Air France Flight 447
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Air France
Flight 447 was a scheduled airline flight
from Rio de Janeiro
-Galeão (GIG) to Paris
-Roissy (CDG) involving an Airbus A330-200 aircraft that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 aircrew
. The investigation is still ongoing, and the cause of the crash has not yet been formally determined. Reports in May and July 2011 from the BEA
stated that the aircraft crashed following an aerodynamic stall
. Several minutes before the crash, the pitot tube
s (speed sensors) started to give inconsistent readings, so the autopilot disconnected. The plane rolled slightly and the pilot flying pulled the nose back. The pilot repeatedly pulled back on the stick, producing a stall, continuing even while the stall warning sounded continuously for 54 seconds.
The cause of the faulty readings is yet to be determined, but a theory is that ice formed on the pitot tubes, which would have caused them to freeze, giving inconsistent measurements owing to their reliance on air pressure measurements to give speed readings. Pitot tube blockage is suspected of having contributed to airliner crashes in the past — such as Birgenair Flight 301
in 1996.
The 29 July 2011 BEA report indicated that the pilots had not been trained to fly the aircraft "in manual mode or to promptly recognize and respond to a speed-sensor malfunction at high altitude", and that this was not a standard training requirement at the time of the accident. This may explain the crew confusion and responses to a situation that they had not been trained for. By the time the captain had returned to the cockpit the stall was so severe that the stall warning was sounding only when the nose was lowered. The warning is only given when the sensor data is believed reliable and it is not reliable at the severe stall levels that were regularly happening at this time. This may have hampered the captain's response, since lowering the nose should have stopped the stall warning during recovery from the stall. Instead it restored reliable data and caused the stall warning to resume.
The investigation into the accident was initially hampered by the lack of any eyewitness evidence and radar tracks, as well as by difficulty finding the aircraft's black boxes
, which were located and recovered from the ocean floor two years later in May 2011.
The accident was the deadliest in the history of Air France
. Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the BEA
(Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety), described it as the worst accident in French aviation history. This was the deadliest commercial airliner accident to occur since the crash of American Airlines Flight 587
in New York City in 2001. It was the first fatal accident to befall an Airbus A330 airliner while in passenger service.
, with manufacturer serial number
660, registered
as "F-GZCP". This airliner first flew on 25 February 2005. The aircraft was powered by two General Electric CF6-80E1
engines with a maximum thrust of 72,000 lb giving it a cruise speed range of Mach
0.82–0.86 (871–913 km/h, 470−493 KTAS, 540 – 566 mph), at 35,000 ft (10.7 km altitude) and a range of 12,500 km (6750 nmi
). The aircraft underwent a major overhaul on 16 April 2009, and at the time of the accident had accumulated 18,870 flying hours. On 17 August 2006, the A330 was involved in a ground collision with Airbus A321-211
F-GTAM, at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris. F-GTAM was substantially damaged while F-GZCP suffered only minor damage. The plane made 24 flights from Paris, to and from 13 different destinations worldwide, between 5 May and 31 May 2009.
The last verbal contact with the aircraft was at 01:33 UTC, when it was near waypoint
INTOL (1°21′39"S 32°49′53"W), located 565 km (351.1 mi) off Natal
, on Brazil's north-eastern coast
. The crew reported that they expected to use airway
UN873 and enter Senegalese-controlled airspace at waypoint TASIL (4°0′18"N 29°59′24"W) within 50 minutes, and that the aircraft was flying normally at flight level
350 (a nominal altitude of 35000 ft (10,668 m)) and at a speed of 467 kn (915.2 km/h; 568.7 mph). The aircraft left Brazil Atlantic radar surveillance at 01:48 UTC.
(ACARS), were made public on 4 June 2009. The transcripts indicate that between 02:10 UTC and 02:14 UTC, 6 failure reports (FLR) and 19 warnings (WRN) were transmitted. The messages resulted from equipment failure data, captured by a built-in system for testing and reporting, and cockpit warnings also posted to ACARS. The failures and warnings in the 4 minutes of transmission concerned navigation, auto-flight, flight controls and cabin air-conditioning (codes beginning with 34, 22, 27 and 21, respectively).
Among the ACARS transmissions in the first minute is one message that indicates a fault in the pitot-static system
(code 34111506). Bruno Sinatti, president of Alter, Air France’s third-biggest pilots’ union, stated that “the first automated system-failure message in a string of radio alerts from the incident aircraft explicitly indicated that the airspeed
sensors were faulty”. The twelve warning messages with the same time code indicate that the autopilot
and auto-thrust system had disengaged, that the TCAS
was in fault mode, and flight mode went from 'normal law' to 'alternate law'.
The 02:10 transmission contained a set of coordinates
which indicated that the aircraft was at 2.98°N 30.59°W.On the map, page 13 the coordinates in the Interim report f-cp090601ae on the accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 registered F-GZCP operated by Air France flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro – Paris (Original French version: Rapport d’étape f-cp090601e Accident survenu le 1er juin 2009 à l’Airbus A330-203 immatriculé F-GZCP exploité par Air France vol AF 447 Rio de Janeiro – Paris, with the information on page 13) is referenced as the "last known position" (French: Dernière position connue, "last known position").
The remainder of the messages occurred from 02:11 UTC to 02:14 UTC, containing a fault message for an Air Data Inertial Reference Unit
(ADIRU) and the Integrated Standby Instrument System (ISIS). At 02:12 UTC, a warning message NAV ADR DISAGREE indicated that there was a disagreement between the three independent air data systems More precisely: that after one of the three independent systems had been diagnosed as faulty and excluded from consideration, the two remaining systems disagreed.. At 02:13 UTC, a fault message for the flight management guidance and envelope computer was sent. One of the two final messages transmitted at 02:14 UTC was a warning referring to the air data reference system, the other ADVISORY (Code 213100206) was a "cabin vertical speed warning", indicating that the plane was descending at a high rate.
extending to an altitude of around 50000 ft (15.2 km; 9.5 mi) above the Atlantic Ocean before Flight 447 disappeared. From satellite images taken near the time of the incident, it appeared that the aircraft encountered a thunderstorm, likely containing significant turbulence.
Detailed analysis of the weather conditions for the flight shows it is possible that the aircraft's final 12 minutes could have been spent "flying through significant turbulence
and thunderstorm
activity for about 75 mi (120.7 km)", and may have been subjected to rime icing, and possibly clear ice or graupel. Satellite imagery loops from the CIMSS clarify that the flight was coping with a series of storms, not just one.
Commercial air transport crews routinely encounter this type of storm in this area. Generally, when storms of this type are encountered at night, pilots use onboard radar to navigate around them.
In this instance, shortly after the last verbal contact was made with Air Traffic Control about 350 mi (563.3 km) north-east of Natal
(station identifier SBNT), the aircraft likely traversed an area of intense deep convection which had formed within a broad band of thunderstorms along the Intertropical Convergence Zone
(ITCZ). Turbulence in the vicinity of these rapidly developing storms may have contributed to the accident. According to news sources, 12 other flights shared more or less the same route that Flight 447 was using at the time of the accident.
said that the crash "was easy to bend into myth" because "no other passenger jet in modern history had disappeared so completely — without a Mayday call or a witness or even a trace on radar." Hylton explained that the A330 "was considered to be among the safest" of the passenger aircraft. Hylton added that when the aircraft disappeared, "Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky, it was tempting to deliver a tidy narrative about the hubris of building a self-flying airplane, Icarus
falling from the sky. Or maybe Flight 447 was the Titanic, an uncrashable ship at the bottom of the sea." Dr. Guy Gratton, an aviation expert from the Flight Safety Laboratory at Brunel University
, said "This is an air accident the like of which we haven't seen before. Half the accident investigators in the Western world
– and in Russia
too – are waiting for these results. This has been the biggest investigation since Lockerbie
. Put bluntly, big passenger planes do not just fall out of the sky." Many people in Germany closely followed the Flight 447 case because 26 German passengers were on board the aircraft.
