Air France plane missing over the Atlantic

[mirrodie]

YOU TOOK THE WORDS RIGHT OUT OF MY MOUTH!

[MarkLawrence]

I have been reading lots of possiblities all over the place. One of the best ones I read happens to be a blog that I read frequently - Dave is a US Airways A319 pilot - with a lot of experience from all his blog entries. In his words, lightening or turbulence can bring down an aircraft. For those that are interested, his blog is at:

http://flightlevel390.blogspot.com/

[FlyingColors]

As always, we may never know, OR BE TOLD, the truth :roll:

[MarkLawrence]

As always, we may never know, OR BE TOLD, the truth

That's the bottom line......

[Iberia A340-600]

I'm not quite sure what this is about, but this is one of the latest headlines on BBC:

"LATEST:Debris recovered in the Atlantic is not from Air France jet, says Brazilian air force official"

[MarkLawrence]

Here is the link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8083474.stm

THey said they picked up a wooden pallet and the A330 had no wooden pallets - also, the oil slick could have come from a ship - very mis-leading......

[Matt Molnar]

interesting pictures..

http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... e0=&swap=1

http://74.125.159.132/translate_c?hl=da ... incPkksrxA

Gran Canaria is along the flight path, but about 1500-1800 miles northeast of where they think the plane went down. Hmmm.

[Matt Molnar]

They said they picked up a wooden pallet and the A330 had no wooden pallets - also, the oil slick could have come from a ship - very mis-leading......

Brazil this morning claimed they had found a 23 foot long chunk of plane. What's wrong with them?

[Iberia A340-600]

CNN is now reporting that NONE of the debris, including the seat, are from the A330:

On Wednesday, searchers recovered two debris fields and had identified the wreckage, including an airplane seat and an orange float as coming from Flight 447. Officials now say that none of the debris recovered is from the missing plane.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html

[USAF Pilot 07]

WTF? This investigation is turning into a "comedy of errors" so-to-speak... Someone needs to take charge and do it right.

It's all well and nice to speculate on what could have caused the crash. Was it a bomb? Was it lightning? Was it turbulence? We may never know - especially if the black box is never recovered...

The aircraft's flightpath was through a region known as the ITCZ (inter-tropical convergence zone - I was a meteorology major; yes I know a geek)... This region is known as a breeding ground for very severe storms - some of which eventually become cyclonic. Storms in this region can - and do - grow as high as 50,000+'. For a storm to grow that high, it has to have strong updrafts associated with it (overshooting tops are a perfect example of storms with strong updrafts that generally are severe). Mother Nature is a beast and will have her way. With all our modern technology sometimes we feel like we are completely invincible against her - but too many times people find out the hard way that if you f**k with her you more than likely will always get burned and come out the loser.

If it's true the pilot sent back a report that they were entering a cell or cluster of CBs, not only does this point to the fact that the crew probably saw the weather on radar, but had enough visual cues outside to confirm what their wx radar was painting. Flying over the Atlantic like they were, I'd imagine they were following certain tracks at hemispheric altitudes. I would also imagine deviations from these established tracks happen quite regularly due to the frequency of severe storms in these area.

So the question becomes, did the crew try to avoid any type of convective activity they were picking up in-front of them? These were surely experienced pilots, who had probably flown this route numerous times and dealt with weather conditions similar to the ones they were facing that night on previous flights.
This is where all my questions come into play. If they didn't deviate around the storms, why did they choose not to?

Fuel comes to mind. Maybe they ran their numbers, saw how much they would have to deviate, and decided that doing so would put them either too close to minimum fuel or even with not enough fuel to continue to their destination without having to divert.

Experience comes to mind as well. There's a "saying" that the most dangerous pilots out there aren't "new" guys because they are too scared to try anything remotely dangerous or dumb and are usually with someone who will slap them if they try. And the really experienced guys have been scared one too many times to try anything dangerous/dumb again or to let anyone else try it. It's the guys who are mid-level with enough experience, who get into a routine and who get comfortable, but who haven't done anything too stupid to have scared the living $hit out of them, who pose the greatest threat. Being A330 guys, you'd have to think these guys were probably pretty senior, but who knows, they'd probably done the trip many times, maybe had personal factors (i.e. get-home-itis) and thought, "hey this won't be too bad".

There are way too many questions that come to mind to write down here, but all are valid and any one - or more than likely a combination of them - could be the culprit of the crash. If it was in fact a bomb that went off, well then the fate of everyone on that aircraft was sealed the minute they boarded it.

It's always easy to Monday morning quarterback any incident involving two HUMAN beings charged with a job of safely operating a multi-million dollar piece of equipment through the skies, sometimes filled with as many as 300 people. Criticism and critique are necessary to an extent after any flight - if we just shrugged off any incident we wouldn't really be doing a good job of trying to mitigate future similar accidents from occurring. But jumping to rash and/or radical conclusions is not. Hopefully in due time, and with due process we will learn of all the facts (namely CVR transcripts/FDR information) and be presented with a logical and solid conclusion of what caused this aircraft to crash. In turn we can all learn something from it, and prevent future similar occurrences from happening.
My guess is that if it wasn't an explosive device, pilot error will probably end up being the main culprit (as it is with most crashes).

[T-Bird76]

WTF? This investigation is turning into a "comedy of errors" so-to-speak... Someone needs to take charge and do it right.

Two simple reasons for this....France and Brazil.

[Matt Molnar]

Very interesting insight, Clark.

Tom, agreed. Brazil especially...their recent history of post-crash information distribution (see Gol 1907) is abysmal.

Latest theory: the plane broke up due to an overspeed condition resulting from an airspeed indicator malfunction, perhaps due to ice.

Airbus, apparently deducing some strong theories about what happened from those automated messages, today issued an advisory to operators of all its aircraft, reminding them to follow established procedures when pilots suspect airspeed indicators are not working correctly.

:arrow: Clues Point to Speed Issues Before Air France Crash [NY Times]

[Matt Molnar]

Here's another, more detailed story about the pitot tube theory, and a history of accidents involving pitot tube problems.
:arrow: Jet Sensors Are Probed in Brazilian Air Crash [WSJ, no login needed]

[Matt Molnar]

Flight 447s ACARS messages:

[Tom_Turner]

Sorry to say, but there may never be a trace found of this airliner or anyone/anything that was on it.

In defense of Brazil & French authorities, the media is desperate for hourly and daily updates. Everything that *might* be or mean something is getting thrown out there before it has a chance to be vetted .... These guys need some time, and again, they may never find *anything*.

Gone... like Amelia Earhart.

Tom