| Author | Message | | gchq | | Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:01 pm Post subject: Brazil says debris from crash jet |
| Brazil says debris from crash jet
BBC
02 Jun 2009 22:47
Brazilian air force pilots have been searching the ocean
Debris spotted by planes in waters 650km (400 miles) off Brazil's coast belongs to a missing French airliner, the Brazilian government has confirmed.
Defence Minister Nelson Jobim said he had no doubt the debris was from the Air France jet carrying 228 people.
A Brazilian search plane saw a band of wreckage along a 5km (3m) strip, Mr Jobim told reporters in Rio de Janeiro. There was no report of survivors.
Flight AF 447 was heading from Rio to Paris when it was lost early on Monday.
The discovery of the debris confirmed "that the plane went down" in the area, Mr Jobim said.
He gave few details of the wreckage, saying only that it included metallic and non-metallic pieces.
Earlier, Brazil's air force said it had spotted an airplane seat, an orange buoy and signs of fuel.
Mr Jobim's words will come as grim confirmation of the worst for the families waiting for news both in Paris and Rio, the BBC's Gary Duffy reports from Brazil.
If it is confirmed that all 228 people on Flight AF 447 are dead, it will be the worst loss of life in Air France's history.
Ships on hand
Naval boats are due to arrive in the crash zone on Wednesday, while three merchant vessels are already in the area, the Brazilian defence minister said
If any bodies are found, they will be transported by ship to the nearest airport, on Brazil's archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, he was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
The defence minister warned that the recovery of the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders could be difficult because of the depth of the ocean.
"It could be at a depth of 2,000m or 3,000m [6,500ft-9,800ft] in that area of the ocean," he said.
He made the announcement after visiting relatives of those aboard the flight, who were being looked after in a Rio hotel by teams including psychological and medical personnel.
France is also sending a research ship equipped with two mini-submarines to the disaster area.
Distress call mystery
Most of the missing people are Brazilian or French but they include a total of 32 nationalities. Five Britons and three Irish citizens are among them.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend a religious service for the families and friends of the missing passengers and crew at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon told the French parliament that the cause of the plane's loss had still to be established.
"Our only certainty is that the plane did not send out any distress call but regular automatic alerts for three minutes indicating the failure of all systems," he said.
Experts remain puzzled that there were no radio reports from the Airbus and they say that such a modern aircraft would have had to suffer multiple traumas to plunge into the sea, the BBC's Adam Mynott reports from Paris.
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Tony Blair - War Criminal
http://www.petitiononline.com/BWCF/petition.html | |  | | gchq | | Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 2:20 pm Post subject: Expert: Air France black boxes may never be found |
| Expert: Air France black boxes may never be found
By FEDERICO ESCHER and EMMA VANDORE – 15:19 GMT +1
Associated Press
FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (AP) — Military planes and ships struggled through high seas and heavy winds Wednesday toward the bobbing wreckage of an Air France jet, while an investigator said the black boxes may never be found in the depths of the Atlantic.
Rescue boats from several nations were sailing toward the site to start the recovery as aviation experts tried to determine why the plane carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday night ended up in the sea.
An airplane seat, a fuel slick, an orange lifevest and pieces of white debris were spotted Tuesday in the ocean about 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.
The floating debris was spread out in two areas about 35 miles (60 kilometers) apart, not far from the path of Flight 447. Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said no bodies had been found and there were no signs of life.
The recovery effort is expected to be exceedingly challenging. Storm season is starting in the are and water depths sink down to 22,950 feet (7,000 meters).
Four boats and a tanker ship were en route to the scene but Brazil lacks equipment to scour the ocean floora Brazilian navy spokeswoman said Wednesday. Brazil was leading the search for wreckage, while France took charge of the crash investigation.
"The seas in the area are high, and that is slowing the arrival of our ships," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We have four divers on the way, but the first of them will not get to the scene until midday Thursday."
The official said if the black boxes are at the bottom of the sea — three miles (five kilometers) deep in some nearby areas — there was nothing the Brazil navy could do as they do not have the special remotely controlled subs needed to withstand the pressure at the ocean's bottom.
If the black boxes have sunk, she said, "We don't have the equipment to look for them."