On 1 June at 02:20 UTC, Brazilian air traffic controllers contacted air traffic control in Dakar
after noticing that the plane had not made the required radio call signaling its crossing into Senegalese airspace. The Brazilian Air Force
then began a search and rescue
operation from the Brazilian archipelago
of Fernando de Noronha
, and at 19:00 UTC on 1 June, Spain sent a CASA 235
maritime patrol plane in search and rescue operations near Cape Verde. French reconnaissance planes were also dispatched, including one Breguet Atlantic from Dakar
, and the French requested satellite equipment from the United States to help find the plane. Brazilian Air Force spokesperson Colonel Henry Munhoz told Brazilian TV that radar on Cape Verde failed to pick up the aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean.
Later on 1 June, officials with Air France and the French government had already presumed that the plane had been lost with no survivors. An Air France spokesperson told L'Express
that there was "no hope for survivors," and French President Nicolas Sarkozy
told relatives of the passengers that there was only a minimal chance that anyone survived.
Also late on 1 June, the deputy chief of the Brazilian Aeronautical Communications Center, Jorge Amaral, confirmed that 30 minutes after the Air France Airbus had transmitted the automatic report, a commercial pilot had reported the sighting of "orange dots" in the middle of the Atlantic, which could indicate the glow of wreckage on fire. This sighting was reported by a TAM Airlines crew flying from Europe to Brazil, at approximately 1300 km (807.8 mi) from Fernando de Noronha. Another similar sighting of "something flashing brightly over the ocean then taking a descending vertical trajectory" was reported by the Spanish pilot of Air Comet Flight 974 flying from Lima to Madrid. The Brazilian newspaper O Globo
reported that wreckage debris was discovered off the Senegalese coast, but that its origin was still uncertain. EarthTimes and news.com.au reported that the crew of the French freighter Douce France spotted debris floating on the ocean in the area earlier indicated by the TAM crew.
On 2 June at 15:20 (UTC), the Brazilian Air Force, using an Embraer R-99A fitted with Erieye radar
, found wreckage and signs of oil, possibly jet fuel
, strewn along a 5 km (3.1 mi) band 650 km (403.9 mi) north-east of Fernando de Noronha
Island, near the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago. Spotted wreckage included a plane seat, an orange buoy, a barrel, and "white pieces and electrical conductors". Later that day, after meeting with relatives of the Brazilians on the aircraft, Brazilian Defence Minister
Nelson Jobim
announced that the Air Force believed the wreckage was from Flight 447. Brazilian vice-president José Alencar
(acting as president since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
was out of the country) declared three days of official mourning.
Also on 2 June, two French Navy
vessels, Foudre
and Ventôse, were en route to the suspected crash site. Other ships sent to the site included the French research vessel Pourquoi Pas?, equipped with two mini-submarines able to descend to 6000 m (19,685 ft), since the area of the Atlantic in which the plane went down may be as deep as 4700 m (15,419.9 ft). A US Navy Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion
anti-submarine warfare and maritime patrol aircraft was deployed in the search.
On 3 June, the first Brazilian Navy
ship, the patrol boat
, reached the area in which the first debris was spotted. The Brazilian Navy sent a total of five ships to the debris site; the frigate
Constituição
and the corvette
Caboclo
were scheduled to reach the area on 4 June, the frigate Bosísio on 6 June and the replenishment oiler
Almirante Gastão Motta
on 7 June.
On 5 June, French defence minister Hervé Morin
announced that the nuclear submarine
Émeraude was being sent to the area, to assist in the search for the missing flight recorder
s or "black-boxes" which might be located at great depth. The submarine would use its sonar to listen for the ultrasonic signal emitted by the black boxes' "pingers
". On 10 June, the Émeraude reached the crash zone of Air France Flight 447 with plans to troll
13 sq mi (33.7 km²) a day, listening for the pingers. The Émeraude was to work with the mini-sub
Nautile
, which can descend to the ocean floor
. The French submarines would be aided by two U.S. underwater audio devices
, capable of picking up signals at a depth of 20000 ft (6,096 m).
On 6 June, five days after Flight 447 disappeared, it was reported that the Brazilian Air Force had located "bodies and debris" from the missing aircraft, after they had been spotted by a special search radar-equipped aircraft near the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago. The bodies and objects were reportedly found at 08:14 Brazilian time (11:14 UTC), and experts on human remains were sent to investigate. Brazilian Air Force Colonel Jorge Amaral stated that "We confirm the recovery from the water of debris and bodies from the Air France plane. Air France boarding passes for Flight 447 were also found. We can't give more information without confirming what we have." Two male bodies were later found along with a seat, a nylon backpack containing a computer and vaccination card and a leather briefcase containing a boarding pass for the Air France flight.
Authorities also corrected the misunderstanding about the earlier debris findings: except for the wooden pallet, the debris did come from Flight 447, but rescue aircraft and ships had made the search for possible survivors and bodies a priority, delaying the verification of the origins of the other recovered debris.
On 7 June, search crews recovered the Airbus's vertical stabilizer
, the first major piece of wreckage to be discovered.
By 17 June 2009, a total of 50 bodies had been recovered in two distinct groups more than 50 miles (80.5 km) apart, and more than 400 pieces of debris from the plane had been recovered. 49 of the 50 bodies had been transported to shore, first by the frigates Constituição
and Bosísio to the islands of Fernando de Noronha
and thereafter by plane to Recife
for identification. As of 23 June 2009, officials had identified 11 of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash site off the coast of Brazil, by using dental records and fingerprints. Of those identified, ten were Brazilian, although no names had been released. On 25 June, Le Figaro
reported that the bodies of the pilot
, Marc Dubois, and a flight attendant
had been retrieved and identified. On 26 June, the Brazilian Military announced it had ended the search for bodies and debris, having recovered 51 bodies with the help of French vessels and French, Spanish and U.S. aircraft.
Following the end of the search for bodies, the search for the flight data recorder
and the cockpit voice recorder
, the "black boxes", continued with the French nuclear submarine and with two French-contracted ships (towing the U.S. Navy listening devices) trawling a search area with a radius of 80 kilometres (49.7 mi). By mid July, recovery of the black boxes had still not been announced. French search teams denied an earlier report that a "very weak" signal had been picked up from the black box locator beacon. The finite beacon battery life meant that, as the time since the crash elapsed, the likelihood of location diminished. In late July, the search for the black boxes entered its second phase, with a French research vessel resuming the search using a towed sonar array. In July 2009, Airbus announced that they would fund an extended search for the aircraft's black boxes. This announcement came amidst their official backing to determine the root cause of the accident. The second phase of the search ended on 20 August without finding wreckage within a 75 km radius of the last position, as reported at 02:10.
On 13 December 2009, the BEA announced that a search for the recorders for three months more would be conducted using "robot submarines" beginning in February 2010.
