, and we cannot know that at the moment.

As for causes of the message: iPad batteries and bombs are at the bottom of the list, just below spilling the cologne on the O2 supply.
Oh, and the sideshow about alcohol? Yes, alcohol is an accelerant, but a pretty poor one, even at 95%. Sure, it's burned teenagers' faces off before, but at normal concentrations of oxygen, it just doesn't generate enough heat by itself to be useful for starting fires.

Some notes Regarding ACARS messages...
00:26Z 3044 ANTI ICE R WINDOW
00:26Z 561200 R SLIDING WINDOW SENSOR
00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE
00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE
00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR
00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT
00:29Z 2700 F/CTL SEC 3 FAULT

Source Document http://www.gauci.info/gone2fly/A320%...tes%202004.pdf

An extraction fan draws air from the cabin through the lavatories and
galleys and exhausts it near the outflow valve. The extraction fan runs
continuously when electrical power is available.

My observation -> If there is smoke in the cabin, it will be drawn into the lavatories to the smoke detector. Smoke source not necessarily in the lavatory.

In Smoke Configuration the main bus bars are shedded. Same as
emergency electrical configuration except that the fuel pumps are
connected upstream of the GEN 1 line contactor. 75% of equipment is
shed, all that is remained is supplied from the CBs on the overhead panel.

• A smoke detector in the air extraction duct detects smoke in the avionics
compartment. If smoke is detected for more than 5 min it can be cleared
but remains latched. A dual FCU reset on ground can de-latch it.
• One smoke detector is in each lavatory. It sends signals to an SDCU
(Smoke Detection Control Unit) which in turn sends signals to the FWC and
CIDS.

Flight Controls
• Flight control surfaces are electrically controlled and hydraulically activated.
• The stabilizer and rudder can be mechanically controlled.
• There are seven Flight Control Computers:
o Two ELACs
􀂃 Normal elevator and stabilizer control.
􀂃 Aileron control.
o Three SECs
􀂃 Spoiler control.
􀂃 Standby elevator and stabilizer control.
o Two FACs
􀂃 Electrical rudder control.
• Also, there are two FCDC (Flight Control Data Concentrators) which
acquire data from the ELACs and the SECs and send it to the CFDS and
EIS

SEC 3 – Controls Spoiler 2.
If a SEC fails, its spoilers are retracted.

Speedbrake
• The Speedbrake is made up of spoilers 2, 3 and 4.
• Extension is inhibited if:
o SEC 1 and SEC 3 have faults.

Flight Control - Mechanical Backup
• Mechanical backup happens in the case of a complete loss of electrical
power.
• Pitch is controlled manually using the THS. (Trimmable Horizontal Stabilizer)
• Lateral control is through the rudders.

Who says ICAO has any authority. It just writes rules(non binding guidelines) member countries agreed upon, and hope same countries follow those rules. Nothing it can do if some country ignores those.

Malaysia didn't even had CAA organization structure, team to investigate accidents and even required templates to document MH370. Yet it is the competitive authority per Annex.13.

A and C
The reference to the drinks spill is far-fetched and I wasn't promoting it as being likely as I am sure you were not.

This is probable, but without further evidence the cause could still be terrorism or a defect. The only thing that is looking unlikely is pilot error.

There is no way to rule out a bomb causing damage to the electrical system or even explosive decompression. The time frame for the ACARS messages, abrupt end to the messages, and lack of voice communication all suggest that things went wrong very quickly.

Somebody with an in depth knowledge of the electrical system may be able to shed further light. For instance, a localized electrical fault (even with fire) is unlikely to take out multiple systems in a very short space of time unless they were physically or electrically close. That would suggest a wider more dramatic issue at play.

Prior to the loss of communication the pilots presumably were not aware of a serious problem.

Perhaps a silly question...are they equipped with efb?

By examining the VHF ACARS coverage on page 20 of this ACARS service summary and this slightly older estimate, I see four stations with some possibility of being send/receive stations as the aircraft headed (roughly) over Karpathos and southeast toward CAI, at least as LOS is measured ... depending on where along the track the aircraft is. Signal strength is another matter once over the basin of the Levantine Sea/Eastern Med.

HER, RHO, PFO, ALY and (ultimately CAI).

Does Egyptair use Satcom and VHF ACARS on their A320's, or only VHF? (Recalling that MH 370 apparently didn't use all of the Satcom services that the aircraft could have been subscribed to ...)

lets try again- approx 2 min plus between smoke- window fault befgore acars quits. NO signals re decompression or cabin differential, no signals re dump valves and air pak changes, etc.

Decompression via explosives or otherewise (open lor broken window ) as an initiator before going offline is NOT likely.

Conso

To assume that ACARS must have transmitted loss of cabin pressure in a compromised situation is unwise. It is also unwise to assume that a bomb would immediately destroy all systems or for that matter properly explode or rupture the cabin.

