Air France plane missing?

[Theoddkiwi]

They (320 and 330) are quite different in many aspects and also, the NZ A320 performed a high risk test at too low altitude where recovery was impossible. AF447 was at cruise FL 350.

There was also an anomoly with the aircrafts two Angle of Attack sensors which seemed to stick in one position halfway through the flight. Not long after the crash, Airbus issued a reminder to operators to ensure after painting that the air data sensors were not degraded. This suggests that when the aircraft had been repainted the AOA sensors had also been painted or their masks had not been removed properly causing the sensor to jam.

But ultimately the crew performed an Alpha Floor test at too low an altitude. And they they had no need to perform the test in the first place as it is done primarily only by airbus. The AOA appears to have confused the aircraft and its speed went as low as 80 kts or something as it pitche up to a very very steep climb attitude.

There is no link apart from them both being Airbus A3

[CockpitCat]

This suggests that when the aircraft had been repainted the AOA sensors had also been painted or their masks had not been removed properly causing the sensor to jam.

Thanks for the clarification Theoddkiwi and swissair...this seems like a crash that could have been prevented...lives lost, brand new A320 lost, quite sad, actually...

[Theoddkiwi]

Call me optomistic, but when considering the minimum speed of descent over 4 min from 35000ft would have been quite high, there seems to be an assumption that the aircraft will disintergrate.

I wonder if there is too much expectation that this will happen. Perhaps there is an underestimation of the strength of the airframe and that while probably permenantly damaged as transonic and supersonic speeds, it does not mean it would have broken up by default.

Damage is caused by trying to manouver at these speeds.

What i am saying is just because it appears to have fallen at very high speed in excess of its design limits does not mean it would have fallen apart.

Even if it did fall at high speed the evidence is that it hit the water at a more sedate speed. say 300kts as opposed to 600kts

[swissair]

Air Safety Rules and their fundament

Thanks for the clarification Theoddkiwi and swissair...this seems like a crash that could have been prevented...lives lost, brand new A320 lost, quite sad, actually...

Off topic: Welcome, sadly the thick books on air transport safety rules are all written in blood....Tragic is really if a known fault occurs twice..SR

[swissair]

SR 111 example - Debris

Call me optomistic, but when considering the minimum speed of descent over 4 min from 35000ft would have been quite high, there seems to be an assumption that the aircraft will disintergrate.

I wonder if there is too much expectation that this will happen. Perhaps there is an underestimation of the strength of the airframe and that while probably permenantly damaged as transonic and supersonic speeds, it does not mean it would have broken up by default.

Damage is caused by trying to manouver at these speeds.

What i am saying is just because it appears to have fallen at very high speed in excess of its design limits does not mean it would have fallen apart.

Even if it did fall at high speed the evidence is that it hit the water at a more sedate speed. say 300kts as opposed to 600kts

Yes but even at 300 kts vertical impact the plane would have been pulverized, just look at the shrapnel remains of SR111, earlier in my posts. Here we had entire galley floating half intact, a Vstab and what have not. The only compact solid mass that remains are the engines.

[Evan]

Yes but even at 300 kts vertical impact the plane would have been pulverized, just look at the shrapnel remains of SR111, earlier in my posts. Here we had entire galley floating half intact, a Vstab and what have not. The only compact solid mass that remains are the engines.

Swissair 111 went into a dive, did it not, after losing control at low altitude on an approach attempt with smoke and fire in the cockpit? I don't think you can compare that to a level fuselage impact, and I concur that the impact of A447 was probably during some early stage of recovery and with significantly less force than a dive with thrust. A 275,000lb a/c hitting the ground level at 200kts will create the kind of wreckage we are seeing.

Also your thrust reverser theory shows us that you are now open minded, but still ignores the evidence. Why must you continue to ignore the evidence we have?

[swissair]

Evidence? of what?

Swissair 111 went into a dive, did it not, after losing control at low altitude on an approach attempt with smoke and fire in the cockpit? I don't think you can compare that to a level fuselage impact, and I concur that the impact of A447 was probably during some early stage of recovery and with significantly less force than a dive with thrust. A 275,000lb a/c hitting the ground level at 200kts will create the kind of wreckage we are seeing.