The BEA announced that they expected the search to resume in mid-March, depending on the weather. The third phase of the search was planned to take four weeks. Air France, Airbus, the US Navy, and the National Transportation Safety Board were to aid in the search. The new search plan covered an area of 770 square miles (1,994.3 km²) and was to utilize four sonar devices and two underwater robots. Oceanographers from France, Russia, Britain, and the United States each separately analysed the search area, to select a smaller area for closer survey.
The search continued in the beginning of April 2010 and was planned to last for 30 days. In May 2010 the French newspaper Le Figaro
suggested that the plane had been heading back to Brazil when it had crashed.
On 6 May 2010, the French Minister of Defense reported that the cockpit voice recorders had been localized to a zone 5 km by 5 km, following analysis of the data recorded by the French submarine during the initial search conducted in mid-2009. On 12 May 2010, it was reported that the search following the 6 May report of the possible location of the voice recorders had not led to any findings and that the search had resumed in a different area from the one identified by the French submarine. The third phase of the search ended on 24 May 2010 without any success, though the French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA) says that the search 'nearly' covered the whole area drawn up by investigators.
In November 2010, French officials announced that a fourth search would start in February 2011, using the most sophisticated technology available.
operating full ocean depth autonomous underwater vehicle
s (AUVs) owned by the Waitt Institute discovered, by means of sidescan sonar, a large portion of debris field believed to be that of flight AF447. Further debris and bodies, still trapped in the partly-intact remains of the aircraft's fuselage, were located in water depths of between 3800 m (2,077.9 fathom; 12,467.2 ft). The debris was found to be lying in a relatively flat and silty area of the ocean floor (as opposed to the extremely mountainous topography that was originally believed to be AF447's final resting place). Other items found were engines, wing parts and the landing gear
.
The debris field was described as "quite compact", measuring some 200 by and located a short distance to the north of where pieces of wreckage had been recovered previously, suggesting that the aircraft hit the water largely intact. The French Ecology and Transportation Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet
stated the bodies and wreckage would be brought to the surface and taken to France for examination and identification. It was not yet possible to quantify how many bodies had been discovered. The French government chartered three vessels – the , the and an American-based vessel, which are normally used by telecommunications companies for deep-ocean cable-laying
and the , a deepwater expedition research vessel, to retrieve debris and bodies. An American Remora 6000 remotely operated vehicle
(ROV) and operations crew experienced in the recovery of aircraft for the United States Navy
were on board the Île de Sein.
The BEA announced that on 26 April, after a 12-hour dive by the Remora 6000, the flight data recorder
chassis had been found, although without the crash-survivable memory unit, which is the actual data storage medium. On 1 May the memory unit was found and lifted on board the Île de Sein by the ROV. According to the BEA's director Jean-Paul Troadec, the photos of the memory module showed that it had suffered little exterior corrosion, but it was not possible to say whether the memory chip remained readable. The plane's cockpit voice recorder
was found at 2150 UTC (GMT) on 2 May 2011, and was raised and brought on board the Île de Sein the following day.
On 7 May the flight recorders, under judicial seal, were taken aboard the French Navy patrol boat La Capricieuse for transfer to the port of Cayenne
. From there they were transported by air to the BEA's office in Le Bourget
near Paris for data download and analysis. One engine and the avionics bay, containing onboard computers, had also been raised. On 5 May 2011, efforts to recover the bodies of passengers from the sea bed began. 51 bodies had been previously recovered from the sea.
The BEA confirmed on 16 May that all the data from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder had been successfully downloaded. The data would be subjected to detailed in-depth analysis taking several weeks, after which another interim report would be released during the summer. The download was completed in the presence of two Brazilian investigators of the Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA), two British investigators of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch
(AAIB), two German investigators of the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation (BFU), one American investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB), an officer of the French judicial police, and a court expert. The entire download was filmed and recorded.
On 3 June, the last 27 bodies from the wreckage were recovered. With this, the number of bodies recovered from the wreckage reached 104 and the total number of recovered bodies was 154. The remaining 74 bodies from the flight were not found.
Investigators have not yet determined a cause of the accident, but preliminary investigation found that the crash could have been caused by erroneous airspeed indications, if the pitot tubes had iced over during the flight. Although the full sequence of events is not yet clear, based on the timing of the events and the shape and distribution of debris, it appeared that the aircraft rapidly lost altitude (possibly going into a stall
) and hit the ocean surface with its underside at a vertical speed of 150 kph (90 mph) 4 minutes later, breaking up on impact.
The French government opened two investigations:
By June 2009 the main task occupying the investigators was the recovery of aircraft parts, primarily the flight recorder
s. BEA chief Paul-Louis Arslanian said that he was not optimistic about finding them since they might be under as much as 3000 m (9,842.5 ft) of water and the terrain under this portion of the ocean was very rugged. Investigators were hoping to find the aircraft's lower aft section, since that was where the recorders were located. Although France had never recovered a flight recorder from such depths, there was precedent for such an operation: in 1988, an independent contractor was able to recover the cockpit voice recorder
of South African Airways Flight 295
from a depth of 4900 m (16,076.1 ft) in a search area of between 80 and 250 sq nmi (274.4 and 857.5 km2). The Air France flight recorders were fitted with water-activated acoustic underwater locator beacon
s or "pingers", which should have remained active for at least 30 days, giving searchers that much time to locate the origin of the signals.
On 2 July 2009, the BEA released an intermediate report, which described all known facts, and a summary of the visual examination of the rudder and the other parts of the aircraft that had been recovered at that time. According to the BEA, this examination showed that:
On 16 May 2011, Le Figaro reported that the BEA investigators had ruled out an aircraft malfunction as the cause of the crash, according to preliminary information extracted from the Flight Data Recorder. The following day, the BEA issued a press release explicitly describing the Le Figaro report as a "sensationalist publication of non-validated information". They stated that no conclusions had yet been made, that investigations were continuing, and that no interim report was expected before the summer. On 18 May the head of the investigation clarified this contradictory information, stating that no major malfunction of the aircraft had been found so far in the data from the flight data recorder, but that minor malfunctions had not yet been ruled out.
On 27 May 2011, the BEA released a short factual report of the findings from the data recorders without any conclusions. A first analysis of the data was to be expected for the end of July.
(IAS) readings. A spokesperson for the BEA claimed that "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear" to the pilots and, on 4 June, Airbus issued an Accident Information Telex
to operators of all its aircraft reminding pilots of the recommended Abnormal and Emergency Procedures to be taken in the case of unreliable airspeed indication. French Transport Minister Dominique Bussreau said "Obviously the pilots [of Flight 447] did not have the [correct] speed showing, which can lead to two bad consequences for the life of the aircraft: under-speed, which can lead to a stall
, and over-speed, which can lead to the aircraft breaking up because it is approaching the speed of sound
and the structure of the plane is not made for resisting such speeds".
Paul-Louis Arslanian, of France's air accident investigation agency, confirmed that there had been previous problems affecting the speed readings on other A330 aircraft stating, "We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330 ... There is a programme of replacement, of improvement". The problems primarily occurred on the Airbus A320, but, awaiting a recommendation from Airbus, Air France delayed installing new pitots
on A330/A340, yet increased inspection frequencies.
On 6 June 2009, Arslanian said that Air France had not replaced pitot probes as Airbus recommended on F-GZCP, saying that "it does not mean that without replacing the probes that the A330 was dangerous." Air France issued a further clarification of the situation:
The recommendation from Airbus was that the Thales model AA pitot tubes which had been installed on the Air France fleet during manufacture should be replaced by Thales model BA pitot tubes, in order to address the problem of water ingress which had been observed. Since it was not an Airworthiness Directive
(AD), the guidelines allow the operator to apply the recommendations at its discretion. Air France implemented the change on its A320 fleet where the incidents of water ingress were observed, and decided to do so in its A330/340 fleet only when failures occurred.