The sturdy black boxes — voice and data recorders — are built to give off signals for at least 30 days, even underwater, and could keep their contents indefinitely.
Remotely controlled submersible crafts will have to be used to recover wreckage settling so far beneath the ocean's surface.
France dispatched a research ship equipped with unmanned submarines that can explore as deeply as 19,600 feet (6,000 meters), but that ship and another French military ship were not expected to reach the area until the end of the week, French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said.
In Paris, the head of France's accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said he was "not optimistic" that rescuers could even recover the black boxes and investigators should be prepared to continue the probe without them.
"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."
The reason for the crash remains unclear, with fierce thunderstorms, lightning or a catastrophic combination of causes as possible theories. France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved.
French investigators flew to Rio to work with Air France, Airbus and meteorologists to determine what happened — and in particular to study a flurry of messages sent in the last few minutes before the plane lost contact.
The crew made no distress call before the crash, but the plane's system sent automatic messages just before it disappeared, reporting lost cabin pressure and electrical failure.
A French AWACS radar plane and two other French military planes flew Wednesday over the area where debris was found to better narrow down the search zone. A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane — which can fly low over the ocean for 12 hours at a time and has radar and sonar designed to track submarines — was also joining the operation.
Arslanian told reporters at Le Bourget airport north of Paris that the investigation was only beginning and was likely to last long. He said investigators didn't have enough information to determine whether the plane broke up in the air or upon impact with the sea.
In the absence of black box data, investigators were studying the plane's maintenance and other records.
"For the moment, there is no sign that would lead us to believe that the aircraft had a problem before it took off," Arslanian said.
He said investigators did not know the exact time of the accident or whether the chief pilot was at the controls when the plane went down. Pilots on long-haul flights often take turns at the controls to remain alert.
A key possibility is some sort of collision with a brutal tropical storm in the area that sent winds of 100 mph (160 kph) straight into the jet's path.
The man in charge of the investigation, Alain Bouillard, said the French accident agency BEA would submit its first preliminary report by the end of June.
While some experts questioned whether a bolt of lightning was enough to bring down the Airbus A330, Mary Schiavo, former inspector general for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said it was plausible.
"For this plane, the difference could have been if the lightning hit a fuel tank or got inside and took out the electrical system," Schiavo said on CBS' "The Early Show. "It's like an atom bomb."
Towering Atlantic storms are common this time of year near the equator — an area known as the intertropical convergence zone. But veteran pilots said it was extremely unlikely that Flight 447's crew planed to fly right through a killer storm.
"Nobody in their right mind would ever go through a thunderstorm," said Tim Meldahl, a pilot who has flown internationally for 26 years. "If they were trying to lace their way in and out of these things, they could have been caught by an updraft."
If no survivors are found, it would be the deadliest crash in Air France's history, and the world's worst civil aviation disaster since the November 2001 crash of an American Airlines jetliner in the New York City borough of Queens that killed 265 people.
On land, hundreds of relatives grieved deeply for those who were lost, a roster that included vacationers, business people, even an 11-year-old boy traveling alone back to England.
Brazil began three days of national mourning Tuesday and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and relatives of the victims were attending an ecumenical service at Notre Dame later Wednesday for the crash victims.
"We will miss your dancing feet," read a tribute from the Northern Ireland family of Eithne Walls, 29, a dancer-turned-doctor. "We will miss your silliness, your wit and your hugs. We will always hold you in our hearts and you are never truly gone."
Emma Vandore reported from Le Bourget, France. Associated Press writers Alan Clendenning and Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Belgium, Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin and Angela Charlton in Paris also contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Tony Blair - War Criminal
http://www.petitiononline.com/BWCF/petition.html | | | | Chui | | Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 7:05 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.cheniere.org
Scalar Weaponry perhaps. I'd like to know who exactly was aboard that plane... | | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:49 am Post subject: |
| I would like to bet an accident! Fly by wire, although there are redundant systems, is no substitute for 'real' controls.
Lightning usually hits the plane at one part, passes out at another part and grounds -
- but I would like to bet this was a million to one chance of striking the wrong part and blowing the electronics - not so sure about the loss of cabin pressure though!
