Posted on 06/04/2009 1:26:35 PM PDT by traumer
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.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Sounds like the got turned into a giant ball of St. Elmo’s fire by the T-storms, and then the plasma currents started leaking through every ground fault they could find.
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...
Global warming!
Oh boy. Now the speculations will go into higher gear.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Ping.
It was Senagalese airspace at that point?
In any case, this is a horrible scenario. Prayers for all those poor people.
If you think that's a joke, think again.
And no voice traffic? Something sounds fishy about that.
I don’t think they’ve recovered the “black boxes”, and I haven’t heard that there were any distress calls, so how are they determining this? Pure speculation?
Wow.
No matter what happened I pray for the passengers, crew and families of the flight.
I fly — A LOT — and can picture what happened and what they were thinking in their last moments. My wife and I both know the importance of that “last” statement: “I love you.” It may be our last statement.
But so may be your drive to work — so let the people you love know how much you love them. Frequently.
They were out of range of VHF communications (400 miles offshore). They would’ve had to use HF shortwave, which is borderline useless in thunderstorms—think of your car AM radio. Besides, if things are going to hell in a bucket in the cockpit, the first rule pilots follow is simple: Fly the plane. *Everything* else, including radio, is secondary to keeping the airplane moving forward and not hitting anything.
}:-)4
Actually it looks silly anyway.....
What the hell is wrong with you guys?
This ain’t funny at all — or does mass death just get you your jollies?
Huh. Failures in air data inputs can give erroneous airspeed indications and kick off the autopilot. I’m not familiar with this aircraft though...
This could have been wind shear: i.e. the plane was flying into a strong headwind and then suddenly found itself in a tailwind. This is what caused the Delta crash at D/FW back in the 80's.
However, the Delta plane was on final approach to the airport near the ground. This plane was presumably at high altitude and cruise speed, although they may have slowed to "maneuvering speed" because they expected heavy turbulence.
The "flying too slow" may have been an erroneous measurement, or it may have have been when the plane first went out of control.
I don’t know how they’d know about “erroneous speed” unless it was transmitted in another ACARS message that they didn’t tell us about at first. Apparently Airbii “phone home” with a lot of information (see all those fault messages between 0210 and 0214 GMT) but I wonder if either an overspeed or a near-stall is one of them.
}:-)4
I knew that would be some ‘scientist’ bent on destroying civilization would say after reading that.
It would be funny … but they are the same group that would believe the world is flat and would force ships to stay near land.
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