Even more curious is why there are no CCTV images of the aircraft that "hit the pentagon", but that, and and a whole load of other Q's,could fill several threads.

Fantastic news that they have found the CVR, if it is readable I suspect it will be of even more value than the FDR. I could imagine Airboos & Air Chance are feeling a little anxious at this moment, as at least one of them is likely to come out smelling of something other than roses.

What would have been the point of sifting minutely through millions of tons of rubble to find two small pieces of equipment that were as likely as not to have been totally useless and unreadable? How much would it have cost, and how long would it have taken? And what would the searchers have had to do about all the other stuff they would come across while they were doing it, including a lot of asbestos and a lot of body parts? What would have been the sense in even trying it?

It's not exactly as if there was any mystery about why those aircraft flew into the World Trade Center.

Name these "many instances".

And if it is the case then the new BEA head would be in his real first test. Would he bend l like his predecessor(s) or would he stand firm behind his staff and publish what must be published ?

The most recent report under the new management I read from the BEA ( the fatal accident of the local Aerobatic world champion ) would indicate that the human aspects reserach was extremely well done and the published conclusions bold and accurate. So I am hopeful, although taking on a French air Force Hero is a bit easier than the 2 you mentioned.

Ballpark figures, but a flight recorder typically is designed to withstand intense fire (1,000C) for about 30min and lower-temperature (250C) for about 10 hours. Plus pressure immersion to twice the depth of AF447.

There are few (if any) cases of aircraft fires burning anywhere near those durations, making the intense WTC fire something of an exception.

It is my feeling that Air France, Airbus, and BEA have spent so much money in an attempt to find the recorders and the wreckage in order to determine the root cause of the accident in order to make all airplanes safer in the future. Will recovery of the root cause open up something like the Applegate memorandum? For those who don't remember, during the trial regarding the first wide body crash with massive loss of life, this memorandum from an executive of Convair, manufacturer of the DC-10 fuselage, came to light:

“My only criticism of Douglas in this regard is that once this inherent weakness was demonstrated by the July 1970 test failure, they did not take immediate steps to correct it. It seems to me inevitable that, in the twenty years ahead of us, DC-10 cargo doors will come open and I would expect this to usually result in the loss of the airplane. This fundamental failure mode has been discussed in the past and is being discussed again in the bowels of both the Douglas and Convair organizations. It appears, however, that Douglas is waiting and hoping for government direction or regulations in the hope of passing costs on to us or their customers.”
An executive writing a memo predicting the accident in the exact way it would happen - could there actually be such a "smoking gun" in the archives of the manufacturer, any of the suppliers, or the airline? I only hope we don't find that something happened to the aircraft early in the event that cut off data delivery to the recorders that hampers finding the root cause of the accident. Walkingthe site of the TK 981 flight crash site near Senlis, France, many times and adding parts of the aircraft I discovered to the collection that is always surrounding the memorial never made me reluctant to fly in DC-10s. I actually felt safer knowing the aircraft in which I was flying was safer due to findings and improvements as the result of its mishaps. Having made over 100 trans-Atlantic crossings in DC-10s before NWA switching, then dozens of those same transits in A-330s before I retired, I look forward to Airbus/Air France/BEA being able to find enough information to make any further transits safer. Already we have the improved procedures the flight crew should follow if they see questionable data, plus the hardware changes. Instead of coverups and downsides, I look at the efforts being put out as making air travel safer for us all.

NWA SLF : very well said :D
I also sincerely hope that the new BEA management will differ from what we were used to in the past and that truly the aim is , as you rightly said, to make air travel safer as a result.

Britfrog wrote:

Why not? Can all other other aircraft survive unlimited turbulence and never need to divert around weather? I don't think so.

For those interested:

skidbuggy,
Nice one.
Also explains where some of the earlier 'photos' came from, with everybody taking photos (and movies) of the screens.
Odd that Phoenix did not have enough 'stuff' at hand to get instant 'video caps' (snapshots) from either the incoming video or the video recordings - look at the discussions about the recorder module P/N and S/N.

And for the conspiracy freaks... note it's the "Gerdarmerie" handling the units, with the BEA team advising on the 'how-to' but otherwise staying completely 'hands-off'.