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Tony Blair - War Criminal
http://www.petitiononline.com/BWCF/petition.html | | | | Chui | | Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 2:49 am Post subject: |
| | Using ELF or Scalar Weapons can do the same thing, gchq, and it can be blamed on electricity or a bomb or whatever. Check ret-Lt. Col Thomas E. Bearden's website: www.cheniere.org he has some materials on this. | | | | Cowboy | | Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 2:51 am Post subject: |
| | Quote: | | - but I would like to bet this was a million to one chance of striking the wrong part and blowing the electronics - not so sure about the loss of cabin pressure though! |
Not to mention the pilots in the cockpit crapping their pants when it struck right in front of them...
| | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:58 pm Post subject: Brazilian Ships Search for Air France Plane Debris (Update4) |
| Brazilian Ships Search for Air France Plane Debris (Update4)
Bloomberg
04 Jun 2009
Brazil increased the number of ships retrieving debris from an Air France plane in the Atlantic Ocean as the country’s defense minister ruled out terrorism as the cause of the crash three days ago.
A fourth Brazilian Navy ship joined the search in an area where pieces of an aircraft were spotted by the air force, Lieutenant Henrique Afonso said yesterday in a phone interview from Recife, a city in northeastern Brazil.
The search team, which includes French and Dutch ships, is looking for wreckage in an area with a radius of 200 kilometers (124 miles) to try to discover what caused the Airbus SAS A330- 200 to crash with 228 people on board. Black-box recorders may be lying at the bottom of the ocean, Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said yesterday in Brasilia.
“There are no signs” that terrorism could have caused the crash, Jobim said. “We will work as long as necessary to find the debris. We can’t estimate how long it will take.”
In total, eleven airplanes, two helicopters, and seven ships from five countries are involved in the search, the French military says. Two French ships are steaming toward the area.
Flight 447 was on it way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Debris was found about 650 kilometers northeast of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha island, off the northeastern coast.
More Debris Found
Brazilian planes covered about 177,000 square kilometers (70,800 square miles) and found debris throughout yesterday, the air force said in an e-mailed statement. A piece of metal measuring 7 meters (23 feet) across was found, Colonel Jorge Amaral said in Brasilia yesterday. There are no signs of bodies, he added.
Brazil’s air force said early today one of its aircraft found more debris at three separate points in the ocean. While the objects haven’t yet been identified, one of them was larger and more “significant,” the air force said, unable to provide the size or details of the findings, adding that bodies still haven’t been found.
The French have two Atlantique 2 and one E-3F AWAC patrol planes flying out of Dakar, Senegal and one Falcon 50 based in Natal, Brazil involved in the search. French planes have yet to sight any of the plane’s debris, Christophe Prazuck, a spokesman for the French military, said in a briefing today.
The U.S. has a P-3 Orion patrol plane flying out of Natal and Spain has offered use of a CASA C-212 patrol plane that’s in Dakar on an anti-smuggling mission.
French, Dutch Ships
One French and two Dutch commercial ships in the area are helping to collect debris. French frigate Ventose will arrive this weekend from the Caribbean and the amphibious assault ship BPC Mistral is on alert in West Africa, Prazuck said.
A French research ship, with two unmanned submarines aboard, is being diverted from a scientific mission in the Azores and will arrive in the area June 12.
Investigators said it may take months to determine what caused the crash. A 20-kilometer-long oil slick between Brazilian and Senegalese waters suggests there was no explosion, Jobim said.
The plane may have been flying at the wrong speed to sustain flight in bad weather, French newspaper Le Monde reported today, citing Brazilian press reports. Airbus SAS, the maker of the plane, said it wouldn’t comment until after French investigators report on the crash.
‘Flash of Light’
A Spanish pilot reported seeing a “strong and intense flash of light” on a vertical, descending course in the area and at the time AF447 is suspected to have crashed, according to newspaper El Mundo. The Air Comet pilot, en route from Lima to Madrid, radioed air traffic controllers to report strong electrical storms in an area just north of the equator which forced him to divert from his planned flight path by 30 miles (48 kilometers), the newspaper said, citing a report filed with the carrier.
