AF447 Plane Accident

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Originally Posted by MattGarner

From what I know it was Brazil, France and Spain? Not sure though. I know USA was helping via satellites.

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Well from what i hered it ws USA via satelities Brazil, Spain was checking over their radar space and saw nothing!
France are sening 2 submrines 2 try get bodies nd the black box, and Senegal have sent shipsownd by france to help search

Huge problem is that if there waves head into one direction things may land on beaches along west Afria or amoonmgst the Carribean islands/South America

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Originally Posted by omgMatt

Could have been me flying home a day earlier on Sunday morning.. :O

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But you was flying home from flordia and not with air france and no-were near brizal...

Lost jet data 'may not be found'

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French aviation officials have said they may never find the flight data recorders of an Air France jet that went missing over the Atlantic.

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Originally Posted by Sad3k..

Well from what i hered it ws USA via satelities Brazil, Spain was checking over their radar space and saw nothing!
France are sening 2 submrines 2 try get bodies nd the black box, and Senegal have sent shipsownd by france to help search

Huge problem is that if there waves head into one direction things may land on beaches along west Afria or amoonmgst the Carribean islands/South America

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Maybe but I been told it takes many months for things to float across the other side of the Atlantic. :(

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A BOMB threat was called in on an Air France flight from Brazil to Paris just days before the airliner lost a jet over the Atlantic ocean. The threat was made on May 27 and forced Bueno Aires airport officials to delay the French carrier's flight. The Air France jet was inspected but cleared for take off.

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This is from The Sun, so be cautious.

Terrorism hasn't been ruled out but no terrorist organisation has claimed responsibility yet, which is rather unusual considering terrorists are usually quick with confessing.

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Originally Posted by Josh1540

This is from The Sun, so be cautious.

Terrorism hasn't been ruled out but no terrorist organisation has claimed responsibility yet, which is rather unusual considering terrorists are usually quick with confessing.

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Indeed. Normally someone will say they did it, but like you said no one has that we know of.

Information on the messages they got:

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The last contact with the aircraft was at 02:14 UTC,[3] four hours after take-off, when its avionics automatically transmitted several messages via ACARS indicating multiple systems failures.[10] The first of these messages, at 2:10 UTC, reportedly indicated that the autopilot had disengaged and the fly-by-wire computers had switched to an alternate program used in the event of multiple system failures. Next, the aircraft transmitted several messages indicating failures of the Air Data Inertial Reference Unit, the Integrated Standby Instrument System (a backup system providing basic flight instruments), and two of the three flight control computers.[citation needed] The final message received, at 02:14 UTC, indicated a possible cabin depressurization at location [show location on an interactive map] 3°34′40″N 30°22′28″W / 3.5777°N 30.3744°W / 3.5777; -30.3744.[11][12][13]

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Plus:

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"It is not only deep, it is also mountainous," he said. "We might find ourselves blocked at some point by the lack of material elements."

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Also today, ABC News has confirmed that Air France received a bomb threat over the phone concerning a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Paris days before Air France flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean Sunday night.

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The question is - if a bomb did explode, it must have only been fairly small - just enough power to cause a rupture/hole in the fuselage, which could have severed some important wiring and obviously led to depressurization. This would have also caused the ACARS to report the messages about autopilot disengagement and cabin depressurization. If the bomb caused the entire aircraft to break up during the explosion, then the ACARS wouldn't have sent the messages as it would have been destroyed?

Air France have also published some more details about the crew and passengers:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090603/...zil_plane_list

The captain was Marc Dubois (58 years old - joined Air France in 1988 - 11,000 flying hours with 1,700 on the A330), first officer Pierre-Cedric Bonin (32 years old) and first officer David Robert (37 years old). Both first officers had over 9,000 flying hours between them.

On PPrune.org, there is some discussion on resting periods for the crew. The captain may have been relieved by the relief pilot a few hours into the flight, but some believe the first officer was relieved, leaving the captain and the relief first officer on the flight deck during the accident.