After discussing these issues with the manufacturer, Air France sought a means of reducing these incidents, and Airbus indicated that the new pitot probe designed for the A320 was not designed to prevent cruise level ice-over. In 2009, tests suggested that the new probe could improve its reliability, prompting Air France to accelerate the replacement program, but this work had not been carried out on F-GZCP. By 17 June 2009, Air France had replaced all pitot probes on its A330 type aircraft.
On 11 June 2009, a spokesman from the BEA reminded that there was no conclusive evidence at the moment linking pitot probe malfunction to the AF447 crash, and this was reiterated on 17 June 2009 by the BEA chief, Paul-Louis Arslanian.
In July 2009, Airbus issued new advice to A330 and A340 operators to exchange Thales
pitot tubes for tubes from Goodrich Sensors and Integrated Systems
.
On 12 August 2009, Airbus issued three Mandatory Service Bulletins, requiring that all A330 and A340 aircraft be fitted with two pitot tubes manufactured by Goodrich Sensors and one Thales model BA pitot (or alternatively three of the Goodrich pitots); Thales model AA pitot tubes were no longer to be used. This requirement was incorporated into Airworthiness Directives issued by the European Aviation Safety Agency
(EASA) on 31 August and by the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) on 3 September. The replacement was to be completed by January 7, 2010. According to the FAA, in its Federal Register publication, use of the Thales model has resulted in "reports of airspeed indication discrepancies while flying at high altitudes in inclement weather conditions", that "could result in reduced control of the airplane." The FAA further stated that the Thales model probe "has not yet demonstrated the same level of robustness to withstand high-altitude ice crystals as Goodrich pitot probes P/N 0851HL,".
On 21 December 2010, Airbus issued a warning to roughly 100 operators of A330, A340-200 and A340-300 aircraft, regarding pitot tube
s, advising pilots not to re-engage the autopilot
following failure of the airspeed indicators.
. At 3 hours 55 minutes absolute time (time from planned departure), the captain woke the second pilot and said: "[...] he's going to take my place". After having attended the briefing between the two co-pilots, the captain left the cockpit to rest at 4 hours 1 minute 46 seconds. At 4 hours 6 minutes absolute time, the pilot warned the cabin crew that they were about to enter an area of turbulence. Four minutes later, the pilots turned the plane slightly to the left and decreased its speed from Mach
0.82 to Mach 0.8 due to increased turbulence.
At 4 hours 10 minutes and 5 seconds absolute time the autopilot disengaged as did the engines' auto-thrust systems 3 seconds later. The pilot made a left nose-up input, as the plane began rolling to the right. The plane's stall warning sounded briefly twice due to the angle of attack tolerance being exceeded by short vertical accelerations due to turbulence. 10 seconds later, the plane's recorded airspeed dropped sharply from 275 knots to 60 knots. The plane's angle of attack
increased, and the plane started to climb. The left-side instruments then recorded a sharp rise in airspeed to 215 knots. This change was not displayed by the Integrated Standby Instrument System (ISIS) until a minute later (the right-side instruments are not recorded by the recorder). The pilot continued making nose-up inputs. The trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) moved from 3 to 13 degrees nose-up in about 1 minute, and remained in that latter position until the end of the flight.
At around 4 hours 11 minutes into the flight, the plane had climbed to its maximum altitude of around 38,000 feet. There, its angle of attack was 16 degrees, and the thrust levers were in the TO/GA detent (fully forward), and at 4 hours 11 minutes 15 seconds the pitch attitude was slightly over 16 degrees and falling, but the angle of attack rapidly tracked towards 30 degrees. Lift was lost from the wing and the aircraft became stalled. At 4 hours 11 minutes 40 seconds, the captain re-entered the cockpit. The angle of attack had then reached 40 degrees, and the plane had descended to 35,000 feet with the engines running at almost 100% N1
(the rotational speed of the front intake fan, which delivers most of a turbofan
engine's thrust). The stall warnings stopped, as all airspeed indications were now considered invalid by the aircraft's computer due to the high angle of attack and/or the airspeed was less than 60 knots. In other words, the plane was oriented nose-up but descending steeply.
Roughly 20 seconds later, the pilot decreased the plane's pitch
slightly, air speed indications became valid and the stall warning sounded again and sounded intermittently for the remaining duration of the flight, but stopped when the pilot increased the plane's nose-up pitch. From there until the end of the flight, the angle of attack never dropped below 35 degrees. During the last minutes, the thrust levers were in the "idle
" detent position. The engines were always working, and responsive to commands.
The recordings stopped at 4 hours 14 minutes and 28 seconds absolute time (02:14:28 UTC), or 3 hours 45 minutes after takeoff. At that point, the plane's ground speed was 107 knots, and it was descending at 10,912 feet per minute, with the engines' N1's at 55%. Its pitch was 16.2 degrees (nose up), with a roll angle of 5.3 degrees left. During its descent, the plane had turned more than 180 degrees to the right to a compass heading of 270 degrees. The plane was stalled during its entire 3 minute 30 second descent from 38,000 feet.
While the incorrect airspeed data was the apparent cause of the disengagement of the autopilot, the reason the pilots lost control of the aircraft remains a mystery, in particular because pilots would normally try to lower the nose in case of a stall. Multiple sensors provide the pitch (attitude) information and there was no indication that any of them were malfunctioning. Some reports have described this as a deep stall, but this was a steady state conventional stall. A deep stall is associated with an aircraft with a T-tail
, but this aircraft does not have a T-tail.
In October 2011, a transcript of the voice recorder was leaked and published in the book Erreurs de Pilotage (Pilot Error) by Jean Pierre Otelli. According to the book, three seconds before impact, the transcripts records a crew member saying, "Damn it, we're going to crash, this can't be true!" The BEA and Air France both condemned the release of this information however, calling it "sensationalized and unverifiable information" that "impairs the memory of the crew and passengers who lost their lives."
The third interim report stated that some new facts had been established. In particular:
The BEA assembled a panel of aviation and medical experts to study pilots' responses as to why they reacted in certain ways.
A brief bulletin by Air France indicated that "the misleading stopping and starting of the stall warning alarm, contradicting the actual state of the aircraft, greatly contributed to the crew’s difficulty in analyzing the situation."
The aircraft was carrying 216 passengers and 12 aircrew
in two cabins of service. Among the 216 passengers were one infant, seven children, 82 women, and 126 men. There were three pilots: 58-year-old flight captain Marc Dubois had joined Air France in 1988 and had approximately 11,000 flight hours, including 1,700 hours on the Airbus A330; the two first officers, 37-year-old David Robert and 32-year-old Pierre-Cedric Bonin, had over 9,000 flight hours between them. Of the 12 crew members, 11 were French and one Brazilian.
According to an official list released by Air France on 1 June 2009, the majority of passengers were French, Brazilian, or German citizens. Attributing nationality was complicated by the holding of multiple citizenship
by several passengers. The nationalities as released by Air France are shown in the table to the right.
Air France had gathered approximately 60–70 relatives and friends to pick up arriving passengers at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Many of the passengers on Flight 447 were connecting to other destinations worldwide, so other parties anticipating the arrival of passengers were at various connecting airports.
On 20 June, Air France announced that each victim's family would be paid roughly €17,500 in initial compensation. Wrongful death lawsuits maintaining that design and manufacturing defects supplied pilots with incorrect information, rendering them incapable of maintaining altitude and air speed, have been filed in US Courts.
