(resent, I had wrotten wrong address in first message).
Something a bit more serious than the relationship betwen AF447 and
Oceanic 815... This is a live transcription from a press conference in
french. Pardon translation :-(
ON july 2, there was press conferance:
Control Atlantico, 01:35:43 last voice radio contact in HF. Aircraft was
at limit of brasilian radar range.
02:01 aircraft tried to contact ADSC system in DAKKAR but there was
failure, probably due to the flight not yet entered in the compuyer at
DAKKAR. Brasil had sent them the flight info at 01:40, and by 02:10, it
was in the Dakkar computers, but not sure when it was actually entered.
While the flight info was transmitted to Dakkar, Brasil did not confim
that Dakkar had taken over flight, and Dakkar had not confirmed to
Brasil that it had taken over control of flight. AKA: Brasil sent the
info early, but never confirmed when aircraft left its jurisdiction.
Atlantico tried 3 times to contact AF 447 without success.
ACARS first message at 02:10.
24 ACARS messages emitted by aircraft until 02:14
Normal weather for june in this area. There was a line of thunderstorm,
but nothing abnormal for this season.
3 types of messages:
-messages with control orgs.
-operational messages (aircraft position, weather info)
-maintenance messages
For the flight were 26 ACARS.
2 first messages related to toilet early after take off.
24 messages:
-incohérence in measured speeds
Messages indicated that due to Probe pitot anomaly, automated systems
were taken offline (auto pilot, control law, auto throttle etc).
3rd Pitot is backup.
Plane due at Tazil control point at 02:20 to report its position. It
didn't. But missing position reports are not uncommon in that area.
There was no transfer of control between Atlantico and Dakar.
Between 08:00 and 08:30, Madrid and Brest start the process of declaring
emergency because plane never arrived in europe.(later on: it was at
07:30 that Air France realised that they were not getting information
about their aircraft).
51 bodies recovered
640 pieces have been recovered, from all portions of aircraft from
radome to the tail.
No life vest was found inflated.
Tail fin was ripped from back to front, small lateral force from the left.
Crew rest: huge deformation of floor. (this was a container in cargo deck).
Current thinking:
Aircraft was not destroyed in flight.
Aircraft hit water horizontal, with large vertical speed.
Nothing found on ground yet. Research for black boxes to continue until
july 10.
On July 14th another type of research will begin with other equipment.
3 aircraft flew about the same course within the same time period:
IB 340: 12 minutes after AF447
AF 330: 37 Minutes after AF447
Lufthansa : 20 minutes after AF447.
These 3 went around thunder cells between ORARO and TASIL. Detour from
10 to 80NM. All had difficulty getting in touch with DAKAR in HF. All
related strong turbulence.
HF radio contacts are often difficult in that zone.
No passenger made satellite telephone calls from the aircraft.
All 24 messages are due to the loss of speed measurements.
About 28,000 square km of sea bottom need to be scanned, about 18,000
have been scanned for the FDR/CVR as of today. (60%)
Loss of radio contact between Brasil and Senegal (Dakkar) is common.
At 07:30, they started to suspect loss of aircraft, in part because
aircraft was not reponding to ACARS messages sent by AF maintenance.
ACARS messages are not necessarily transmitted in the same order as the
computers generate them. ACARS time stamps are 1 minute resolution. But
FDR messages are precisely timed.
On one the inquiry focus is on the transfer of control between south
america to africa to europe and why a downed plane wasn't detected for
many hours. Seems there are frequent problems with managing flight
transfers.
70400 kg of fuel loaded, which is normal for this flight. Enough fuel to
go around storms if needed.
So far, based on position reports from aircraft every 10 minutes, it
appears to be a straight line path.
Starting 14 july to 15 august, instead of sonar to hear pings, they will
try to locate shapes.
Aircraft parts will be repatriated to France. But bodies are a more
difficult legal issue and remain in Brasil for now.
--
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