These ACARS transmissions may only be a small subset of fault conditions prior to being completely disabled. However, the idea of a fire taking hold and disabling all communication and a number of other systems in 2 minutes, or so, is unrealistic.

Images of apparently sizeable debris fields, by US Navy P3 Orion based at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Sicily, Italy.

U.S. Navy P-3 Orion Assists in Search for Egyptair Flight MS804 | U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa / U.S. 6th Fleet

"UPDATE 6
May 23, 2016 at 14:30 UTC
Yesterday, (May 22), U.S. Navy P-3s continued to support the search effort with two missions (6th and 7th) from NAS Sigonella. The first flight of the day (6th overall) discovered another debris field that was a radius of three nautical miles in size. Once reported to the Egyptian on scene commander, the aircraft was sent elsewhere to search for additional debris fields. The Egyptians deployed small vessels to retrieve debris in the field they discovered. From post mission reporting and the plotting of debris fields, two confirmed debris fields have been located by U.S. Navy aircraft supporting the effort."

Again- my point was that IF an initiating event such as explosion- decompression took place before OR during the 2 plus minute interval shown in the released ACARS, it would most likely have triggered other ACAR alarms BEFORE going offline.

I gather that other debris fields have been found as well by others assisting in the search effort? :confused:

Without trying to steal mm43's thunder, the drift plotting team are doubtless working on where these debris fields drifted from. How many days of useful battery life do the FDR/CVR pingers have left? Using back of napkin ... 24.

Air France (with the French Navy) searched for nearly two years for the AF 447 wreckage. In April 2011, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Cape Cod, Massachusetts) arrived on the scene and located the AF 447 aircraft in about a week using Waitt Institute vehicles. You may recall that WHOI was also the organization that located the Titanic back in the 1980s.

Locating and recovering the flight recorders was another matter. The French government hired Phoenix International (Largo, Maryland) to do this. Using Remora 6000 vehicles operated from a French chartered ship, Phoenix found and recovered the flight recorders within a week of arriving at the site in April 2011. The flight data recorder's memory unit was no longer inside the flight recorder's orange housing and had to be located and retrieved separately from the sea floor.

Hopefully this search in the Med will be far less challenging than the mid-Atlantic, and there are no severe terrain challenges and mid ocean mountain ranges to overcome. The pingers may even still be pinging, which would be a terrific advantage. However if the local search authorities cannot find the wreckage in a timely matter, it would benefit all to bring in the experts who have a track record at finding and recovering aircraft and flight recorders from the bottom of the sea.

Good question T28B, I see what you are getting at. Other pilots on this forum have indicated that the area has marginal VHF voice coverage.

If the ACARS data is transmitted VHF-only, and all of the ground stations sites are just on the edge of the VHF ACARS range, one could assume the possibility of ACARS data drop-outs.

The decoded reports such as what we have seen so far would normally only show the error-free messages. I presume there are recordings of the raw data that can be further dissected.

It would be a good idea for people to look back over the AF447 thread. The wreck could have been found a lot earlier if the search pattern hadn't been interrupted by a spurious indication of a pinger picked up apparently by a nuclear sub the Emeraude. This red herring caused the search vessels to divert, and lose the remainder of their search time for that season. Also as far as this incident is concerned there are a lot of assets in the med, there is a much more accurate LKP and much closer ports for search vessels to use.

Responding to doubts about these ACARS messages:

In post #652, Water Pilot said "In my career I saw lots of messed up computer transmissions, but these messages have a logical coherence. I'm not saying it is not possible that the messages are bogus, but there are a whole lot of ACARS messages possible for the computer to pick randomly from."

In my 45 year career as a software engineer, I know that you need to keep some doubt in mind about the cause of a message until you have fixed the problem and successfully tested it. And, although I have worked with SCADA systems before, I don't have specific knowledge about the ACARS system.

That being said, these ACARS messages reflect substantial functionality of the system. They are properly formed and properly time-stamped and followed the communication protocols well-enough to be received. Also, with that level of functionality, most safety related systems are designed to report problems with the system itself - and there are no reports that the ACARS system detected any such problems.

If I were looking at these messages for the purpose of diagnosing a problem with the damaged aircraft systems, my initial expectation would be that the source of these reports were, in fact, from the sensors denoted in the reports.

I don't want to get involved in how confident we can be about these ACARS reports because that can only be done in the context of how you want to use the information. But I certainly find it reasonable to have a discussion that presume their validity - so long as we keep some doubt in mind.

I would also defend "impatience" for other data. Althoug we all have high hopes for the recovery of the recorders, we do not what additional data will actually become available.

Even though the LKP for MSR804 has not been reliably determined, it may be worthwhile reading/reviewing the Report to the BEA document by Metron Scientific Solutions regarding methodologies for determining the location of the final crash site of AF447, entitled, Search Analysis for the Location of the AF447 Underwater Wreckage

Another document, which I cannot locate online yet, was a report, (presentationMAK.ppt), apparently written by the IAC/MAK concerning known aircraft descent trajectories of previous LOC accidents. I know that this point has been made earlier in the thread but the presentation reinforces the notion that crash sites are almost always within ~12nm of the LKP.

