AVIATION/ BEA UPDATES ON AIR FRANCE FL445

The French BEA has issued a brief update a serious incident involving an AIR FRANCE A330 over the Atlantic Ocean on November 30, 2009. AF Flight 445 was on International Service form Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France, when the incident took place. The A330 was inflight at 38000 feet, near waypoint DEKON, and about 680 miles NE of Fortaleza, Brazil, when the A330 encountered severe turbulence. The crew declared MAYDAY on the International Emergency Frequency, and began descending. The aircraft continued on to Paris, and landed about 6.5 hours after the encounter. No one onboard was injured. The BEA announced shortly after the incident that they were going to open a full investigation, due to the similarities of this incident to the crash of AF Flight 447 on June 1, 2009. That crash killed all 228 passengers and crew onboard, and investigators are still searching for a cause. Both incidents took place on the same Airline, and on the same type of aircraft. Both aircraft encountered bad weather and severe turbulence in same region overhead the Atlantic. The only difference is that Flight 445 continued on its journey without incident. In their update, the BEA said that the Captain reported that the aircraft was about 60 miles ahead of waypoint DEKON when they encountered the turbulence. Unable to reach ATC due to their location, the Captain declared the MAYDAY to warn other traffic that they were descending to 36000 feet, to get out of the turbulence. The BEA also reported that Air France did forward an ASR on the incident to the BEA within 72 hours of the incident, which is violation of French law. After arrival in Paris, Air France dispatched the A330 on a flight to and from Cameroon, without retrieving the data from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. By the time an investigation was begun, both recorders had already been overwritten and will not be usable in the investigation.