Some six months later, on 30 November 2009, Air France Flight 445 (F-GZCK) made a mayday
call due to severe turbulence around the same area and at a similar time to when Flight 447 had crashed. Because the pilots could not obtain immediate permission from air traffic controllers to descend to a less turbulent altitude, the mayday was to alert other aircraft in the vicinity that the flight had deviated from its normal flight level. This is standard contingency procedure when changing altitude without direct ATC authorization. After 30 minutes of moderate to severe turbulence the flight continued normally. The plane landed safely in Paris six hours and 40 minutes after the mayday call.
On 6 September 2011, the French media reported that the BEA was investigating a similar incident on an Air France flight from Caracas to Paris. The aircraft in question was an Airbus A340.
There have been several cases where inaccurate airspeed information led to flight incidents on the A330 and A340. Two of those incidents involved pitot probes.For an explanation of how airspeed is measured, see Air Data Reference. In the first incident, an Air France A340-300 (F-GLZL), en route from Tokyo, Japan, to Paris, France, experienced an event at 31000 feet (9,448.8 m) in which the airspeed was incorrectly reported and the autopilot
automatically disengaged. Bad weather, together with obstructed drainage holes in all three pitot probes, were subsequently found to be the cause. In the second incident, an Air France A340-300 (F-GLZN), en route from Paris to New York, encountered turbulence followed by the autoflight systems going offline, warnings over the accuracy of the reported airspeed and two minutes of stall alerts. Another incident on TAM Flight 8091, from Miami to Rio de Janeiro on 21 May 2009, involving an A330-200, showed a sudden drop of outside air temperature, then loss of air data, the ADIRS
, autopilot
and autothrust. The aircraft fell 1000 metres (3,280.8 ft) before being manually recovered using backup instruments. The NTSB also examined a similar 23 June 2009 incident on a Northwest Airlines
flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo.
The Flight 447 accident could have some relevant similarities to other A330 incidents with other carriers. Three reports are on file at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau
(ATSB) relating to Airbus A330s with flight computer problems, plus one which involved a Boeing 777.Malaysia Airlines
9M-MRG, 1 August 2005, a Boeing 777-200; Qantas Flight 68 on 12 September 2006, an Airbus A330-300; Qantas Flight 72
on 7 October 2008, an Airbus A330-300; Qantas Flight 71 on 27 December 2008, an Airbus A330-300. In October 2008, a malfunctioning ADIRU caused Qantas Flight 72
, en route from Singapore to Perth, Western Australia
, to enter a dive resulting in injuries to passengers and damage to the aircraft. This incident similarly started with ADIRU failure messages, inconsistent speed indications, and the automatic pilot disengaging. The same airframe and ADIRU were also involved in an earlier incident, in 2006, Qantas Flight 68. The Qantas aircraft was equipped with ADIRUs manufactured by Northrop Grumman
, while Flight 447 was equipped with an ADIRU manufactured by Honeywell
. A memo leaked from Airbus suggests that there was no evidence that the Flight 447 ADIRU malfunction was similar to the failure in the Qantas incidents.
Air France
Air France , stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, , and is one of the world's largest airlines. It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance...
Flight 447 was a scheduled airline flight
Airliner
An airliner is a large fixed-wing aircraft for transporting passengers and cargo. Such aircraft are operated by airlines. Although the definition of an airliner can vary from country to country, an airliner is typically defined as an aircraft intended for carrying multiple passengers in commercial...
from Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
-Galeão (GIG) to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
-Roissy (CDG) involving an Airbus A330-200 aircraft that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 aircrew
Aircrew
Aircrew are the personnel who operate an aircraft while in flight. The composition of the crew depends on the type of aircraft as well as the purpose of the flight.-Civilian:*Aviator** Pilot-in-command** First officer** Second officer** Third officer...
. The investigation is still ongoing, and the cause of the crash has not yet been formally determined. Reports in May and July 2011 from the BEA
Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'Aviation Civile
The Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile is an agency of the French government, responsible for investigating aviation accidents and making safety recommendations based on what is learned from those investigations. It is headquartered in Building 153 on the grounds...
stated that the aircraft crashed following an aerodynamic stall
Stall (flight)
In fluid dynamics, a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases. This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the foil is exceeded...
. Several minutes before the crash, the pitot tube
Pitot tube
A pitot tube is a pressure measurement instrument used to measure fluid flow velocity. The pitot tube was invented by the French engineer Henri Pitot Ulo in the early 18th century and was modified to its modern form in the mid-19th century by French scientist Henry Darcy...
s (speed sensors) started to give inconsistent readings, so the autopilot disconnected. The plane rolled slightly and the pilot flying pulled the nose back. The pilot repeatedly pulled back on the stick, producing a stall, continuing even while the stall warning sounded continuously for 54 seconds.
The cause of the faulty readings is yet to be determined, but a theory is that ice formed on the pitot tubes, which would have caused them to freeze, giving inconsistent measurements owing to their reliance on air pressure measurements to give speed readings. Pitot tube blockage is suspected of having contributed to airliner crashes in the past — such as Birgenair Flight 301
Birgenair Flight 301
Birgenair Flight 301 was a flight chartered by Turkish-managed Birgenair partner Alas Nacionales from Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic to Frankfurt, Germany via Gander, Canada and Berlin, Germany...
in 1996.
The 29 July 2011 BEA report indicated that the pilots had not been trained to fly the aircraft "in manual mode or to promptly recognize and respond to a speed-sensor malfunction at high altitude", and that this was not a standard training requirement at the time of the accident. This may explain the crew confusion and responses to a situation that they had not been trained for. By the time the captain had returned to the cockpit the stall was so severe that the stall warning was sounding only when the nose was lowered. The warning is only given when the sensor data is believed reliable and it is not reliable at the severe stall levels that were regularly happening at this time. This may have hampered the captain's response, since lowering the nose should have stopped the stall warning during recovery from the stall. Instead it restored reliable data and caused the stall warning to resume.
The investigation into the accident was initially hampered by the lack of any eyewitness evidence and radar tracks, as well as by difficulty finding the aircraft's black boxes
Black Box (transportation)
The term black box is a placeholder name used casually to refer to a collection of several different recording devices used in transportation: the flight recorders in aircraft, the event recorder in railway locomotives, the event data recorder in automobiles, message case in ships, and other...
, which were located and recovered from the ocean floor two years later in May 2011.
The accident was the deadliest in the history of Air France
Air France accidents and incidents
Air France has been in operation since 1933, and like other airlines with long histories and far-flung operations, its aircraft have been involved in a number of major accidents and incidents. A selected list of the most noteworthy of these events is given below.-1930s:*On 15 January 1934, a...
. Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the BEA
Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'Aviation Civile
The Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile is an agency of the French government, responsible for investigating aviation accidents and making safety recommendations based on what is learned from those investigations. It is headquartered in Building 153 on the grounds...
(Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety), described it as the worst accident in French aviation history. This was the deadliest commercial airliner accident to occur since the crash of American Airlines Flight 587
American Airlines Flight 587
American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300, crashed into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens, a borough of New York City, New York, shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on November 12, 2001. This is the second deadliest U.S...
in New York City in 2001. It was the first fatal accident to befall an Airbus A330 airliner while in passenger service.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was an Airbus A330-203Airbus A330
The Airbus A330 is a wide-body twin-engine jet airliner made by Airbus, a division of EADS. Versions of the A330 have a range of and can accommodate up to 335 passengers in a two-class layout or carry of cargo....
