[raygun]

The current system is the best system developed so far.

Measuring Air Speed from within an aircraft is a pretty complicated process. The pressure generated within the probes by the air, and the pressure differential on the static ports works extremely well in tens of thousands of flights every day across the globe. Usually the wings ice over long before the pitot fails due to icing.

While we do not know that the probes iced over, that is a vailid assumption based on the ACARS maintenance messages received that at least one failed to provide accurate speed information.

Icing in a probe without a mechanical failure of the heating element is very hard to prove, because if it ices, then the ice will usually melt before the probe can be examined on the ground.

As to the reliability

1. Probes are heated.
2. There where three separate independent probe/static port systems on the aircraft.
3. Several other A330 aircraft have exprienced what is apparently the same situation as AF447 - and all have come through without major problems. True none were in as severe weather as AF447.
4. Formation of ice sufficient to foul the probe at that altitude was through to be impossible, but new science has found that assumption to be in error.
5. Airbus and several airlines had determined the Thales pitot probes to potentially have an issue. Air France had already ordered a fleet wide replacement of that model - concentrating on their A320 aircraft first (the A340 aircraft also had the same probes).
6. Pilots are trained early in their career how to fly without reliable air speed indications, and the A330 has some very specific, and proven successful, methods to deal with such a problem.

Something else happened with AF447 that went beyond simple icing of the probes and loss of air speed data.

[PiperShade]

So much for your “strawman” argument......

IMO, the Airbus “Flight Management System” is suspect in AF 447. Its “screwed the pooch” very dramatically in the past. All too easy to place blame on a dead flight crew - as you imply - when no other evidence is apparent; or needs concealment. Happens all the time...... >PS

[PiperShade]

Fying a heavy at max, or near max, altitude isn’t something you do by “hand”, in most instances. IMO airspeed is the critical datum, as it - along with presssure/temperature -
determines where on the mach curve you lie.

Now “jest guessin’” mind you, but I suspect both pilots’ “flight directors” are driven by the aircraft’s computers - which derive their data from the suspect probe systems. That leaves only a “standby attitude gyro” - if it existed - as a source of attitude information to hand fly a heavy aircraft in its critical mach range in turbulence.

What kills aircraft and pilots/crew/passengers is a “cascade” of failures piling one atop another too fast for the cockpit crew to counter. I seriously suspect the AF 447 flight crew faced a disorienting “pinball explosion” of visual and audio alarms competing for attention while experiencing conflicting physical sensations. How would you react if suddenly, in the dark, you became weightless and surrounded by clipboards, flight bags, lost pencils/pens and various floor debris ? What if the cockpit lights failed at the same instant ? When “sh*t happens” it ain’t usually pretty..... >PS