They wouldnt be sending submarines unless they were equipped with stuff to grab the actual data recorders. These sort of operations are used by deep sea excavators. Ive seen it on an Air Crash Investigations episode.

Also, the beacons will need to be identified as to the frequency they emit. The first naval ships were to have arrived today to start the recovery operation around the debris area they have identified. Regular boats near the crash site were called in until naval ships were to arrive.

Air France jet debris recovered

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Brazilian navy ships have begun recovering debris from an Air France jet lost over the Atlantic this week, a Brazilian air force official has said.

Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso said the debris will be taken to France, which is leading the investigation into the crash, AFP news agency reported.

Searches have located debris but no flight data recorders or bodies.

In Paris, relatives of passengers have been told that there is no hope of survivors being found.

Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon and chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta briefed the relatives in a hotel near Paris Charles de Gaulle airport where they have been waiting for news.

Mr Gourgeon said the jet, which was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, broke apart either in the air or when it hit the sea.

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"What is clear is that there was no landing," said a support group representative who was at the meeting, Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc. "There's no chance the escape slides came out."

Two Brazilian navy vessels have been combing the area, about 1,100km (690 miles) north-east of Brazil's coast.

Three more Brazilian boats and a French ship equipped with small submarines are expected to arrive in the area in the next few days.

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'Clock ticking'

French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said the priority was looking for wreckage from the plane, before turning the search to flight data recorders.

"The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear," he said.

French officials have also said the recorders, which could be deep under water, may never be found.

Officials have warned that they are far from working out the cause of the crash.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8083474.stm

News on what is believed to have happened:

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Originally Posted by BBC News

The hunt for clues as to the fate of an Air France jet lost in an Atlantic storm has intensified with the arrival of the first Brazilian navy vessel.

French aviation officials say they may never find the jet's flight data recorders, which could be under waters 3,700m (12,100ft) deep.

Aerial searches have not reported bodies but Brazil's air force has seen more, and larger, debris.

The jet was carrying 228 people from Rio to Paris when it was lost.

See a map of the plane's route

Wreckage seen from the air was spread over a 5km area and included a metallic object 7m in diameter and an oil slick stretching over 20km (13 miles).

Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim said the presence of oil slicks could eventually rule out the possibility of a fire or explosion on the plane, Reuters news agency reports.

Meanwhile, an unconfirmed report in a Brazilian newspaper has detailed what it says is the final series of critical failures in the systems on board the Airbus 330.

'Fuselage or tail'

France's minister responsible for transportation, Jean-Louis Borloo, warned that "black boxes" had never been recovered at such depths.

"The sea currents are powerful that far down," he said.

Paul Louis Arslanian, head of France's air accident investigation agency, said: "We cannot rule out that we will not find the flight recorders."

While the flight recorders were designed to send homing signals for up to 30 days after hitting water, there was no guarantee they even survived the impact, he added.

Cascade of messages

According to the report in Brazil's Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, citing an unidentified Air France source, the doomed airliner's pilot first sent a message that he was entering thick black clouds of a type normally associated with violent winds and lightning.

Ten minutes later a series of electronic messages were sent from the plane indicating that the autopilot had disengaged and that a computer on board had switched to an alternative power system.

The controls needed to keep the aircraft stable had also been damaged, the newspaper report says, and an alarm sounded, suggesting the situation was becoming increasingly grave.

This cascade of messages ended with one pointing to a loss of air pressure and electrical failure.

The French authorities who are leading the investigation into the causes of the crash declined to comment.

A US aviation safety expert, Bill Voss of the Flight Safety Foundation, said the Brazilian newspaper account strongly suggested the plane had broken apart in the air without explaining why.

"This is the documentation of the seconds when control was lost and the aircraft started to break up in air," he told the Associated Press.

It is clear, our correspondent says, that the only definitive explanation will come with the recovery of as much debris as possible and, crucially, the flight data recorders.

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Click here for the full article

Looks like theres a VERY slight possibility of retrieving the black boxes at that sort of depth. Shame really..