AF447 is being rerun in flight simulators by other Airbus operators

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

[patton]

A plane that big is like a ship on the ocean - what the pilot, on the prow, feels, has little to do with what the guy in the aft restroom is feeling.

Oh, they are not completely unrelated, but at the same time, not the same, at all.

[El Gato]

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.

The simulation had nothing to do with any structural failure, except getting into a sitatution where it could occur.

No indication that anyone tried simulating a structural failure that occurred independent, or mostly so, of proplems with the airspeed instrumentation.

[SunTzuWu]

"The scenario was conducted several times and the results at the end of each scenario produced consistent findings."

And

The aircraft breaks up in flight around 20,000 ft.

This is what I was referring to when I said structural failure.

[zipper]

I agree this is the most likely scenario — meaning an inflight breakup due to loss of control after a cascading series of malfunctions, beginning with the loss of airspeed indications.

Beyond that is mostly speculation. The tops nearby at the time some of the ACARS messages were sent were up to 55,000 feet. Storms like that will certainly produce turbulence and updrafts that could rip an airplane apart. They may or may not have flown into these thunderstorms.

Then again they didn’t have to fly into a thunderstorm in order to suffer loss of control. In darkness at high altitude and turbulence it would be a very difficult to maintain a speed within the ‘coffin corner’. If they got too fast they’d suffer mach tuck, which could have led to an uncontrollable dive. If they got into high-altitude stall buffet they could have suffered horizontal stabilizer damage or fallen into a nose-down position that was unrecoverable.

One thing’s for certain: it was a REALLY horrifying last few minutes for everyone on board.

interesting link with weather analysis:

http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447