Air France 447 - BEA: AF447 May Have Hit Ocean Intact
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By Robert Wall
Accident investigators believe Air France Flight 447 impacted the Atlantic Ocean at high velocity in the direction of flight, and with the underside of the fuselage striking the sea first.
Visual examination of debris, including the tail fin and parts of the galley, suggest that impact pattern, as well as the conclusion that the Airbus A330-200 did not break apart in flight, says Alain Bouillard, lead investigator for the French air accident bureau (BEA). But investigators are still no closer to figuring out the sequence of events that led to the crash.
Bouillard notes that no signs of fire or an explosion have been detected.
The speed at impact and time the aircraft hit the surface are not established, nor is whether passengers were still alive when the aircraft impacted. Some clues to those questions may be in personal effects that still are held by the Brazilian police, as well as autopsies of the 51 bodies recovered. But the reports on the latter are not yet out.
Debris and 24 Acars fault messages the A330 broadcast just before all communication was lost remain the primary areas of investigation, with the cockpit voice and flight data recorders still not recovered more than one month after the June 1 crash. France will continue until July 10 to locate the black boxes through their beacon, but then will shift to using sonar and other systems to try to find debris. The next phase will run until mid-August, with a decision due then on whether to continue recovery operations. The search is focused largely on a 40-square-nautical-mile area.
The BEA report confirms the known problem with anomalous speed information, but investigators note they still have no data to suggest a pitot tube failure brought down the aircraft or that a mandatory replacement of the Thales-designed probes is needed. They merely note the tubes remain under examination as part of the entire chain of events that led to the crash.
One issue gaining some attention is why failure to properly hand off AF447 from Brazilian to Senegalese air traffic control authorities didn’t spark earlier attention. Bouillard notes it has nothing to do with the crash per se, but could have led to rescue operations beginning more promptly. As it was, those didn’t take place until Madrid and Brest ATC personnel sounded the alarm six hours later. The miscue is under review.
The crew of the mishap aircraft also tried to contact for a third time without success ATC at Dakar, around 2:01 a.m., or 13 minutes before the last Acars message was sent.
Photo: Airbus