, with manufacturer serial number
Serial number
A serial number is a unique number assigned for identification which varies from its successor or predecessor by a fixed discrete integer value...
660, registered
Aircraft registration
An aircraft registration is a unique alphanumeric string that identifies a civil aircraft, in similar fashion to a licence plate on an automobile...
as "F-GZCP". This airliner first flew on 25 February 2005. The aircraft was powered by two General Electric CF6-80E1
General Electric CF6
The General Electric CF6 is a family of high-bypass turbofan engines produced by GE Aviation. A development of the first high-power high-bypass jet engine available, the TF39, the CF6 powers a wide variety of civilian airliners. The basic engine core formed the basis for the LM2500, LM5000, and...
engines with a maximum thrust of 72,000 lb giving it a cruise speed range of Mach
Mach number
Mach number is the speed of an object moving through air, or any other fluid substance, divided by the speed of sound as it is in that substance for its particular physical conditions, including those of temperature and pressure...
0.82–0.86 (871–913 km/h, 470−493 KTAS, 540 – 566 mph), at 35,000 ft (10.7 km altitude) and a range of 12,500 km (6750 nmi
Nautical mile
The nautical mile is a unit of length that is about one minute of arc of latitude along any meridian, but is approximately one minute of arc of longitude only at the equator...
). The aircraft underwent a major overhaul on 16 April 2009, and at the time of the accident had accumulated 18,870 flying hours. On 17 August 2006, the A330 was involved in a ground collision with Airbus A321-211
Airbus A320 family
The Airbus A320 family is a family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger jet airliners manufactured by Airbus Industrie.Airbus was originally a consortium of European aerospace companies, and is now fully owned by EADS. Airbus's name has been Airbus SAS since 2001...
F-GTAM, at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris. F-GTAM was substantially damaged while F-GZCP suffered only minor damage. The plane made 24 flights from Paris, to and from 13 different destinations worldwide, between 5 May and 31 May 2009.
Disappearance
The aircraft departed from Rio de Janeiro-Galeão International Airport on 31 May 2009 at 19:03 local time (22:03 UTC), with a scheduled arrival at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport approximately 11 hours later.The last verbal contact with the aircraft was at 01:33 UTC, when it was near waypoint
Waypoint
A waypoint is a reference point in physical space used for purposes of navigation.-Concept:Waypoints are sets of coordinates that identify a point in physical space. Coordinates used can vary depending on the application. For terrestrial navigation these coordinates can include longitude and...
INTOL (1°21′39"S 32°49′53"W), located 565 km (351.1 mi) off Natal
Natal, Rio Grande do Norte
-History:The northeastern tip of South America, Cabo São Roque, to the north of Natal and the closest point to Europe from Latin America, was first visited by European navigators in 1501, in the 1501–1502 Portuguese expedition led by Amerigo Vespucci, who named the spot after the saint of the day...
, on Brazil's north-eastern coast
Coastline of Brazil
The coastline of Brazil measures 7,491 km, which makes it the 16th longest national coastline of the world. All the coast lies adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean....
. The crew reported that they expected to use airway
Airway (aviation)
In aviation, an airway is a designated route in the air. Airways are laid out between navigational aids such as VORs, NDBs and Intersections ....
UN873 and enter Senegalese-controlled airspace at waypoint TASIL (4°0′18"N 29°59′24"W) within 50 minutes, and that the aircraft was flying normally at flight level
Flight level
A Flight Level is a standard nominal altitude of an aircraft, in hundreds of feet. This altitude is calculated from the International standard pressure datum of 1013.25 hPa , the average sea-level pressure, and therefore is not necessarily the same as the aircraft's true altitude either...
350 (a nominal altitude of 35000 ft (10,668 m)) and at a speed of 467 kn (915.2 km/h; 568.7 mph). The aircraft left Brazil Atlantic radar surveillance at 01:48 UTC.
Automated messages
An Air France spokesperson stated on 3 June that “the aircraft sent a series of electronic messages over a three-minute period, which represented about a minute of information. Exactly what that data means hasn't been sorted out, yet.”The first interim report, released on 2 July 2009, shows that the series were sent over a four-minute period. These messages, sent from an onboard monitoring system via the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting SystemAircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System
Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System is a digital datalink system for transmission of short, relatively simple messages between aircraft and ground stations via radio or satellite. The protocol, which was designed by ARINC to replace their VHF voice service and deployed in 1978,...
(ACARS), were made public on 4 June 2009. The transcripts indicate that between 02:10 UTC and 02:14 UTC, 6 failure reports (FLR) and 19 warnings (WRN) were transmitted. The messages resulted from equipment failure data, captured by a built-in system for testing and reporting, and cockpit warnings also posted to ACARS. The failures and warnings in the 4 minutes of transmission concerned navigation, auto-flight, flight controls and cabin air-conditioning (codes beginning with 34, 22, 27 and 21, respectively).
Among the ACARS transmissions in the first minute is one message that indicates a fault in the pitot-static system
Pitot-static system
A pitot-static system is a system of pressure-sensitive instruments that is most often used in aviation to determine an aircraft's airspeed, Mach number, altitude, and altitude trend. A pitot-static system generally consists of a pitot tube, a static port, and the pitot-static instruments...
(code 34111506). Bruno Sinatti, president of Alter, Air France’s third-biggest pilots’ union, stated that “the first automated system-failure message in a string of radio alerts from the incident aircraft explicitly indicated that the airspeed
Airspeed
Airspeed is the speed of an aircraft relative to the air. Among the common conventions for qualifying airspeed are: indicated airspeed , calibrated airspeed , true airspeed , equivalent airspeed and density airspeed....
sensors were faulty”. The twelve warning messages with the same time code indicate that the autopilot
Autopilot
An autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. An autopilot can refer specifically to aircraft, self-steering gear for boats, or auto guidance of space craft and missiles...
and auto-thrust system had disengaged, that the TCAS
Traffic Collision Avoidance System
A traffic collision avoidance system or traffic alert and collision avoidance system is an aircraft collision avoidance system designed to reduce the incidence of mid-air collisions between aircraft...
was in fault mode, and flight mode went from 'normal law' to 'alternate law'.
The 02:10 transmission contained a set of coordinates
Geographic coordinate system
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on the Earth to be specified by a set of numbers. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represent vertical position, and two or three of the numbers represent horizontal position...
which indicated that the aircraft was at 2.98°N 30.59°W.On the map, page 13 the coordinates in the Interim report f-cp090601ae on the accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 registered F-GZCP operated by Air France flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro – Paris (Original French version: Rapport d’étape f-cp090601e Accident survenu le 1er juin 2009 à l’Airbus A330-203 immatriculé F-GZCP exploité par Air France vol AF 447 Rio de Janeiro – Paris, with the information on page 13) is referenced as the "last known position" (French: Dernière position connue, "last known position").
The remainder of the messages occurred from 02:11 UTC to 02:14 UTC, containing a fault message for an Air Data Inertial Reference Unit
Air Data Inertial Reference Unit
An Air Data Inertial Reference Unit is a key component of the integrated Air Data Inertial Reference System , that supplies air data and inertial reference information to the pilots' Electronic Flight Instrument System displays as well as other systems on the aircraft such as the engines,...