@.Scott - Given the recoveries of recorders from the AF447 & AirAsia accidents and given similar search conditions, I am confident that the recorders will be found. I expect that there will be a multi-national specialist group with hand-to-hand recording of the "evidence trail" at any such recovery, transport, disassembly, and reading of same. The A320 recorders (and where it survives, the QAR), typically records ~2000 parameters. This of course varies with data frame and installation. What occurred in both the cited cases herein show that a very good determination of what transpired immediately prior to the accident sequence, will be known and understood, providing all the usual protocols and processes for such investigations are followed to ensure transparency, and documented for all to witness. It is far too early to make any further statements regarding cause.

A bit surprised that all the US Navy can provide, is a video from a hand-held iPhone. If that is the state of their surveillance capability, no wonder the search is taking so long.

Strata

@ silverstrata

Well, as a European, this accident having happened on the EU's border, I'm happy with the US publishing at least some debris field images. Apart from some small items recovered, I don't think the Egyptian, Greek nor French Navy posted something similar. This is in stark contrast with the transparency of the Brazilian Airforce handling AF447, which saw from day 1 a steady stream of images, including flown grids, what was found where and so on.

PS Isn't it remarkable that at least the VS hasn't been located yet....

Not surprising that the Navy only posted iThing video. The P-3 is a military reconnaissance aircraft, and they're unlikely to post video that demonstrates the plane's true capabilities, just to trend on Twitter or whatever.

Quote from #711 .Scott
There is no reason not to consider the possibility that the sensors were the source. On that basis one might suspect failure of the right hand windows and decompression followed by progressive hull failure. There would have to be some way of connecting the window faults with the FCU and SEC faults for this scenario; what if not hull failure?

The cause of the window failure could still be a bomb?

That is why I prefer the wiring/power theory, but little can be ruled out at this stage.

News reports say that one Egyptian forensics expert has examined 80 body fragments, the largest of which is a hand. Some of these tiny fragments show burn marks. None of them are large. Of course, this may or may not be true.

I was a TWA pilot when TWA 800 went down. The failure was at a relatively high altitude and quite catastrophic. There were some body fragments, but many were intact except their clothes were blown off while some were fully clothed with no sign of damage at all, like you would expect in a swimming pool drowning. I think it's safe to say the TWA 800 parts impacted the water at a significant speed, but not at ultra high speed as might be the case with an intact, but out-of-control aircraft nosing in at Vne.

Are there airline crashes at sea where there were no large human remains? Or does the lack of large body parts not indicate anything definitive?

Swissair 111 crashed at sea and according to a report I read, only one body was intact.

I don't think so. There was some triggering event. Overheating, crushing of glass, arc or short circuit, battery runaway, explosion, smoke etc. It was after midnight, nobody was fresh. Remember AF477 - nobody told "stall", all three were fully confused. They surely knew what the stall is, but in that moment they couldn't see it, they didn't believe computer warnings. In our case the crew might be confused and did some wrong actions too. I hope that they didn't, but experience teaches us that we all do mistakes. We must wait for a more data.

I can remember KE007, MA240

What the USN can provide, and will provide to a variety of interested parties like the Egyptian MoD, Aviation Ministry, etc, to BEA, and others is a bit more than that. What the 6th Fleet chose to provide for the ravening maw that is the 24/7 news cycle is ... PR stuff.

SR111
Transportation Safety Board of Canada - Aviation Investigation Report A98H0003

US Navy Update #5
 

Not sure if this had been posted here, but I am assuming no pictures of the large debris mentioned above (four pieces 10ft x 10ft)?

- GY

A small summary of the results of the Briefing including a graphic showing the distribution of distance of travel between LoC and Impact in 9 previous cases you can find in
http://fusion.isif.org/proceedings/F...papers/140.pdf on page 1063, Figure 2


It would probably wise to start from LKP in this case as well. LKP being the point where primary radar signal was lost. They should find it in a circle of much less than 5NM from there. Compared to AF447 (or even MH370) finding this one should be a walk in the park.

I don't believe anyone claimed that all the U.S. Navy can provide is handheld video. USN is much smarter than releasing handiwork of its capabilities and has no need see itself on the evening news. Relevant information for the investigation will of course be provided to the relevant investigative parties that need to know.

henra, re, "They should find it in a circle of much less than 5NM from there. Compared to AF447 (or even MH370) finding this one should be a walk in the park. "

Completely agree.

There is a big difference between releasing your full capabilities and making yourself look incompetent. All they need do is degrade the quality of the proper surveillance photos by 90% and release those. But to release an iPhone video through a frosted window on an official USN website, is a PR blunder of epic proportions. But having watched a recent documentary on Canadian SAR aircraft, where the equipment was three decades old and barely worked, I do wonder.

Has anyone thought about a fire on the flight deck that got out of hand very quickly forcing the crew to evacuate the flight deck?