So what happens next are they going to send the black boxes back to mainland? how? Or they are going to sit on the ship until they are done with the search.

"The BEA reports that a French navy patrol boat will be dispatched to pick both elements up from the Ile de Sein vessel that is conducting the search for debris of the Airbus A330-200...."

AF447 Cockpit Voice Recorder Recovered | AVIATION WEEK

The conspiracy freaks will say it's BEA personel dressed as gendermarie. :rolleyes:

NY Times article

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/ma...ne-t.html?_r=1

@dfish:
thanks for that link - excellent piece of investigative jurnalism

Best they don't see this then, they'll say the whole aircraft is in disguise

Why is the AF447 search using our A321 cutaway? - Flight International

dfish - very good article thanks
Injuries appear very similar to the Trident crash which came down in a deep stall.

dfish - this article must be the best at this time, sensitively written and apparently well researched. there seems to be very little bias there as well.

I'd really like to know what makes that article *excellent*, *best*, *sensitive* (??????????) and *well researched*.

Really. because I haven't found one redeemeing piece of intellectual honesty in it... Just a search for a scoop at any price.
But I'm ready to be convinced, as I think it is a piece of self-serving gutter garbage, and I wonder why you are members of this forum : having seen for two years the investigative work done by the pros on this thread and the results -incomplete by sheer intellectual honesty- achieved by pooling to-gether multiple fields of interests and specialities, achievements that are nothing short of impressive...
A philosopher of the XIX th century would say again :"The more I see people, the more I love my dog ".
I feel the same.

Then - I think - you're in the wrong forum.

Here's the link for you:

Forum du chien CaniForum - Portail

Some people here really think that those who paid for the search did so *to cover up* something? Wouldn't a cover-up have been easier by just saying that the wreckage was lost, end of story?

Edmund

Hi,

I know that is a very old event (the crash of the Caravelle Ajaccio - Nice) ... but what follow is not to shut up the feeling of conspirations when French state and BEA are mixed in a investigation.
Sorry for those who don't understand french .. and also apologise for the disgression ............

Video (TF1 news - main french TV media)
L'enquête du 20h : le secret d'Etat de la Caravelle - Vidéo du journal televise : Le journal de 20h - TF1

http://i.imgur.com/VMRo5.jpg

I wouldnt be surprised if the French tried to blame the poor Brazilians like they did to the Americans over the concorde disaster...

jcjeant,

I do , fortunately , understand French, and thank you for that link.

When we are asked, why conspiracy theories?
why you don't trust the French (or let's be honest ANY govt) to tell the truth?

Et voila !

Not forgetting ( geographically very close) the Itavia DC9, apparently, also the victim of a (French? if I remember the last hypotheses) missile.

Sh1t happens Eh? ( C'est la merde, Non? )

Edited to say, if you don't like conspiracy theories, read "Itavia 870" on wikipedia & ignore, if you wish to continue life as an ostrich.

Those were the 70s and a famous French sentence resumed everything : "la raison d'etat" . You were told and educated in those days that you needed to protect the State, and the State would protect you.

If someone screwed up big in those days, evidence was removed and tainted to fit a "rosier" version exonerating the State.
Fortunately the French people are not very good at keeping secrets or go quiet for years. Justice is not always "aux ordres" and years later generally we get the truth.
For the Nantes collision in 1973 , it took 10 years , for the Caravelle near l' Ile du levant in 1978 it may still take a few more years, ( most probably waiting for a certain ex-minster to die ).

Those times are gone fortunately, and I sincerely do not think this will apply to the 447 inquiry.

Are you aware that most of the 87 passengers at the A320 accident of Straßbourg 1992 died due to cold temperatures on ground and massive SAR "delays" ordered by the "prefecture" to protect the accident area and all possible traces?

Hi,

And it was again the 11/05/2011 on the TF1 main stream (the families ask the open of a new investigation and trial) at 11.10 min in video:
Le 20 heures du 11 mai 2011 - Vidéo du journal televise : Le journal de 20h - TF1

Le Ministre d'Etat

http://i.imgur.com/NftXk.jpg

Thank you Lemurian for your kind personal comments. Looking at your past posts you have often felt that you needed to comment on other posters albiet not realising who any actually are, and I am sure we appreciate this.

