UPDATE 1-Doomed Air France plane was not destroyed in flight

[bigdelta]

PARIS, July 2 (Reuters) - The Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic last month with 228 people on board was not destroyed in mid-air but hit the water intact and at high speed, French investigators said on Thursday.

 

Flight AF 447 went missing during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1. The exact cause of the disaster is not yet known.

 

"The plane was not destroyed while it was in flight. It seems to have hit the surface of the water in the direction of flight and with a strong vertical acceleration," said Alain Bouillard, who is leading the investigation on behalf of France's BEA air accident board.

 

Bouillard said control of the flight was supposed to have passed from air traffic controllers in Brazil to their counterparts in Senegal, but that never happened.

 

He said the pilots of flight AF 447 had tried three times to connect to a data system in the Senegalese capital Dakar, but had failed, apparently because Dakar had never received the flight plan.

 

"This is not normal," he said, adding that investigators were also trying to find out why it took six hours after the plane disappeared before an emergency was declared.

 

He said the search for the flight recorders, or black boxes, from the Airbus A330 aircraft would continue until July 10. The recorders emit a signal for a limited time.

 

He also reiterated that France had not yet been granted access to autopsy reports on bodies taken to Brazil. (Reporting by Tim Hepher, editing by Tim Pearce)

[joekicker]

Vertical acceleration.

 

Heh. You've got to love these dweebs. Thank goodness they have translators for their final reports.

[jacko]

Vertical acceleration.

 

Heh. You've got to love these dweebs. Thank goodness they have translators for their final reports.

So it hadn't reached a terminal speed....vertically..... this is really very little information.

[bigdelta]

Obviously,they ruled out explosives also.And search to continue until July 10 for CVR and FDR (no,not the former President).

And "experts" said no life jackets were found inflated,which they attributed to the psgrs having no time to prepare-except for the agonizing minutes to crash vertically.Also,I understand that the life jackets were not to be inflated inside that acft at any time.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/07/02...rss_mostpopular

Edited July 3, 2009 by LTGTR

[joekicker]

Two lines that always cracked me up (one no longer used).

 

In case of a water landing....

Yeah, sure.

 

... place the mask over your face and breathe normally.

No problem. Oxygen masks wouldn't increase your breathing rate or anything.

[jacko]

Two lines that always cracked me up (one no longer used).

 

In case of a water landing....

Yeah, sure.

 

... place the mask over your face and breathe normally.

No problem. Oxygen masks wouldn't increase your breathing rate or anything.

Oxygen makes you high, you feel euphoric.....(Fight Club?)

[joekicker]

Oxygen makes you high, you feel euphoric.....(Fight Club?)

 

If the oxygen masks suddenly descend in an in-flight airplane, "euphoric" isn't what I'm feeling, believe me.

 

Especially if the plane vertically accelerating in the earthbound direction.

 

I saw another version of that story where the investigators said the passengers were not prepared for a crash. Weird. Could it have lost that much height without the pilots even being aware??? Doesn't seem possible. "Seat of the pants" tells you you're falling, surely, no matter what the upscrewed instruments say. Anyway, all interesting.

[midlifecrisis]

When the first bodies were found, we were told the injuries were consistant with a midair breakup and inconsistant with hitting the sea.

 

We were also told that wreckage was distributed over many miles consistant with coming apart in flight.

 

Because of that, they told us they might never find the flight data recorders because they could be anywhere over the flight path.

 

So, if the plane crashed intact, the black boxes should be right below the crash site. Of course they have wasted so much time the batteries are dead by now.

 

We will never know what happened for sure.

 

"And where are the clowns? Send in the clowns! Don't bother, they're here." Apologies to Stephen Sondheim.

[The Mook]

Good points made, MLC. It shows the value of cooperation in the early part of a flight accident investigation. This apparent misdiagnosis of the evidence is a critical blunder. I hope we find out what happened, especially for the family and friends of the victims, not to mention all who will be an employee or a passenger on future flights.