The plane probably flew into thunderstorms that stretched for 600 kilometers, towered as high as 15,000 meters and may have produced lightning, State College, Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather.com said two days ago.
Some of the plane’s exterior sensors had frozen, French Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said on France’s RMC radio, confirming a report on the Web site of the weekly magazine Le Point. The magazine also said the last transmission from the plane concerned electrical failures.
Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of the French Aviation Accidents Investigation Bureau, said he wasn’t optimistic the black box recorders would be found.
Deep, Mountainous Ocean
“It’s not only deep but mountainous in that part of ocean,” he said in Paris yesterday. “Recorders can be a great help but aren’t essential to an investigation.”
The wreckage may be as deep as 3,000 meters, Borloo said.
The plane has recorders for pilot communications and data such as its altitude, speed and trajectory.
They emit signals for 30 days after an accident, according to French officials. The recorders are actually bright orange, to distinguish them from other equipment in black or gray casings.
Brazilian investigators said yesterday they were still working under the assumption that there are survivors.
To contact the reporters on this story: Heloiza Canassa in Sao Paulo at hcanassa@bloomberg.net; Andrea Rothman in Toulouse, France, at aerothman@bloomberg.net.
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Tony Blair - War Criminal
http://www.petitiononline.com/BWCF/petition.html | | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 2:09 pm Post subject: Air France pilots battled for 15 minutes |
| Air France pilots battled for 15 minutes to save doomed flight AF 447
The Telegraph
04 Jun 2009
Air France pilots battled for up to 15 minutes to save the doomed flight that went missing over the Atlantic this week, electronic messages emitted by the aircraft have revealed.
Air France Airbus A330: Air France confirmed that 'it had no news' of flight
number AF 447 Photo: AFP
Details have emerged of the moments leading up to the disappearance of flight AF 447 with 228 people on-board, with error messages reportedly suggesting the plane was flying too slowly and that two key computers malfunctioned.
Flight data messages provided by an Air France source show the precise chronology of events of flight AF 447 before it plummeted into the sea 400 miles off Brazil on Monday.
These indicate that the pilot reported hitting tropical turbulence at 3am (BST), shortly before reaching Senegalese airspace. It said the plane had passed through tall, dense cumulonimbus thunderclouds.
At this stage, according to a source close to the investigation cited by Le Monde, the Airbus A330-200's speed was "erroneous" - either too fast or too slow. Each plane has an optimal speed when passing through difficult weather conditions, which for unknown reasons, had not been reached by flight AF 447.
Airbus is expected to issue recommendations today to all operators of the A330 model to maintain appropriate thrust levels to steady the plane's flight path in storms.
At 3.10am, the messages show the pilot was presented with a series of major failures over a four-minute period before catastrophe struck, according to automatic data signals cited by the Sao Paulo newspaper, le Jornal da Tarde.
At this time, the automatic pilot was disconnected – either by the pilot or by the plane's inbuilt security system, which flips to manual after detecting a serious error.
It is unclear whether the pilot wanted to manually change course to avoid a dangerous cloud zone – an extremely difficult manoeuvre at such high altitude.
At the same moment, another message indicates that the "fly-by-wire" electronic flight system which controls the wing and tail flaps shifted to "alternative law" – an emergency backup system engaged after multiple electricity failures. This system enables the plane to continue functioning on minimum energy but reduces flight stability. An alarm would have sounded to alert the cabin crew to this.
Two minutes later, another message indicates that two essential computers providing vital information on altitude, speed and flight direction ceased functioning correctly.
Two new messages at 3.13am report electricity breakdowns in the principal and auxiliary flight computers.
At 3.14am, a final message reads "cabin in vertical speed", suggesting a sudden loss of cabin pressure, either the cause or the consequence of the plane breaking up in mid-air.
Despite the precise details, sources close to the investigation contested the chronology and denied that the two computers providing altitude, speed and directional data malfunctioned.
The suggestion that the pilot gradually lost control of the plane appears to counter reports that the plane exploded in mid-air.
These were lent more weight today after a Spanish pilot in the vicinity at the time reported seeing an "intense white flash".
"Suddenly we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, followed by a downward, vertical trajectory which broke up into six segments," the chief pilot of an Air Comet plane from Lima to Madrid told the Spanish newspaper, El Mundo. He has reported his observations to investigators.
