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AF 447 Black boxes Found!!
Atleast they have them identified in a 5km area, but under 3000 mts of abrupt terrain, in the ocean. Shouldnt be that difficult now after all theyve gone through to get them.
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So when you say "found", you actually mean "still not found"? :hmm:
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I think "found" is slightly misleading. From BBC:-
BBC News - Air France crash 'black boxes located in Atlantic' |
But Gen Christian Baptiste told AFP that retrieving the boxes from the ocean floor might be impossible. |
If the boxes are there, maybe structural parts too?
In case the BEA can confirm this information, I'd expect they will concentrate their search effort on this area now. So maybe we'll finally learn about the location and shape of any major parts of the wreckage. And hopefully learn what did for those poor souls...
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If I had lost a friend on that flight I'd be p!ssed off by reading the topic title in a "Professional Pilots Rumour Network" just to find out they were not found (yet).
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Bluefalcon,
I think you meant AF447 black box SITE found! The word Site changes the situation greatly don't you think? |
Misleading Topic Heading Found!!
Is it just me or do others feel that some people start a topic just to see their name at the top? VC10 Rib22 :ok: |
"located to within a 5km zone" sounds like an oxymoron.
Either the recorders have been found or they haven't. In the absence of some kind of acoustic contact, it's a bit of a stretch to refer to a newly defined search area of 5 kilometers as having "located" the target(s). Has something perhaps been slightly lost in translation from a French language briefing? Or have they identified a debris field? Are they still in an area search mode? Or have they moved on to the contact investigation phase? |
Partly answering my own question, I found this at The Times website:
France’s Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses, BEA, which looks into air crashes, said it made the breakthrough after a further analysis of sonar data gathered during an initial search of the crash area last year when the recorders were still emitting signals. “The BEA was told yesterday ... that the black box recorders have been tracked down by the defence ministry thanks to data from the first phase of the probe, and a further perimeter for searches has been set up,” said a BEA spokeswoman. The cause of the crash is not known but despite this breakthrough it is unlikely that the boxes will be brought to the surface. General Christian Baptiste, the deputy defence ministry spokesman, said: “This does not mean we are going to retrieve the black boxes, because they are not giving off a signal any more and the zone where they are is very rugged terrain.” Two sophisticated salvage vessels, using miniature submarines, have been scouring a 3,000-square-km area to try to locate the flight recorders of the Airbus A330 plane. Earlier this week, the BEA said it would extend a deep-sea search for the wreck of the plane and that the new search would cover a broader expanse of ocean. The headline given to the story by the BBC and others is very misleading and suggests a very poor standard of journalism and even worse sub-editing. |
It's just junk journalism. See the main thread for a more detailed discussion.
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Well, in defence of the OP they are found, just not recovered.
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They are only "found" if their position is positively identified to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
A 3x5km search site is nothing more than a targetted area. Not a "location" of a "find". Big difference. Very very big. If they find the box(es) then they can almost certainly recover them. Not easy. Very difficult in fact, but doable once you have genuinely "found" the items. The boxes have not been found. That should have been mentioned in those misleading news stories today. |
The fact is, that the sonar recordings of the french submarine, which scanned the area last year right after the crash, were again analysed with more sophistcated methods/software. Now they seemed to have heard the signals of the boxes and could reduce the possible position to an area of only 25 squarekm, which makes another search much easier. But the mentioned terrain is very rough ( like the alps ), so it could be very difficult to locate at least small items of the wreck. Lets see..
skadi |
The 'not recoverable' statement is very strange indeed.
For that to be the case there would have to be some local impediment, (depth is irrelevant), and given that they are merely ascertained a location zone it is impossible to have established that such an impediment exists. :confused: |
Given the terrain of the focused search area is reportedly so tricky, it does lend some credence to the reasoning as to why nothing has been found to date. If this area is one of those known to be extremely mountainous (and there's no reason to believe it is not) then I'm (at last) hopeful some real progress is now possible.
Searching in and around a 5-6km sq targeted area seems eminently more likely to turn up "something", than tooling around 6000km sq (or whatever the most recent search area was supposed to be. Given the (somewhat) limited knowledge I have of acoustics processing, it does not surprise me that it would take a very long time to re-process the original acoustic data - I imagine there were hundreds of hours of recordings, and processing that amount of data would be time consuming. - GY :8 |
Originally Posted by SLFguy
(Post 5677785)
The 'not recoverable' statement is very strange indeed.
For that to be the case there would have to be some local impediment, (depth is irrelevant), and given that they are merely ascertained a location zone it is impossible to have established that such an impediment exists. :confused: It will be fascinating to find out (assuming we will) where the new zone is and whose predictions (if any) of impact point were correct. Must admit i am slightly bemused by the timing - this result having turned up just after completing a long and expensive search phase. So the analysis must have happened in parallel - which makes not a lot of sense, unless they had no confidence in the new analysis. Or maybe military classification of data/results has got in the way somewhere. |
There is new press release from BEA.
Press release, 6 May 2010: Update on the sea searches |
BEA Update
Press release, 6 May 2010: Update on the sea searches
From the BEA Web Site The French Navy Staff Headquarters this morning provided the BEA with the results of the latest analysis of the audio recordings made by the submarine Emeraude during the first phase of underwater searches. These results were obtained very recently and made it possible to define a zone of a few dozen square kilometres in which the airplane wreckage may be found. Given this latest information, the BEA has decided to extend the searches to this zone. It is in fact situated two hours sailing time to the south of the position of the ship that is currently exploring the area north-west of the last known position of the airplane. Searches will begin there tomorrow morning. In relation to these developments, the BEA will provide an update on the situation in its offices at Le Bourget on Monday 10 May between 14 h and 15 h. Journalists who wish to attend are requested to confirm their presence as soon as possible to Martine Del Bono, preferably by email. |
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