I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for recorders where one of the engines was left running until it ran out of fuel. Of course mabe even that rumor is false or dead waiting for new life.

Even if this is purely a test aircraft function not intended for flight Airbus has a responsibility to report any anomalies found that could releate to intended flight.. If that pedestal story continues to hold up even the dog in the cockpit wouldn't help

Not to mention the fact that maintenance people who conduct engine runs need to be aware of the hazards involved as identified by this occurrence. As for the recorders, the CVR on most new aircraft runs for 2 hours, and I can't imagine it took that long to get the engines shut down. The DFDR should be good for 24 hours, so for sure there's no issue there.

An earlier post, which went unchallenged, said that (at least) one engine ran for 7 hours.

But post #193 on page 10 of this thread purports to describe "the sequence of events according to the recorders".

RSN.

The Flight Data Recorder will track events long beyond 7 hours. The Cockpit Voice Recorder may well have been overwritten (2 hours) so what was said on the flight deck (very significant here) may be lost.

However, I am sure they removed the CVR and DFDR before that time.
There should be enough people around who know why and how to
stop or remove it.

Marcus

The CVR probably stopped recording anyway since the signal from the cockpit probably became unavailable when the front section tore off.

Salvage
 

It looks like the engines (and probably other individual components) might be salvageable. So, it might not be a complete w/o.

After reading BEA and Airbus bulletins
No other alternative than to blame the crew (I should say the two guys) seated at the controls at the time:

These guys failed to retard the THR LEVERS for 11 seconds !?

They did rapidly notice they were moving
They did quickly push on the brake pedals
They did quickly turn the PARKING BRAKE OFF
But they failed to retard the THR LEVERS for 11 seconds …
As the wall was dangerously approaching, they kept substantial thrust (1.24 to 1.26 EPR) for 11 seconds !

How surprising is it ?

Still, it could be possible … as long as you don’t have a look at the pictures, and you don’t realize the magnitude of destruction, and you don’t note the absence of braking mark.

So possibly one of these official statements is false, if not all of them:
· Airplane was at 30 knots
· Power was at idle
· Airplane was braking

DFDR / CVR did deliver all the story already, but very surprisingly they waited (as officially told) 4 days before reading them, and even there they precise they waited in the afternoon to do that, at tea time.

But this information is not avail to anyone, it would be too simple to know what happened, it really has to stay in “good hands”.

... and be assure:
Usually it is, ……. as soon as doctored !

Well, better doctored, than swapped. . . . like the one caught by aerial picture from a helicopter after Mont Odile, or Air Inter "air-show" (don't remember which but I think the
latter) which was a different colour to the one they produced at the Press Conference. Insp Clouseau would have appreciated that gaf.

AAAAAh that explanes the order for a palet load of speed tape:suspect::suspect::suspect:

What's so surprising. This happened late on a Thursday, no? So Friday to recover the bits and pieces and check out the externals of the boxes once they get to the lab.

Sat & Sun - weekend. It's an incident during a ground test, not an inflight incident with immediate implications for inservice flight safety.

Monday afternoon, they read the data.

Like I say, what's the rush? If they were to say "oh, we rushed to read the tapes ASAP and accidentally erased some data - which COULD happen - the finger pointing/conspiracy-theorists would have a field day. Rule #1 in accident investigation - take your time, don't destroy evidence.

Agree with your other comments MFS, but check out the externals of the boxes? These things DFDR/CVR are designed to survive a crash and burn from 40,000ft, so a 30 kt ram into a concrete wall with no fire is hardly going to render them unreadable! :8

Bgrd's

N1 Vibes

Nothing to worry - Business as usual

That's the way it should be ... but in that BEA / Airbus love story, things may work quite differently.

Of course not - but first things first. The external condition (including pre-existing anomolies) needs good documentation - to see if any internal or data defects can be correlated with external condition.

At least that's the way it's supposed to work.

More of concern I'd think - to ADAT (GAMCO) anyway - is permitting French authorities to read out the recorders. Remember the Cameroun accident w/Kenyan 738 jurisdictional issues?

How many seconds are needed by those engines to spool down to idle?

G,D&L,

suggest 5 seconds maximum, at the EPR they were at probably producing between 100-150K lbs thrust total.

Brgd's

N1 Vibes

I've scrolled through most of the thread...lot's of stuff about why it happened, physics, chocks, etc etc.

But I didn't see any comment about why the fuselage seemed to more or less snap like a broken twig, slightly aft of the flight deck.

Can anyone enlighten a non-structural engineer, non-physicist, non-most things person?

I always thought that the fuselage structure is supposed to withstand quite severe unexpected and unusual forces. And this one didn't.

The initial aircraft motion was parallel to the ground. Eventually it contacted a hard immovable object which now changed the motion to about 45 degrees to the ground. This force appears to have been applied directly to the underside of the fuselage located forward of the wing and main gear.
Thus a significant bending moment coupled with significant impact forces resolved through the 45 degree change in direction.
Not exactly considered in the normal operational design of an aircraft

Why the fuselage broke down
 

The fuselage was going up the slope of the blast wall. At this moment
there was not a lot of deceleration as the plane was only pitched
around the CG.
A short moment after the Cockpit area went over the edge the main
gear started climbing the wall. At this moment the whole plane was
slowed down quite heavily because now there was real deceleration.
This created a forward-down momentum around the CG. This momentum
smashed the forward fuselage on the sharp edge of the blast wall cutting
it through up to the main deck. As the integrity of the lower part of the
fuselage was completely destroyed the down momentum bend down the
part of the plane forward of the edge.