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Things are starting to come to light, this from A Sky news blog:

 

Air France Flight A447. The Last 4 Minutes. Tim Marshall

June 02, 2009 5:07 PM

 

 

I've just got this from someone I trust. It originates within Air France. Translation below;

 

'The ACARS messages of system failures began to arrive at 02:10Z. Indication was that the

autopilot had disengaged and the fly by wire system had changed to alternate law. Between 02:11Z and 02:13Z a flurry of messages regarding ADIRU and ISIS faults arrived. At 02:13Z PRIM 1 and SEC 1 faults were indicated, at 02:14Z the last message received was an advisory regarding cabin vertical speed."

 

"Received 4 minutes of automatically triggered satcom transmission from the plane, cascading systems failures, electrics, depressurization."

 

I ran this past an expert. It confirms the theories doing the rounds. It says the plane automatically sent the messages. These are not verbal messages from the pilots. A sudden event caused the autopilot to disengage. The 'cascade' is one system after another failing within seconds of each other. That included the cabin pressure. This suggests the pilots would have had little or no time to attempt to do anything.

 

The advisory on 'cabin vertical speed' is the last message. It may be an automated 'ping' but it still manages to be chilling. The expert says the the fact that the messages were sent out over a four minute period concurs with significant parts of the plane, especially the ****pit, still being intact as the different parts of the signalling computers would have to be attached to the mainframe.

 

http://blogs.news.sky.com/foreignmatters/Post:0fc148fa-4542-4246-99e7-c0a8824562e6

 

Just a bit of clarification on a few points:

 

1. The autopilot can be disengaged manually (quite unlikely in this situation)by a fault within some of the parameters feeding the autopilot (which could indicate damage to avionics and therefore lightning strike, or if the aircraft encounters turbulence so severe it cannot maintain the commanded flight path (which would lend weight to the turbulence causing inflight break-up theory)

 

2. ADIRU is the air data inertial reference unit. It supplies a lot of information regarding airspeed, altitude and inertial data (for positioning) to the autopilot. A fault with it could be caused by lightning. I'm not familiar with the ADIRU system in an airbus, but there would have to be more than one and if both failed, the autopilot would disconnect. ISIS is a standby display in the ****pit, not sure what this has to do with anything.

 

3. The 'cascade' indicates an in flight break up as many systems were damaged or destroyed simultaneously. Cabin vertical speed confirms this. Basically the cabin altitude would have gone from c8,000ft to whatever the aircraft was cruising at when the aircraft broke up.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL21012520

 

Interesting... Lufthansa are 'subscribed' to receive updates on weather, dangers etc yet the AirFrance wasnt'...

 

Weather updates will only get you so far, they will only tell you what weather you can expect in a certain area. The Air France pilots would certainly have known there were large thunderstorm cells in the ITCZ when they left Rio. When it comes to actually finding a path through them you're totally reliant on the weather radar, which all commercial aircraft have, and whatever information you can gather from looking out the window.

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I seem to remember a plane ditching near a pacific island, where survivors walked to the beach (about 10 years ago?) - also the Hudson event. Are there any other incidents of ditiching in the sea where anybody has survived? A potential urban myth I've heard is that there is zero chance of surviving if the plane goes down in the sea.

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I seem to remember a plane ditching near a pacific island, where survivors walked to the beach (about 10 years ago?) - also the Hudson event. Are there any other incidents of ditiching in the sea where anybody has survived? A potential urban myth I've heard is that there is zero chance of surviving if the plane goes down in the sea.

 

 

50 people out of about 175 survived that, off the East Coast of Africa. The plane had been hijacked by some retarded hijackers and ran out of fuel. Think it's the incident you are refering too. There haven't been that many ditchings on water and in most cases, there are few survivors.

 

If this was an inflight break-up there is 0% chance of any survivors.

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  • 1 year later...

Apparantly, bodies have been found still pretty much intact, strapped into their seats. The cold of the Atlantic and the depth has prevented much decay. Lets hope they can finally solve this mystery. Horrible seeing those photos, the A330 is a stunning plane too.

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Apparantly, bodies have been found still pretty much intact, strapped into their seats. The cold of the Atlantic and the depth has prevented much decay. Lets hope they can finally solve this mystery. Horrible seeing those photos, the A330 is a stunning plane too.

 

Presumably rather wrinkly though one would imagine.

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