Also your thrust reverser theory shows us that you are now open minded, but still ignores the evidence. Why must you continue to ignore the evidence we have?

Dear Evan, where is evidence. Do we really now know for a fact that AF 447 did a recovery and ditched a tad too hard so to speak? Re Lauda Air, I just throw stones in the lake to wake up all possible brains to turn every stone. In a University it is the same, when break out sessions challenge to seek facts, sometimes make new discoveries. I just do not, repeat, do not buy the BEA report. To me there is something not right here, but, hey, that is only my personal opinion, call me a pessimist or worst, contrarian. We know nothing except that this flight fell out of the sky, basta. Also, the initial DGSE reports, then the two passengers linked to a certain religion etc. and the luggage, also no facts. I maintan, most likely it was a killer device on board. But I am now really sorry for repeating this trash again. So, SR 111 darted right in, pretty vertical at 300 kts...they had a massive cable fire under the cockpit floor where all the CPUs are, the final reports suggest the crew probably had to leave the pit as estimated temperatures have reached multiple 100 degrees Celsius....I try to still figure the FL350 and the 4 minutes......pretty steep one, that decent of AF447 a decent of which we also have no facts really. And to recover, well, maybe they did an emergency decent, idle throts, throwed all out, gear, full flaps, speed brakes and then tried to pull, but maybe systems would no longer allow it. Again, we simply do not know and the boxes are also not up, yet. I suspect they will remain there and this tragic story remains a mystery. I have my opinion though.

[MCM]

There is heaps of evidence! Every piece of the aircraft is putting together a picture of what happened.

You can come up with all sorts of theories as to what might have happened, however as more an more evidence points to one "general" area of likelihood, then we can start to eliminate some of the more outlandish ones.

Do we really now know for a fact that AF 447 did a recovery and ditched a tad too hard so to speak?

No, we do not. We do, however, know that it is a quite likely situation. There are, of course, others.

In my personal opinion (which holds no more weight than Evan or anyone elses) is that this is indeed the most likely situation. For some reason, the aircraft has entered an unusual flight situation, and has descended and ultimately crashed into the ocean, quite possibly in an accelerated stall as they tried to pull out of a dive. I do not think it was a flat spin. I could very well be wrong.

My belief (at this stage, and with the evidence that I have seen) is that it has occurred due to a flight instrumentation malfunction. An airspeed failure, with subsequent aircraft stall, descent, and attempted recovery, would fit this evidence.

Could there have been a bomb? Yes, however very unlikely the cause.
Could there have been an uncommanded thrust reverser deployment? Yes, but, again, very unlikely as the aircraft would not have ended up in the position it did.

What is it about the BEA report that people have an issue with?

Is it the fact that something as simple as an airspeed failure could bring down an airliner? I'm sorry to burst everybodies bubble, but given the right set of circumstances, I FIRMLY belive that yes, it can. A subtle deterioration in the flight instrumentation, along with a dark, stormy night, with an aircraft near its performance limits, and it is a plausible outcome.

The BEA have been fairly factual in their reporting, without giving too much away. The investigators know far more about the situation than they will release in an interim report. But I have seen nothing from them that leads me to doubt the accuracy of anything they have said.

[WhiteKnuckles]

The Crew

MCM: I'm not answering your gibes anymore. That's a game of yours which is a waste of my time.

Not wanting to physically read each page of the 128 some pages in this thread, I tried a search on Marc Dubois' name. Either the search mechanism sucks or this discussion hasn't delved into the history of the people who flew the plane. Some pages on Dubois said he started with this plane in 2007 (month not given). Said he has 1700 hours. Where those hours were is also not given. I'm just wondering what the experience level of the crew was flying in the weather conditions they faced. Given its almost 40 days since the plane disappeared, has the media found time to produce the history of the crew? I assume the data is already in the hands of the French safety researchers, but I take it that data has not been made public?

[Spad13]

MCM: I'm not answering your gibes anymore. That's a game of yours which is a waste of my time.

And why, if I may ask, is your time particularly valuable?