(ADIRU) and the Integrated Standby Instrument System (ISIS). At 02:12 UTC, a warning message NAV ADR DISAGREE indicated that there was a disagreement between the three independent air data systems More precisely: that after one of the three independent systems had been diagnosed as faulty and excluded from consideration, the two remaining systems disagreed.. At 02:13 UTC, a fault message for the flight management guidance and envelope computer was sent. One of the two final messages transmitted at 02:14 UTC was a warning referring to the air data reference system, the other ADVISORY (Code 213100206) was a "cabin vertical speed warning", indicating that the plane was descending at a high rate.
Weather conditions
A meteorological analysis of the area surrounding the flight path showed a mesoscale convective systemMesoscale Convective System
A mesoscale convective system is a complex of thunderstorms that becomes organized on a scale larger than the individual thunderstorms but smaller than extratropical cyclones, and normally persists for several hours or more...
extending to an altitude of around 50000 ft (15.2 km; 9.5 mi) above the Atlantic Ocean before Flight 447 disappeared. From satellite images taken near the time of the incident, it appeared that the aircraft encountered a thunderstorm, likely containing significant turbulence.
Detailed analysis of the weather conditions for the flight shows it is possible that the aircraft's final 12 minutes could have been spent "flying through significant turbulence
Turbulence
In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic and stochastic property changes. This includes low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time...
and thunderstorm
Thunderstorm
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm, a lightning storm, thundershower or simply a storm is a form of weather characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere known as thunder. The meteorologically assigned cloud type associated with the...
activity for about 75 mi (120.7 km)", and may have been subjected to rime icing, and possibly clear ice or graupel. Satellite imagery loops from the CIMSS clarify that the flight was coping with a series of storms, not just one.
Commercial air transport crews routinely encounter this type of storm in this area. Generally, when storms of this type are encountered at night, pilots use onboard radar to navigate around them.
In this instance, shortly after the last verbal contact was made with Air Traffic Control about 350 mi (563.3 km) north-east of Natal
Natal, Rio Grande do Norte
-History:The northeastern tip of South America, Cabo São Roque, to the north of Natal and the closest point to Europe from Latin America, was first visited by European navigators in 1501, in the 1501–1502 Portuguese expedition led by Amerigo Vespucci, who named the spot after the saint of the day...
(station identifier SBNT), the aircraft likely traversed an area of intense deep convection which had formed within a broad band of thunderstorms along the Intertropical Convergence Zone
Intertropical Convergence Zone
The Intertropical Convergence Zone , known by sailors as The Doldrums, is the area encircling the earth near the equator where winds originating in the northern and southern hemispheres come together....
(ITCZ). Turbulence in the vicinity of these rapidly developing storms may have contributed to the accident. According to news sources, 12 other flights shared more or less the same route that Flight 447 was using at the time of the accident.
Significance of the disappearance
Wil S. Hylton of The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
said that the crash "was easy to bend into myth" because "no other passenger jet in modern history had disappeared so completely — without a Mayday call or a witness or even a trace on radar." Hylton explained that the A330 "was considered to be among the safest" of the passenger aircraft. Hylton added that when the aircraft disappeared, "Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky, it was tempting to deliver a tidy narrative about the hubris of building a self-flying airplane, Icarus
Icarus
-Space and astronomy:* Icarus , on the Moon* Icarus , a planetary science journal* 1566 Icarus, an asteroid* IKAROS, a interplanetary unmanned spacecraft...
falling from the sky. Or maybe Flight 447 was the Titanic, an uncrashable ship at the bottom of the sea." Dr. Guy Gratton, an aviation expert from the Flight Safety Laboratory at Brunel University
Brunel University
Brunel University is a public research university located in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom. The university is named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel....
, said "This is an air accident the like of which we haven't seen before. Half the accident investigators in the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
– and in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
too – are waiting for these results. This has been the biggest investigation since Lockerbie
Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport...
. Put bluntly, big passenger planes do not just fall out of the sky." Many people in Germany closely followed the Flight 447 case because 26 German passengers were on board the aircraft.
Search effort
Dakar
Dakar is the capital city and largest city of Senegal. It is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland...
after noticing that the plane had not made the required radio call signaling its crossing into Senegalese airspace. The Brazilian Air Force
Brazilian Air Force
The Brazilian Air Force is the air branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces and one of the three national uniformed services. The FAB was formed when the Army and Navy air branch were merged into a single military force initially called "National Air Forces"...
then began a search and rescue
Search and rescue
Search and rescue is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger.The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, mostly based upon terrain considerations...
operation from the Brazilian archipelago
Archipelago
An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...
of Fernando de Noronha
Fernando de Noronha
Fernando de Noronha is an archipelago of 21 islands and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, offshore from the Brazilian coast. The main island has an area of and had a population of 3,012 in the year 2010...
, and at 19:00 UTC on 1 June, Spain sent a CASA 235
CASA CN-235
The CASA/IPTN CN-235 is a medium-range twin-engined transport plane that was jointly developed by CASA of Spain and IPTN of Indonesia as a regional airliner and military transport. Its primary military roles include maritime patrol, surveillance, and air transport...
maritime patrol plane in search and rescue operations near Cape Verde. French reconnaissance planes were also dispatched, including one Breguet Atlantic from Dakar
Dakar
Dakar is the capital city and largest city of Senegal. It is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland...
, and the French requested satellite equipment from the United States to help find the plane. Brazilian Air Force spokesperson Colonel Henry Munhoz told Brazilian TV that radar on Cape Verde failed to pick up the aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean.
Later on 1 June, officials with Air France and the French government had already presumed that the plane had been lost with no survivors. An Air France spokesperson told L'Express
L'Express (France)
L'Express is a French weekly news magazine. When founded in 1953 during the First Indochina War, it was modelled on the US magazine TIME.-History:...
that there was "no hope for survivors," and French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
told relatives of the passengers that there was only a minimal chance that anyone survived.
Also late on 1 June, the deputy chief of the Brazilian Aeronautical Communications Center, Jorge Amaral, confirmed that 30 minutes after the Air France Airbus had transmitted the automatic report, a commercial pilot had reported the sighting of "orange dots" in the middle of the Atlantic, which could indicate the glow of wreckage on fire. This sighting was reported by a TAM Airlines crew flying from Europe to Brazil, at approximately 1300 km (807.8 mi) from Fernando de Noronha. Another similar sighting of "something flashing brightly over the ocean then taking a descending vertical trajectory" was reported by the Spanish pilot of Air Comet Flight 974 flying from Lima to Madrid. The Brazilian newspaper O Globo
O Globo
O Globo is a Brazilian newspaper based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. O Globo is the most prominent print publication in the Marinho family's Brazilian media conglomerate....
reported that wreckage debris was discovered off the Senegalese coast, but that its origin was still uncertain. EarthTimes and news.com.au reported that the crew of the French freighter Douce France spotted debris floating on the ocean in the area earlier indicated by the TAM crew.
On 2 June at 15:20 (UTC), the Brazilian Air Force, using an Embraer R-99A fitted with Erieye radar
Erieye radar
The Erieye radar system, is an Airborne Early Warning and Control System developed by Saab Microwave Systems of Sweden. It is based on the Active Electronically Scanned Array . The Erieye is used on a variety of aircraft platforms, such as the Brazilian Embraer E-99 or EMB-145...
, found wreckage and signs of oil, possibly jet fuel
Jet fuel
Jet fuel is a type of aviation fuel designed for use in aircraft powered by gas-turbine engines. It is clear to straw-colored in appearance. The most commonly used fuels for commercial aviation are Jet A and Jet A-1 which are produced to a standardized international specification...