Some experts have supported the theory that the plane exploded, given the wide area where debris has been found.
However, Brazil's defence minister, Nelson Jobim, said an explosion was "improbable" given the 13-mile trail of kerosine spotted on the sea. "If we have fuel slicks, it's because it didn't burn," he said.
Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the French air accident bureau in charge of the investigation, also said there were other possible reasons for wide debris area, such as high winds and choppy seas.
Yesterday he warned against hasty "speculation" and said that the search would take time.
Four naval vessels and a tanker are in the area around 400 miles off Brazil's northeastern coast. Some 11 spotter planes are searching for more debris, after finding a seat and a 23-foot metal object thought to be part of the fuselage. A French mini-submarine will arrive in the zone next week.
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Tony Blair - War Criminal
http://www.petitiononline.com/BWCF/petition.html | | | | gchq | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 1:27 pm Post subject: Airbus warns airlines after Air France crash |
| Airbus warns airlines after Air France crash
Reuters
05 Jun 2009
PARIS, June 5 (Reuters) - Airbus (EAD.PA) has warned airline crews to follow standard procedures if they suspect speed indicators are faulty, suggesting that technical malfunction may have played a role in this week's Air France (AIRF.PA) crash.
Investigators know from the aircraft's final batch of automated messages, which were sent over a three minute period, that there was an inconsistency between the different measured airspeeds shortly after the plane entered a storm zone.
The Airbus telex was sent to customers of its A330s late on Thursday. An industry official said such warnings are only sent if accident investigators have established facts that they consider important enough to pass on immediately to airlines.
The recommendation was authorised by the French air accident investigation agency (BEA) looking into the disaster. It has said the speed levels registered by the slew of messages from the plane showed "incoherence".
Airbus said its message to clients did not imply that the doomed pilots did anything wrong or that a design fault was in any way responsible for the crash.
"This Aircraft Information Telex is an information document that in no way implicates any blame," Justin Dubon, a spokesman for Airbus, said on Friday.
The Air France A330-200 was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it suffered a rapid succession of technical problems after hitting turbulence early on Monday and almost certainly plunged into the Atlantic. All 228 people on board died.
Brazilian authorities hunting for the plane said on Thursday that flotsam scooped from the sea about 1,100 km (680 miles) northeast of Brazil's coast, was not from the Airbus A330, as previously reported.
Searchers have found several debris sites spread out over a 90 km (56 miles) zone and boats in the area are trying to pick it up to ascertain if the plane really did come down there.
BLOCKED SENSORS?
More than 300 aircraft similar to the missing Air France (AIRF.PA) jet -- an Airbus A330-200 -- are in service worldwide.
Investigators do not know if Flight AF 447 was travelling at an incorrect speed as it crossed a storm cluster.
An aviation expert, who declined to be named, said the plane's airspeed sensors, called pitot tubes, work on air pressure and might provide incorrect readings if they get obstructed by objects such as ice.
The tubes are heated to prevent icing at high altitude and there was no immediate information on what went wrong.
If pilots believe the flawed readings are right, they might mistakenly alter their speed, jeopardising their plane.
Airbus said the correct procedure when confronted by unreliable speed indications was to maintain thrust and pitch and start trouble shooting.
The Airbus telex has revived a long-standing debate among pilots over whether the Airbus planes are overly complex.
"This is a plane that is conceived by engineers for engineers and not always for pilots," Jean-Pierre Albran, a veteran pilot of Boeing 747s, told Le Parisien newspaper.
"For example on a 747, the throttle is pushed by hand. You feel it move in turbulence. On recent Airbuses, this throttle is fixed. You look at the dials. You don't feel anything."
Aviation experts have speculated that the Air France plane was brought down by a chain of problems, with strong turbulence and stormy weather almost certainly a factor. Officials have played down any suggestion of terrorism. (Additional reporting by Fernando Exman and Brian Ellsworth in Brazil; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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Tony Blair - War Criminal
http://www.petitiononline.com/BWCF/petition.html | | | | Cowboy | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:29 pm Post subject: |
| | Not good news for Airbus... | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
