Air France 447 crash.....possibly found after 2 years

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/04/04/france.jet.wreckage/index.html?hpt=T1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/europe/05brazil.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/04/04/france.jet.wreckage/index.html?hpt=T1

If the main wreckage is found, I hope the black boxes can be recovered. Would they still be ok after 2 years?

"At a spot no farther than six miles north of the last known location of Air France Flight 447..."

6 Miles North of it's last known location and it took 2 years to find the wreckage? Seems like the original search would've covered that relatively small area pretty well.

When it's that deep and that rough of terrain (they equated it to the Alps), I'm not surprised. It's not like you have great visibility and can walk around with ease to see the wreckage. I really hope they can bring this case to a close, very mysterious what happened.

I read that they focused the search too far away, covering a huge part of the ocean... just not the right part. Also, the article I read said that it was where an oil slick was spotted from satellite immediately after the crash.

The latest....landing gear, engines, wings and fuselage all found

[video]http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/04/04/durgahee.air.france.wreck.cnn[/video]

In early May search teams found the crucial "data recorders" from the wreck site, estimated to lie at a depth of between 2,000 to 4,000 meters (6,562 to 13,124 feet).

The aircraft experienced some "rolling" before stalling and then descending rapidly into the ocean. The descent lasted 3 minutes and 30 seconds and the engines remained operational, said the report. It plunged at 10,912 feet (3,300 meters) per minute.

Thats scary shit.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/05/27/air.france.447.crash/index.html?hpt=T1

There's still a ton of questions to be answered here. The take away thus far is even something benign as loss of airspeed can become a big deal when redundant systems fail, with a dash of bad weather, to boot.

The engines never flamed out, the wings were still capable of making lifties; maybe i'm being obtuse, but what they are saying caused this accident doesn't seem like it adds up. The pitot's may have been screwed, but VSI's and Altimeters were still working. The pilots knew they were at 10000 feet and descending, from the CVR. Where in all of this does the airbus's HAL 3000 come in? Early reports were that the pilots tried to turn it off and reboot it before water impact, but I haven't heard anything about that lately. Airbus's PR machine is in overdrive, now that the black boxes are being examined.

I'd bet 3 very experienced aviators had the wherewithal to keep the blue side up, fly known combinations of power and attitude, and ride it out to somewhere VMC. The computer...not so much.

It sounds like the static stuff was fine; the pilots knew they were passing thru 10000 feet on the way down. I assume their primary attitude indicators were still working fine, but that's just swag.

I don't know, it just seems like a really experienced crew to get beaten by something as JV as a pitot failure. No airspeed/ stall warnings going off and they continue to pull back? eh...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/tec...really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877 Popular Mechanics account of the last minutes of the flight.

CRM. It keeps you alive.

when i was reading around the end of the summer, what I understood was that alternate law had taken affect. The computer assumed the attitude vs airspeed was invalid and turned off the horn. The pilots attempted to put nose down inputs and the stall horn would come BACK on. I can see how that is really conflicting. In the end it stinks though because experience is supposed to trump and you think someone would say, "I'm not going to believe that because I know that if I point this nose down it works and I get airspeed. Screw that clicking thing...." But that is easy for me to sharpshoot from the armchair.

Edit: just read that PM article, yep guy just held the stick back. not much to do with alternate law, oh well.

Yet another reason Airbus should always be avoided. They tend to establish a pattern of killing people because of their computers do they not? The holding the stick back part kind of reminds me of the Buffalo Colgan flight.

Strange that the control system is built so that a) one pilot's inputs can't be felt through the opposite controls and b) that the computer averages the inputs of the two controls to give one single output.

I was thinking the same thing. I guess there has to be a breakdown of CRM to begin with for both pilots to be putting in different inputs, but it definitely would make more sense to have the controls linked.

An ignorant statement from someone who has never flown a transport category aircraft. My airline flies the A330. there is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft. It just takes good systems knowledge and proper training so the unique characteristics of the aircraft are known.

You're right I know very little about Airbus, but it doesn't take an expert to see they've had some pretty serious design flaws. I agree that you have to have the proper systems knowledge and training for your aircraft, but it just seems like some unnecessary variables are added with Airbus. You can obviously train to fly them safely, but why would companies want to spend the extra money teaching pilots to transition to something unconventional, not mention incurring the extra risk?

As far as Colgan, the two are similar in that both pilots seemed to ignore the airplanes' warnings and the most elementary aviation knowledge by continuing to pull back.

Quit talking out of your ass about design flaws until you've flown double-digit aircraft types.

Not planning to fly Harriers or F35B then? Or helicopters or anything with a tailhook. You'll get familiar with the phrase that NATOPS is written in blood. It's no different in non-tactical aircraft. Although "they" really do have most of the stuff that will kill you nailed down, the apparently preventable tragedies WILL happen on the way forward.

And for the safety nerd herd, of the 80% of mishaps that are caused by human factors, 70% of those are caused by latent organizational weakness as opposed to the individual error we all think about when we think about human factors. This is what we're talking about here, proper training on the organizational level with proper procedures in place to make the pilot smarter than the system before he ever takes it out into the real world. [/nerdout]

This would have been a great place to stop. Since you obviously have no background, knowledge or experience in the certification process (our's or Europe's) you may as well quit on your whole "design flaw" theory right here.

I agree with you, although I'm curious... Are there any FBW wide bodies that the control yokes don't move independent of each other? I only ask, because it seems as though if they did move together, it would be something to add to the crew's CRM decision making process... You know, "dude, the yoke is pushing against my belly, why don't you push it forward dumb ass?"