Golf

I thought the PADI Limit was 42m (but only about 7 minutes of bottom time.

RTC

Trimix, Heliox and hydrox air is used to 300 meters.

There won't be salvage of the full structure. It's not a complete mystery. Recovery of the flight recorder and CVR will help solve whether it was simply a control problem or a structural failure, then presumably the useful parts in the investigation can be searched for. It's not a total mystery like the Comet crashes or the TWA 747, so painstaking (and very expensive) rebuilding is not necessary.

But please stop harping on about other unrelated incidents in this thread!

Baron rouge,
Thanks for that. Not sure whether they have the same 'e-mail subscription' service, but at least I've asked them the question through your link.

Rainboe,
Let's hope we can get some valid info from the FDR and CVR.
Even so, picking the right odds and ends from the wreck field, to confirm that info, will not be obvious.

CJ

This short article says the investigators are in fact trying to recover as much of the debris as possible:

3 News > National > Story > Searchers take day off from Air NZ crash

I am not surprised by the news item above.Investigators will attempt to recover as much of the airframe as possible.As the B777 incident at LHR showed just having the computer data doesn't always tell the whole story.

(From BOAC) Could not agree more.
Maybe it's our age/ sense of value. But, I wish some of he posters would take time to think & reflect on the contents & the potential damage or offense of their "contributions", before putting them in the public domain......

O.

I do not envy the people who, at this moment, are trying to make sense of the mess that they were handed as being an FDR and a CVR, even if they appeared superficially intact.
As mentioned earlier in this topic, the deceleration during a water impact can be awesome.....

For once, can we show some respect to them, and also to the people who will be again looking for "bits and pieces" in the cold and the murk at a few degrees above freezing and forty-odd metres down?

CJ

Hi this my first post here, but a long time AD and a LAME.

I agree that it is easy to jump to conclusions, and i am guilty of this fact, which i am sure we all are at times.

The comparision with Habsheim i feel is warranted, not so much im terms of the circumstances of the accident but the sense that something does not feel right about the picture that we are presented with.

In simple terms and A320 has crashed during the approach component of a flight which by history is when pretty much all A320 accidents have occured. Which is not statistically surprising. Given that it is the most risky and challenging part of flying.

If we remember the Russian A320 last year which would seem to be a very similar if not identical accident. We could possibly make some conclusions that there may be some issue with the A320 or piloting procedures.

My concern is with the CVR and FDR data or the apparent fact that so far the data cannot be recovered. This a very very rare circumstance.

Consider this: Two different components, located physically in different locations of the aircraft operating off different power circuits, have suffered the same technical failure.

Has that happened before? Silk Air? or this one here?
http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/...rimFactual.pdf

Thing is that in both of these events the relevent data is missing, but previous data is recovered. Which tends to the theories that they have been disabled on purpose during flight (Silk Air) or before the flight (ATSB Report).

My eyebrows were rasied the minute i read that the Data from both recorders has so far been unrecoverable. From a techincal and statistical point of view the chances are incredibly small.

Impact with the water is indeed a lot harder than most would expect. But the dynamics of impact with water also tends to result in the tail sections to snap and rotate over the fwd section of the aircraft, which results in a much slower impact than the front of the aircraft. Of course this depends on angle of impact and speed, which we don't know in this case. An thus total speculation, which is human nature if anyone cares to argue with.

Eitherway the impact forces on the Recorders would normally be quite low with respect to the initial impact and they should easily be able to withstand an accident of this nature. Note the Metroliners recorders had reasonable damage, but there was no real problem getting the data which was on recorded tape, where the A320 would be solid state which is more robust.

So for me there is cause for concern, but i hope i am wrong.

If i might add, NZ and France do still have a strained relationship, given Frances antics surrounding the Rainbow Warrior bombing, so if I sound cynical about the BEA, you should not be surprised.

Not to say what sort of relationship the Frogs might have with the Germans!!!!

I too am very suspicious of the reports about there being no recoverable data so far from the CVR and FDR.

I wouldn't trust the French. Quite some time back I read quite a compelling article on the Concorde crash which contradicted the "official" causes of that crash.

I wonder why it has been reported that Air NZ have taken a New Zealand police contingent as part of the team that went to France?

Please someone change the title of this thread, it was not a training flight, it was an acceptance flight.

Come on guys, be reasonable. It's far too early to form these conspiracy theories about the reasons why flight recorder data is so far inconclusive. Also to quote the B737 Silk Air or the Fairchild Metro III accidents, are totally out of line and bear no resemblance to the A320 accident. If Airbus finds something that endangers the A320 operations, they will immediately issue the appropriate ADs. You are not going to solve it, so just sit and wait until the official expert investigation publishes their report.

OK Hotdog, cancel the thread, let's just all of us read the paper.

Well, that's exactly what should happen (cancel the thread) if you "experts" guys keep referring as HotDog is saying to accidents bearing no resemblance to this one!
And I'm not even talking about those non sense conspiracy theories :yuk:

Any news if the rest of the bodies have been recovered yet?

It has gone quiet; 2 bodies found, other 5 assumed to have perished. Both CVR and ADR recovered - this was 10 days ago. My thoughts are with the families. dbee

Saturday's French press said a fourth body, found near the aircraft on Friday evening, has been recovered.

I bet Airbus is relieved the data cant be retrieved

Scissorlink

Who told you the data cannot be retreived.It is my understanding that the data recorders have been sent to Honeywell in the US,the company who made them.To date no information has been released by them.

The various Reports have stated that while the recorders appear to have withstood the accident. The Data on them as so far been unable to be retrieved.

Under normal circumstances, the data can be read by the investigating organisation, this is often carried out by an independent country so there is no conflict of intrest, eg in this case, not French, German or New Zeland. Often the Canadian investigation organisation do it. The BEA should and would have the capability to download and read the FDR and CVR data.

So for them to be sent to the manufacturer has indicated that they have not been able to retrieve the data.

To explain how simple it is to download. Just last night i downloaded the FDR data from an aircraft to confirm a fault that had been picked up had been corrected. This was as simple as pluging into the FDR while still in the aircraft and copying the data to a memory card. The card then being sent to a FDR data interpretation specialist, who is physically just down the road from our airport.

Its not a difficult task and does not normally need the FDR manufacturer to retrieve.

The unretreivable data issue my be a misinterpretation in that Honeywell may have been selected as the independent Data recovery source. So perhaps there is not issue.

If the connection sockets on the outside of the module are chewed up in the crash then the investigating authority cannot simply plug in and download.

If this near-indestructible box has to be opened in order to retrieve the data then it is best done by the manufacturer. Normal procedure.