[Evan]

I just throw stones in the lake to wake up all possible brains to turn every stone. In a University it is the same, when break out sessions challenge to seek facts, sometimes make new discoveries. I just do not, repeat, do not buy the BEA report. To me there is something not right here, but, hey, that is only my personal opinion, call me a pessimist or worst, contrarian. We know nothing except that this flight fell out of the sky, basta.

Ok, be fair, I never accused you of throwing stones in the lake to... wake up all the possible brains to... turn every stone. I would never accuse anyone of that.

And I wouldn't call you a pessimist or contrarian, I call you a paranoid conspiracy theorist. But I also realize that you may well be the only one here with any paranormal skills for solving these mysteries, and you may end up proving us all to be fools who cant see the forest for the... stones in the lake.

Still, I'm not buying what you have to offer and you're not buying what the BEA has to offer and the DGAC isn't buying what pilot experiences have to offer and generally this is the problem with the world right now. Nobody is buying.

[CockpitCat]

I did not read the BEA report, but apparently the autopsy results of the recovered bodies have not been taken into account? So presumably there would be another interim report soon which should/might contain more conclusions based on the autopsies, maybe?

[Leightman]

I did not read the BEA report, but apparently the autopsy results of the recovered bodies have not been taken into account? So presumably there would be another interim report soon which should/might contain more conclusions based on the autopsies, maybe?

You need to read the report and then make your post. It is interesting and you don't have to feel compelled to understand every last bit. Forum posts that ignore, or are ignorant of, or which try to disparage the report are not acknowledging the concentrated efforts of a large team of highly trained and motivated people dedicated to discovering the cause of this crash. Ths is not to say that posters who are not privy to or aware of all details regarding AF447 may not provide important clues by means of observation or deduction. But the probability of posting useful information is very low if the post is composed with minimal knowledge of the existing evidence and strongest theories. Please consider this as encouragement and not criticism.

[Leightman]

Impact scenario

....I concur that the impact of A447 was probably during some early stage of recovery and with significantly less force than a dive with thrust. A 275,000lb a/c hitting the ground level at 200kts will create the kind of wreckage we are seeing.

Why leads you do you say "early" in the recovery? If a 275,000 pound plane was flying at 35,000' at 540 mph less than five minutes before impact at sea level, and loss of control and near-overspeed or overspeed are probable for a significant portion of the descent, just to get the wings level, the nose above the horizon, and the descent rate decreased from that of an overspee dive or a fully developed stall, to a relatively low multiple of the sink rate that would break an aircraft apart (total damaged resulting from that plus froward speed) would suggest much of the recovery had taken place. The stall could have been a relatively last minute affair.

A purely hypothetical, very rough guess would be that re-orientation and the pullout attempt began at maybe 12,000' with a nose down attitude of 40 degrees and a speed of near 500 mph, but unfortunately that recovery required 15,000'. And it is entirely possible (due to evidence of yaw rotation) that pilots never re-oriented and consequently remained stalled all the way down. (Mention of sticking AOA vanes was interesting.)

Anyway, why "early"?

[Evan]

Why leads you do you say "early" in the recovery? If a 275,000 pound plane was flying at 35,000' at 540 mph less than five minutes before impact at sea level, and loss of control and near-overspeed or overspeed are probable for a significant portion of the descent, just to get the wings level, the nose above the horizon, and the descent rate decreased from that of an overspee dive or a fully developed stall, to a relatively low multiple of the sink rate that would break an aircraft apart (total damaged resulting from that plus froward speed) would suggest much of the recovery had taken place. The stall could have been a relatively last minute affair.

A purely hypothetical, very rough guess would be that re-orientation and the pullout attempt began at maybe 12,000' with a nose down attitude of 40 degrees and a speed of near 500 mph, but unfortunately that recovery required 15,000'. And it is entirely possible (due to evidence of yaw rotation) that pilots never re-oriented and consequently remained stalled all the way down. (Mention of sticking AOA vanes was interesting.)

Anyway, why "early"?

Early meaning the vestigial stage of a recovery that never actually became a recovery, perhaps the last in a sequence of recoveries, honestly, who knows? It's possible the a/c did experience some degree of overspeed airframe failure before it struck the surface, but in a way that caused the fuselage to impact more or less horizontally. We don't even know if the wings were attached at that point. Do we?