Posted on 06/03/2009 7:59:18 AM PDT by Clive
French aviation officials have said they may never find the flight data recorders of an Air France jet that went missing over the Atlantic.
The officials promised a thorough investigation but said the circumstances were very difficult.
Flight AF 447 was heading from Rio to Paris with 228 people on board on Monday when it was lost over the ocean.
Debris has been spotted 650km (400 miles) off Brazil's coast and navy vessels are converging on the area.
Brazilian and French officials said there was no doubt the debris was from the missing plane.
A Brazilian air force plane found more, larger items of debris on Wednesday about 90km (55 miles) south of where other wreckage was spotted, a spokesman said.
"Several objects spread over a 5km (three-mile) radius, including an apparently metallic object 7m (23ft) in diameter and a fuel slick" were discovered, Col Jorge Amaral said.
The French civil aviation officials, at a news conference in Paris, said they hoped there would be an initial report by the end of June.
The officials, headed by Paul-Louis Arslanian, chief of the French civil aviation ministry's bureau of investigation, said there had appeared to be no problems with the flight before take-off.
Mr Arslanian said there would be no speculation and that it was "essential we check and verify everything".
He said: "This catastrophe - which is the worst that our country has witnessed in terms of aviation, took place in a very difficult region... so the investigation will not be easy... but we are not giving up."
Mr Arslanian said the exact time of the accident was not known, nor whether the chief pilot was at the controls.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Did any terrorists take responsibility yet?
I heard on the morning news that they had a threat Air France that is of a bomb a day or so before the flight
Don’t these black boxes emit a ‘ping’ for underwater search? Though with the vastness of the crash area and the ocean as a whole, I can understand the slim likelihood in ever finding it, even with a ping.
Not yet.
Were normally non-dangerous phenomena the culprits?
Possibly.
Turbulence, lightning, etc. are usually handled without a problem. Perhaps this combination was dangerous in the particular case? Perhaps the pilots did not take to confluence of events as seriously as he should have. Other flights had passed through the air before and after him. Maybe it put him at ease when it shouldn’t have.
Is this about the "Black Boxes" or Obama's Birth certificate? Had to ask.
It’s only been a couple of days and the French are ready to surrender. BS, we’ve got to locate the recorders, I think that plane was taken down.
As always, my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it.
It has been reported that the water depth in that area is about 14,000 feet.
With the dept of the water in that part of the ocean, it would be impossible to rescue a lost sub, much less locate and retrieve a tiny black box. The debris floating on the surface may have some clues. There is a small chance they can determine the cause from what they do find. Even quick notes scribed by passengers or phone calls made - if they had time that is. The answer could be still on someones answering machine. I guess we are in a wait and see mode, praying for an answer.
Transoceanic flights should have to carry a black box that would survive a ocean crash and be locatable.
Why isn’t flight data transmitted to a server via satellite in real time? Any thoughts?
I assuming that the U.S. Navy has to bite its tongue in situations like this one.
I’ve wondered that myself.
An aviation expert said the large distance between the wreckage zones might be an indication the plane broke up in the sky well before it hit the water.
First depressurization, and now scattered debris. More evidence pointing to an onboard explosion. It couldn't be anything else. Turbulence and weather do NOT bring down modern airplanes, no matter how severe.
I’d like to add that the British Navy is also capable of doing such a recovery but that ends the list.
They do. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder almost always survive such impacts—they’ve been recovered and successfully read from airplanes that went straight down into land or water at 500+ mph. In Indonesia a couple years back, they pulled the boxes out of a 737 wreck after seven months in 6,000 feet of water and the NTSB got the data from them. They’re equipped with water-activated “pingers” that emit an ultrasonic pulse to help find them—but they only last about 30 days. The big problem is, the ocean floor there is heavily mountainous and the depth is from 12 to 20 thousand feet. “Needle in a haystack” doesn’t even begin to describe what they’re going to have to do.
Oh and trivia—CVRs and FDRs are bright orange, not black. But I guess “black box” sounds cooler. :)
}:-)4
You would need a dish outside the airplane pointed to a satellite at all times. Not practical. It is easier to receive satellite signals than to send.
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