Interesting detailed map of the AF447 debris field here:

AF447: Map of the debris field - Flight International

Given the repeated tendency of commercial pilots eg. Korean 007 or Iran AIr 655 to to aggressively pursue missiles and insist on colliding with them, it is understandable that military authorities in every country will insist on short and clear investigations when they serve their political masters :)

I don't think there has ever been such a thing as an honest investigation after a missile shootdown of a civilian airliner, nor can one be expected. The investigation after the Iran Air 655 flight was probably the best one can hope for, and the facts, or at least a fairly plausible version of the facts slowly emerged after a long time and retirement of all concerned.

Edmund

What has this to do with AF447, edmund? Or are you referring to the Italian incident? :confused:

Lonewolf,

It has to do with french accident reports - if the military are involved the reports will be trash - but that appears to be the case in every country on the earth.

I live in France, and I think the the AF 447 report will be clean, since it is locally visible that extraordinary measures are being taken in order to get hold of some facts. At the very least, the facts will be used to make future flights safer.

I do remember that in the past even the FAA has occasionnally been overly cooperative with the aircraft industry, to the extent sometimes of not explicitly enforcing safety-related design changes. The unsavory story of the well-understood, recurring, and ultimately deadly DC10 cargo door issues is related on Wikipedia.

The French are not known for understatement, which is why one of the final paragraphs of the Ermenonville report (p50) is a striking indictment:
Of course it is quite possible that in the case of the Pitot probes they should have remembered this sentence themselves :)

Edmund

No inflight break-up mentioned by one writer
 

No inflight break-up? Hmmmmm what about that nasty little
vertical stab then? Remember turbulence and New York plus the possibility of a lesser experienced crew pressing on through a storm system (captain could have been in his sleeping pit?)

Questions questions questions.

Let's see what the French authorities come up with.

YW, I think you are right that the captain wasn't in the cockpit, but taking his rest period. Can someone tell us again what experience the two FO's in the cockpit had if the captain was taking his break? If it was a pitot static failure it would take a damn good pilot to get through that zone using what he had available. Maybe going to GPS ground speed for a while until they sorted it out. I only did one trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil and that convinced me I didn't want to do any more. You leave your cockpit to have no control for a couple hours would require a lot of confidence in your crew. I had confidence in them but still didn't like it. Only did it once so am not an authority on the subject.

Captain:
10,988h, on type 1,747 (1,093 A330, 654 A340)
16 rotations South America sector

1st FO:
6,547h, on type 4,479 (1,882 A330, 2,597 A340)
39 rotations South America sector
"This pilot’s licences allowed him to perform the duties of replacement pilot in place of the captain."[1]

2nd FO:
2,936h, on type 807 (216 A330, 591 A340)
5 rotations South America sector

[1] "The airline’s procedures specify that to be a replacement duty pilot, a crew member must have the same rating as the crew member that he or she is replacing and, in addition, during the captain’s rest period, a pilot with the same license as the captain must be at the controls."

Source: 1st interim report, p. 14-16

Bubber 44, you have the option of chosing your break..............wisely if you know you're heading into a dungstorm.
I've been crossing zillions of times both as F/O and Captain. My elders were always at the control to cross this particular spot and I am doing just the same.

Some I trust and some others I'd be a lot happier knowing they're working in a diner.

If you're in charge, you might as well be in your seat knowing where the tricky spots are.

Absolutely. That pretty well sums it up.

How much time has gone by since the boxes reached the lab for examination? It seems strange that there has been so little news.

IIRC there was a report on the BBC website (I only saw it as part of an RSS feed) that said they wouldn't announce any findings until approx 2012.

This is from CBS: The seven memory cards in each data recorder will be extracted, cleaned, dried and tested to see if they still work. If so data will be copied onto BEA's computers."If the card is in good shape it can be read in a couple hours," Menez said. If damaged, it is impossible to say how long it might take to try to cull information from it, he added.The officials said BEA will provide an update on Monday.