AF447 is being rerun in flight simulators by other Airbus operators

Crikey.com.au ^ | June 12, 2009 | Ben Sandilands

[SunTzuWu]

"After several attempts at this with all results being equal one could not see AF447 sending out any distress signals if this is what happened to them."

It's going to upset the conspiricy folks here but it's looking less and less like a "man made disaster" and more like structural failure.

[Aroostook25]

It does not however explain why the jet was flown into such a violent storm cell when flights all around it were navigating through them without issues.

Maybe professional and experienced pilots were not flying the aircraft.

[MortMan]

There is always a reason for structural failure. If this was catastrophic failure attributable to a design or manufacturing flaw - then Airbus has a problem (so does Air France).

If it was due to some other event that caused the structural failure, then the other event needs to be identified.

Man made or not, there was no reason for this airplane to fall apart.

[SunTzuWu]

Maybe professional and experienced pilots were not flying the aircraft.

Air France spokeswoman, said the highly experienced pilot had clocked 11,000 flying hours, including 1,100 hours on Airbus 330 jets.

[Tuketu]

In a very detached way, DEBKAfiles stated that there was a chance of terrorism before the French sent their equivalent of MI6 sans Clouseau, to Brazil. Then the names of the two terrorists. Where is the scenario with the Terrorists accidentally detonating a device before they reached Paris. Then again there was the prior threat against Air France in Argentina the Friday before.. coincidence I guess.

[Aroostook25]

Air France spokeswoman, said the highly experienced pilot had clocked 11,000 flying hours, including 1,100 hours on Airbus 330 jets

My point is that maybe that pilot was NOT flying the aircraft. Maybe some Muslims were.

[schu]

How many pitot tubes are on an aircraft? It would seem that airspeed is a pretty important measurement, should one expect that there are a number of redundancies for this input? It is hard to believe that “icing” was an unknown possibility.

Surely there are good answers to these questions, I feel foolish even asking them. Is the media brain dead?

schu

[SunTzuWu]

I can’t find the source but I read here on FR that investigators have already looked into the two terrorist names and concluded that the two passengers had similar names and were in fact just passengers.

[SunTzuWu]

From the article.

Air France also confirmed three days after the crash that the externally mounted pitots and static points manufactured by Thales had been found faulty in a serious of inflight incidents, leading the airline late in April to decide to replace all of them by the end of June.

[Dan Middleton]

"My point is that maybe that pilot was NOT flying the aircraft. Maybe some Muslims were."

And maybe winged monkeys will fly out of my butt and break-dance.

[schu]

I saw this, maybe they should have expedited the replacement schedule.

Nonetheless, what is the backup system if the input for airspeed fails? Can they estimate using GPS?

Very strange.

schu

[patton]

No - GPS measures speed over the earth.

The air moves, so airspeed is another thing, altogether.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Agreed.The verticle fin looks to have broke off from the base of its mount to the fuselage.I guess the pilot was dancing on the rudder pedals again.Sheesh.

[schu]

No - GPS measures speed over the earth.

Yes of course, foolish question on my part.

Txs, schu

[ArmstedFragg]

Did you notice in the photos that the rudder was slammed over to about 45 degrees? Don’t know whether that happened in the course of picking it up, or if that’s the way they found it.

[patton]

This is the telling bit -

“Updrafts take the aircraft up to FL 370 and produces a negative G of 0.2. The aircraft then enters severe downdrafts and the rate of descent averages more than 19,000 fpm [feet per minute]. The instinctive reaction is to pull on the stick to arrest the rate of descent. The aircraft shakes and buffets violently. The G force on the [pilot display] reads +5 but the instructor’s panel shows +8. The aircraft breaks up in flight around 20,000 ft. “

That aircraft can not withstand an 8-G pull out. It would bust in half.

Who knows what really happened - but the Airbus instrument system looks bad, in all the reports.

[2111USMC]

Smacking the water at 200+ MPH could have done it, too. I don’t think it tells us much.

[2111USMC]

However Air France has not explained why it initially blamed lightning as a possible factor in the disaster or claimed, incorrectly, that the ACARS messages recorded unprecedented electrical faults and short circuits.

This threw up the biggest red flag to me. The reports of electrical failures went on for a number of days.

[schu]

I am not a pilot, but wouldn't the pilot “feel” 5Gs? Would they be trained not to pull back on the stick given that this could cause catastrophic failure?

Just questions from an interested bystander.

schu

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Yes, I did.Look at the base.Why did the verticle come off almost clean?Remember the bird right after 9/11 that they blamed the pilot for the verticle coming off the bird.Something may be up with the composite material to the metal attach fittings.Do you know why they found the verticle?Its plastic and floats.