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Approximate minimum distances to land here, for the sake of interest, from where the aircraft probably went down:
St. Peter and Paul Rocks (Brazilian Navy station) 350 km Ilha F. de Noronha 800 km South American mainland 1000 km African mainland 1900 km Cape Verde Isles 1450 km .... that´s guesstimating from the last known location. |
There has been little or no detail released on the AF447 Phase 3 search, e.g. (a) what spread will be utilized? and (b) the mobilization date. News reports have indicated that Phase 3 will commence at the end of February, but I suspect that the on location date will be around 10 to 14 days later.
My suspicion is that the "Pourquoi pas?" will be the actual command vessel, carrying contracted personnel/equipment and supported by other vessels. That being the case, I can report that "Pourquoi pas?" departed Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe at 1600z 2010-02-12 with ETA Brest 1000z 2010-02-24, Av.Spd 12 KTS. mm43 |
There will be a BEA press conference regarding the search operations on 17 Feb, next Wednesday. No doubt further info will be released then.
Press release, 12/02/2010 |
The BEA held a press conference today, and the following article Air France Black-Box Quest Has Better Than 50% Chance, BEA Says - Bloomberg.com has been published by Bloomberg France.
Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Investigators probing the crash of Air France Flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean more than eight months ago said the chances of finding the plane’s “black-box” flight recorders remain “well above 50 percent.” A search that was suspended in August will resume next month with the help of computer models that have reduced the area to be scoured, Jean-Paul Troadec, head of France’s BEA air- accident investigation bureau, said today at a Paris briefing. Without the cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders it may be impossible to discover why the Airbus SAS A330 plunged into the ocean off Brazil on June 1 while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people on board. “This is one of the most complex search operations ever conducted on the seabed,” Troadec said. “‘If we don’t find the flight recorders, we won’t be able to go much further.” Computer models run by oceanographic institutes have homed in on a zone within the earlier search area and about 10 times smaller, the investigators said Feb. 4. Data from recovered debris and satellite-tracked buoys improved their understanding of currents after previous searches ended in failure. The area under scrutiny measures about 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) in water no deeper than 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). With a budget of 10 million euros ($14 million) financed by Airbus and Air France, the BEA plans to cover the site in less than a month. Mountainous parts of the seabed will be examined by remotely controlled submarines at a rate of about two square miles a day. Flat areas can be scanned 20 times faster by sonar. Ships Hired The BEA has engaged two ships for the search: Anne Candies, hired from U.S-based Phoenix International and equipped with U.S. Navy sonar, and Seabed Worker, made in Norway, which will serve as a larger coordination base. Three robot submarines will use sonar to scan the seabed and two more will explore rougher terrain. In the first search, submarines and boats equipped with listening devices sought to detect signals emitted by the black boxes during the month that their batteries were expected to hold out. A second phase from July to August using sonar and submarines also produced nothing. The cockpit voice and data recorders are located in the tail of the plane. About 1,000 pieces of the downed Airbus have been recovered, together with 50 bodies. The main fuselage hasn’t been found. Anne Candies specs. ANNE CANDIES We are still missing a lot of the detail. Hopefully more will emerge in the near future. mm43 |
There's an interesting PDF from the BEA on the subject, but I don't have the link.
Anybody? CJ |
NY Times article here:
Officials to Resume Search for Air France Wreckage - NYTimes.com |
@ChristiaanJ
I've searched the BEA site and can't find anything new on AF447. I did find an interesting animation showing the flight paths of AF447 and other aircraft that crossed the ITCZ around the same time. I don't recall seeing it in any of the other AF447 threads. Flight Paths of Flight AF 447 and of the flights that crossed the zone around the same time mm43 |
New Search for AF447 Mar 2010
New search for AF447 is announced (in French) on the BEA website
http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/vol....17.02.2010.pdf |
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mm43,
Yes, thanks! Your 2nd link refers to the PDF I mentioned. CJ |
The South-West corner of the proposed Phase 3 search area lies just to the North of the original back-tracked position calculated in my earlier posting to the AF447 thread - http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/37643...ml#post5170393
In fact if you look at the US Navy and US Coast Guards computer modeled calculations from the Phase 2 search, the focus of the latest search has moved much further to the West. Personally, I feel that the wreckage will be located in the South-West of the latest search area, and that all the power of current modeling programs may yet come to 'nowt'. There is also the unexplained find of debris near the Last Known Position, that if it has broken free from wreckage on the bottom, could lead to the wreckage being located a little further to the South than anticipated. A revised graphic including the South-West boundary of the Phase 3 search area follows:- http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/a...ath_posn_3.png I am now feeling confident that FDR/CVR will be found once major portions of the wreckage have been located. mm43 |
I did find an interesting animation showing the flight paths of AF447 and other aircraft that crossed the ITCZ around the same time. 447 literally flew straight in to it. SoS |
[QUOTEI did find an interesting animation showing the flight paths of AF447 and other aircraft ][/QUOTE]
mm43 - Is the site still active. I cannot get it to open. Thanks ww |
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wes wall
The animation works fine in Firefox for me PS since af447 had an ETA of 11.10 am and af 459 =11.35 they were flying this track pretty much at the same time, no? Then why was one zigzagging all over the map and the other didn't. |
The animation shows the flight paths, but the weather image is not updated. I don't know how much the weather would change over the interval shown, but it would. Quite possibly there was only one satellite image available for the period.
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The release about the new search ops is now available in English here:
http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flig...17.02.2010.pdf |
@RatherBeFlying
Take a closer look at the animation, as the weather image is being updated with the passage of time. Clearly AF459 was avoiding everything, and the flights on UN866 paid due regard to the radar paint they were getting. @Finn47 Thanks for English version link. mm43 |
You´re welcome. Having just read it, I can´t but marvel at the magnitude of the undertaking going on. They sort of deserve to get lucky and find them things. Agreed?
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Finn47
They sort of deserve to get lucky and find them things. Agreed? The media reports indicated the proposed search area is now about 2,000km2, which doesn't match the area marked out in the BEA's presentation. My calculation shows the area within the red lines to be 887NM2 or 3042km2. A bit of a difference, but their task may well be to redefine the area in the coming weeks. mm43 |
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