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.

Magplug

Even if the external connectors are damaged the larger investigation authorities will have the capability to download just the surviving memory module using replacement cables and a 'donor unit'.

If the impact is severe, it's possible that one of the pcb connections on one of the chips in the memory module (could be address decoding or the flash itself) has come adrift and the best place to fix the problem is the manufacturer.

This has nothing to do with perceived impartiality etc. etc., it's just the safest and quickest way to get the module into a downloadable state.

302b31
 

Indeed. According to the press, the BEA investigators said that if they themselves dug into the guts of the memory, they could make the situation worse and lose information. They said that Honeywell is the best equipped to extract data. It makes sense to this non-specialist.

In reality the representatives from the parties to the investigation all travel to the manufacturer of the Black Box, have a pre-meeting to agree on the course of action (opening the box, plugging in slave modules etc. to bypass any damage and then decoding chip sets etc). Then whoever wants to can stand around watching all this happen (boring as hell) and once completed somebody can display it on a monitor screen. Then more meetings to decide on how to graph or print out the stuff. About one or two technicians doing the real work and the rest watching while drinking coffee. Once the stuff gets printed out on a piece of paper then you typically circle areas of interest and decide how to proceed further.

For all I know they might even have gotten this far already

recovery from damaged recorders example--N600XL PR-GTD
 

For an example case in the news recently, there is a discussion of recovery of data from the damaged recorders of PR-GTD on pages 62 to 65 of the English translation of the Brazilian report posted on the NTSB site.

NTSB posting

Caution: this is a large file, slow serving site, likely a several minute download.

As others have suggested in this thread, in this case the means employed were decidedly low-tech in this instance, including the extremely ordinary soldering pencil being used in figure 23.

Really??
I am pretty sure they want to know exactly what has happenned as much as everybody else.
Whatever caused this crash is not going to affect airbus orders!

God bless the families involved.

Gents, let's be clear how these things work. The aircraft manufacturer doesn't wait to be told what happened. Airbus flight safety dept will have a copy of the black box data at the same time as the other involved parties.

Thanks for the link, archae.
Typical low-power low-voltage thermostat soldering iron... Weller to judge from the colour....
But in the picture it's being used to repair the salvaged flat cable, which is indeed a low-tech job.

Judging by the pics, the memory module itself survived pretty well unscathed.
The real trouble starts when the impact forces are so high that the memory board itself cracks and becomes unuseable, or if any of the bonding inside the memory chip packages breaks.
Then it becomes a decidedly high-tech job!

I've "talked" to undamaged FDRs, but never had to go inside one.

CJ

more info
 

:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

we've all heard rumours, most of us dismiss ones as silly as that without posting.

"The last rumour I heard was that the aircraft was on its 2nd flight test but it should have only had the one! It had been re-sprayed and was due to fly to Germany post successful flight / acceptance checks etc.(hence the 3 air nz engineers and 1 pilot onboard) I have also heard on the grapevine that the static ports had been blanked off (for re-spray) and may have been missed pre flight. Quite how the aircraft can fly for 90 minutes with these blocked and the problems not have come to light is a mystery? Maybe it upset the landing configuration (height and speed information way out) and the aircraft stalled. Would have thought it would have a RAW data backup from Inertia system?? Who knows?"

Think before writing please.:ugh:

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

Theoddkiwi
Probationary PPRuNer

SAID on page 13 of this thread ....

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

So TRUE.

Referring to C130airman:

It's no rumour - it's simply wrong

According to the press, six of the seven bodies have now been recovered, and formal identification is expected 'mid-January'.

no data yet from cvr/fdr?
 

It has been over three weeks and no updates at all....the French are being awfully quiet about this.

According French local Perpignan TV news (Fr3 ) a few days ago : the CVR/FDR were both sent to Honeywell in Seattle as the BEA were unable to get info from them. The QAR however is repported to be OK and talking . ( a photo was even shown ).
6 bodies retreived so far , none identified yet, they are waiting for DNAs from siblings to make positive ID. Divers still on the site to recover instrumentation and last body.

