First Clues in AF 447 Crash

About a month and a half ago I wrote on this blog that I was hoping the search teams would find the black boxes of downed Air France flight 447. To my own surprise, they recovered both boxes last week. Yesterday, investigators were able to have a first look at the data stored in one of the black boxes, but the voice recorder still needs to be analyzed. The families of the people who died in the crash as well as the public will finally know what happened to the A330-200 on June 1, 2009. French investigators confirmed they will be able to fully understand the causes of the crash.

In my opinion, the most surprising development was a telex Airbus issued to all A330 customers today, which stated that there are no recommendations for Airbus's highly successful widebody aircraft. Many of us asked ourselves today: What does that actually mean? And this is the sensational part of today's news - it means that AF 447 did not crash because of any technical difficulties or errors with the fly-by-wire system. This is shocking news. In a good way though for Airbus and everybody who believes in and trusts Airbus's fly-by-wire technology.

After AF 447 crashed almost two years ago, many people - and even experts - believed the jet crashed because of a "stroke inside the plane's computers," as Germany's Der Spiegel wrote in 2009. They assumed the plane's fly-by-wire system shut down, following the icing of the Airbus's pitot tubes, rendering the pilots unable to fly the plane manually. I never believed in this theory as my earlier blog posts about the topic pointed out. Many aircraft have had issues with iced pitot tubes and none of them crashed. It was just not a good reason for a modern, state-of-the art airliner to crash.

But this brings us to the next question: Now what caused AF 447 to go down in early June 2009? Well, it is still too early to know that. We now know more about what didn't cause the crash, but we still do not yet know what caused it. The investigators mentioned today it would take until this summer to come to a final conclusion. There is still a list of numerous reasons for the crash, among them pilot error. Indeed, errors by the crew now seem to be the likeliest possibility. Listening to the voice recorder will answer a lot, if not all, of these questions. While today is a good day for Airbus and the A330, there are still no good answers for the families of those who died on June 1, 2009.

AF 447 Found in Atlantic

To be honest, I was not very hopeful that we would ever hear anything again about AF 447. So you can imagine how surprised and excited I was when I read the news two days ago about a submarine finding parts of the downed A330-200.

AF 447 was en route from Rio to Charles de Gaulle when it crashed into the Atlantic after passing a bad weather front in the ITCZ in June 2009. The emphasis here is on AFTER, not during - contrary to many media reports. Almost two years after the accident, even experts are still unsure about what happened to F-GZCP.

A popular theory is that the Airbus's fly-by-wire system, including all flight computers, broke down, rendering the pilots unable to fly the plane. Based on the automated messages AF 447 sent to the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, this is not very likely. Another theory is that the pilots did not know the aircraft's exact speed, because the pitot tubes were jammed with ice (the plane was flying through a very moist bad weather front) and the Airbus did not receive any consistent airspeed data anymore. The automated messages confirm that this happened. However, this alone cannot be the cause of the crash. Yes, the pilots may not have had exact airspeed data, but they still had over-ground speed information based on GPS. This is not exact, but enough to fly the plane safely in a situation like this.

As in most cases, I strongly believe that many causes led to this fatal accident: Pilots who probably were not very familiar with the aircraft's computers and technology; a stressful and highly demanding situation they were not well trained for and never experienced before; multi-system failure; and it was in the middle of the night, so the crew probably couldn't see anything (contrary to earlier reports, the A330 has a manual horizon, so the crew always knew where up, down, right and left were).

Two years later, important questions remain, which make this accident so mysterious: Why didn't the crew radio to other planes traveling the same route that they were experiencing difficulties? They still had electricity and another Air France jet was directly behind them. A Lufthansa plane directly in front of them. Why did the Airbus hit the water belly first if the crew couldn't control it? Why was the captain not in the cockpit if it was a tricky situation?

Hopefully, in a few weeks from now, we will have answers to these questions. Fingers crossed that the search teams will find the black boxes!

Air France 447 - One Year Later

June 1 marked the first anniversary of the crash of Air France flight 447. One year later we still don't have any answers whatsoever on why the Airbus A330 crashed into the Atlantic. Still, pretty much all scenarios are possible. Most journalists, and some experts, blame the crash on faulty pitot tubes or a bug in the A330's fly-by-wire system/avionics. None of this is confirmed. All is speculation. Even if the pitot tubes were not working correctly - that is not a good reason for a plane to crash. As mentioned several times before, all airplanes are equipped with GPS and still receive above-ground speed information even if the pitot tubes fail. A bug in the fbw system could potentially be the cause, but this has never happened before and would still not explain why no "mayday" signals were sent.

The search for the black boxes is still ongoing and the area where those boxes can be have been narrowed down to twenty-five square kilometers. Still, that is like finding two shoe boxes in an area half the size of Manhattan. However, I am still positive that the black boxes will be found and the mystery will be solved. I still don't really believe any of the current scenarios. Fingers crossed we will know more a year from now.

If you want to read more about the search and a documentary that is currently being produces, please click here.

Reuters: Breakthrough in Air France Crash Black Box Search

Today is a good day - for those who lost relatives and friend in the crash of Air France flight 447 on June 1, 2009, as well as for everybody else interested in aviation. I am very sick of hearing that AF 447 crashed because of turbulence, bad weather or pitot tube malfunctions. I want to know what really happened to the Air France A330 almost one year ago.

The French defense ministry today announced the search teams have found what could be the first concrete clues to the location of black boxes missing from last year's Atlantic jet disaster, but warned on Thursday there was no guarantee the breakthrough would lead to their recovery. This allows experts to narrow the search to a few square kilometers from several thousand ahead of the anniversary of the airline's worst crash.

To read the full Reuters story, please click here.

WSJ - EU Makes Push for Real-Time Flight Data

In the wake of the AF 447 crash last June more and more pilots, aviation experts and policy makers support the introduction of real-time flight data streaming. The International Civil Aviation Organization's global aviation summit will start tomorrow in Montreal, Canada, and the EU's transport commissioner, Siim Kallaswill, will officially endorse such a program. This will mark the first official government endorsement of such data streaming.

To read the Wall Street Journal Article, please click here.