AVIATION/ BEA UPDATES ON AIR FRANCE FL447

The French BEA released their 2nd interim report into the June 1, 2009 crash of AIR FRANCE Flight 447. The A330 went down over the Atlantic Ocean while on a flight from Rio de Janiero, Brazil, to Paris, France, after encountering severe storms enroute. All 228 passengers and crew onboard were killed in the crash. The report states that investigators still do not know what brought the plane down, who was at the controls when it crashed, or what the Pilots did in the moments leading up to the disaster. "At this stage ... it is still not possible to understand the causes and circumstances of the accident," investigators said. The plane hit the water belly first, essentially intact, studies of the debris and the bodies that have been recovered show. The colored sections in the diagram at top, show the sections of the A330 that have been recovered. Autopsies done on 45 passengers, 4 Flight Attendants and the Captain, show spinal fractures, consistent with a high upwards accleration of a seated person. Oxygen masks were not deployed, indicating that the cabin did not depressurize, and that life vests were still in their wrappers, possibly suggesting that passengers had little or no warning of the impending crash. (The colored sections in the diagram at top show the sections of the aircraft that have been recovered from the Atlantic).

Automated messages sent from the plane in the minutes before the crash showed there were problems measuring airspeed, the investigators said. But that alone was not enough to cause the disaster, they added. Large parts of the plane, including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, have never been found, leaving investigators without key pieces of the puzzle. Investigators, who are preparing to begin a new search for the recorders in February, said that flight data recorders should be able to send signals for up to 90 days, rather than the current 30 days. Tests have already brought into question the performance of pitot tubes, which measure the pressure exerted on the plane as it flies through the air, and are part of a system used to determine air speed. Before it crashed, Flight 447 sent out 24 automated error messages that suggested the plane may have been flying too fast or too slow through the thunderstorms. The BEA has already said that its attention is clearly focused on the pitot tubes.