In addition there are local rumours ( but only rumours ) that someone present during the briefing prior the flight heard the crew talk about the " manual back up" which led to speculations. But it seems very unlikely that experienced 320 crews ( as they were) did this on final APP below 10.000ft . So only wild speculations so far.
Hopefully Honeywell will be able to get something out of the Recorders.

Quote "It has been over three weeks and no updates at all....the French are being awfully quiet about this." Quote.

Quite normal during any aircraft investigation.
One of the major failings during accident investigation is speaking up too soon, before you have the facts.
Untill the recorders have been downloaded by Honeywell I doubt anything will be said.

Black boxes reveal no clues to Airbus crash
 

Black boxes reveal no clues to Airbus crash
10:04AM Saturday Dec 27, 2008

The two black boxes from the Airbus that crashed off the French coast a month ago have not provided any information into the cause of the accident.

The Airbus A320 plunged into the sea near Perpignan on November 28, killing all seven on board - five New Zealanders and the two German pilots.

The A320 was in its final assessment before it was handed back to Air New Zealand after it had been leased to the German airline XL Airways.

The Washington Post said this week no useful information had been gleaned from either the cockpit voice recorder or the flight-data recorder.

The lack of progress had frustrated aviation safety experts on both sides of the Atlantic because the twin-engine A320 was considered a workhorse of airlines around the world, and the cause of the crash was keenly awaited, the Press reported.

Six of the bodies have so far been recovered, but none have yet been identified.

A team of divers would continue to search the wreckage for the remaining body this week, helped by an observation robot.

The French prosecutor expected to formally identify the bodies by mid-January.

Air New Zealand spokeswoman Tracy Mills said French authorities had not contacted Air New Zealand with any updates since early this month.

Four of the five New Zealanders on board were Air NZ staff.

They were Captain Brian Horrell, 52, from Auckland; engineers Murray White, 37, from Auckland, Michael Gyles, 49, from Christchurch, and Noel Marsh, 35, from Christchurch.

The fifth New Zealander was Civil Aviation Authority airworthiness inspector Jeremy Cook, 58, of Wellington.

A memorial service for Mr Marsh will be held at the Harewood Crematorium chapel in Christchurch on Monday morning.

- NZPA

Black boxes reveal no clues to Airbus crash - National - NZ Herald News

Some information must be available since this aircraft was capable of sending off real time data.
The Washington Post reports that no useful information has been retrieved from the recorders.
Do you believe that?

Whoa, Silver. Hold the horses, guys.
The Wall St Journal article provides slightly more background than the selectively quoted NZ Herald report linked above.

Wall Street Journal Report

Basically, the reason no useful information has been gleaned, is that in all likelihood, it hasn't been downloaded by Honeywell yet.

It would be appreciated if folk keen to post info would take a few seconds to read it and realize that it is non-info before hitting the "submit" button.
And for those that can't wait, or take everything posted here as gospel, take a bit of trouble to quote correctly.
Why quote the NZ Herald when the source is actually slightly different?
"...because the twin-engine A320 was considered a workhorse..."
becomes
"...- because the twin-engine A320 is a workhorse of airlines... when you look to the original article.
(Minor niggly point, maybe, but apparently important.)

Final note, you (or I, anyway) have to be a little circumspect when reading media reports with wording like If they can't reveal the source, or think it unimportant - and I imagine the Wall St Journal should be fairly reputable - then the source should really be considered as irrelevant.
It's reportage for the sake of it.
Move along, please, nothing to see here....:rolleyes:
[edited for source correction]

Is there any info on the net about the progress?
I had no idea that a criminal investigation was holding up the processing of the FDR and am a little disturbed by the news. I would have thought that extracting the data in gthe name of safety would be the highest priority. What organization has the rite/power etc to do this?