, strewn along a 5 km (3.1 mi) band 650 km (403.9 mi) north-east of Fernando de Noronha
Fernando de Noronha
Fernando de Noronha is an archipelago of 21 islands and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, offshore from the Brazilian coast. The main island has an area of and had a population of 3,012 in the year 2010...
Island, near the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago. Spotted wreckage included a plane seat, an orange buoy, a barrel, and "white pieces and electrical conductors". Later that day, after meeting with relatives of the Brazilians on the aircraft, Brazilian Defence Minister
Ministry of Defence (Brazil)
The Ministry of Defence of Brazil, is the civilian cabinet organization responsible for managing the Military of Brazil. It is headed by the Minister of Defence....
Nelson Jobim
Nelson Jobim
Nelson Azevedo Jobim is a Brazilian jurist and politician. He served as the Minister of Defense of Brazil from 2007-2011. He is a distant relative of musician Antonio Carlos Jobim.-Early life:...
announced that the Air Force believed the wreckage was from Flight 447. Brazilian vice-president José Alencar
José Alencar
José Alencar Gomes da Silva , also known as José Alencar, the Strong, was a Brazilian businessman and politician, and the Vice President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. In business since a young age, Alencar was a self-made multimillionaire, as the chief executive of Coteminas, after working as...
(acting as president since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , known popularly as Lula, served as the 35th President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.A founding member of the Workers' Party , he ran for President three times unsuccessfully, first in the 1989 election. Lula achieved victory in the 2002 election, and was inaugurated as...
was out of the country) declared three days of official mourning.
Also on 2 June, two French Navy
French Navy
The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...
vessels, Foudre
Foudre (L 9011)
The Foudre is an amphibious assault ship of the French Navy, the twelfth vessel to bear the name, and lead ship of her class.She served during the war in Yugoslavia, and has been the central element of Operation Licorne in Côte d'Ivoire....
and Ventôse, were en route to the suspected crash site. Other ships sent to the site included the French research vessel Pourquoi Pas?, equipped with two mini-submarines able to descend to 6000 m (19,685 ft), since the area of the Atlantic in which the plane went down may be as deep as 4700 m (15,419.9 ft). A US Navy Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion
P-3 Orion
The Lockheed P-3 Orion is a four-engine turboprop anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft developed for the United States Navy and introduced in the 1960s. Lockheed based it on the L-188 Electra commercial airliner. The aircraft is easily recognizable by its distinctive tail stinger or...
anti-submarine warfare and maritime patrol aircraft was deployed in the search.
On 3 June, the first Brazilian Navy
Brazilian Navy
The Brazilian Navy is a branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces responsible for conducting naval operations. It is the largest navy in Latin America...
ship, the patrol boat
Patrol boat
A patrol boat is a relatively small naval vessel generally designed for coastal defense duties.There have been many designs for patrol boats. They may be operated by a nation's navy, coast guard, or police force, and may be intended for marine and/or estuarine or river environments...
, reached the area in which the first debris was spotted. The Brazilian Navy sent a total of five ships to the debris site; the frigate
Frigate
A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...
Constituição
Brazilian frigate Constituição (F42)
The F Constituição is a Niteroi class frigate of the Brazilian Navy. The Constituição was the fourth Niterói class frigate ordered by the Brazilian Navy, on 20 September 1970...
and the corvette
Corvette
A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...
Caboclo
Brazilian corvette Caboclo (V19)
The Cv Caboclo is an Imperial Marinheiro class corvette of the Brazilian Navy. The Caboclo was the fifth of ten Imperial Marinheiro class corvettes ordered by the Brazilian Navy in 1953...
were scheduled to reach the area on 4 June, the frigate Bosísio on 6 June and the replenishment oiler
Replenishment Oiler
A replenishment oiler or fleet tanker is a naval auxiliary ship with fuel tanks and dry cargo holds, which can replenish other ships while underway in the high seas. Such ships are used by several countries around the world....
Almirante Gastão Motta
Brazilian tanker Almirante Gastão Motta (G23)
The NT Almirante Gastão Motta is an Alte. Gastão Motta class replenishment oiler of the Brazilian Navy. The Almirante Gastão Motta was ordered by the Brazilian Navy on 15 December 1987...
on 7 June.
On 5 June, French defence minister Hervé Morin
Hervé Morin
Hervé Morin is a French politician, leader of the New Center party and a former French Minister of Defence.-Member of National Assembly:...
announced that the nuclear submarine
Nuclear submarine
A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor . The performance advantages of nuclear submarines over "conventional" submarines are considerable: nuclear propulsion, being completely independent of air, frees the submarine from the need to surface frequently, as is necessary for...
Émeraude was being sent to the area, to assist in the search for the missing flight recorder
Flight recorder
A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of an aircraft accident or incident. For this reason, flight recorders are required to be capable of surviving the conditions likely to be encountered in a severe aircraft...
s or "black-boxes" which might be located at great depth. The submarine would use its sonar to listen for the ultrasonic signal emitted by the black boxes' "pingers
Underwater locator beacon
An underwater locator beacon or underwater acoustic beacon is a device fitted to aviation flight recorders such as the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. ULBs are also sometimes required to be attached directly to an aircraft fuselage...
". On 10 June, the Émeraude reached the crash zone of Air France Flight 447 with plans to troll
Troll (angling)
Trolling is a method of fishing where one or more fishing lines, baited with lures or bait fish, are drawn through the water. This may be behind a moving boat, or by slowly winding the line in when fishing from a static position, or even sweeping the line from side-to-side, e.g. when fishing from...
13 sq mi (33.7 km²) a day, listening for the pingers. The Émeraude was to work with the mini-sub
Midget submarine
A midget submarine is any submarine under 150 tons, typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to 6 or 8, with little or no on-board living accommodation...
Nautile
Nautile
The Nautile is a manned submersible owned by Ifremer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea. Commissioned in 1984, the submersible can be operated at depths of up to ....
, which can descend to the ocean floor
Seabed
The seabed is the bottom of the ocean.- Ocean structure :Most of the oceans have a common structure, created by common physical phenomena, mainly from tectonic movement, and sediment from various sources...
. The French submarines would be aided by two U.S. underwater audio devices
Underwater acoustic communication
Underwater acoustic communication is a technique of sending and receiving message below water . There are several ways of employing such communication but the most common is using hydrophones...
, capable of picking up signals at a depth of 20000 ft (6,096 m).
Search results
On 4 June, the Brazilian Air Force claimed they had recovered the first debris from the Air France crash site, 340 miles (547.2 km) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, but on 5 June, around 13:00 UTC, Brazilian officials announced that they had not yet recovered anything from Flight 447, as the oil slick and debris field found on 2 June could not have come from the plane. Ramon Borges Cardoso, director of the Air Space Control Department, said that the fuel slicks were not caused by aviation fuel but were believed to have been from a passing ship. Even so, a Brazilian Air Force official maintained that some of the material that had been spotted (but not picked up) was in fact from Flight 447. Poor visibility had prevented search teams from re-locating the material.On 6 June, five days after Flight 447 disappeared, it was reported that the Brazilian Air Force had located "bodies and debris" from the missing aircraft, after they had been spotted by a special search radar-equipped aircraft near the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago. The bodies and objects were reportedly found at 08:14 Brazilian time (11:14 UTC), and experts on human remains were sent to investigate. Brazilian Air Force Colonel Jorge Amaral stated that "We confirm the recovery from the water of debris and bodies from the Air France plane. Air France boarding passes for Flight 447 were also found. We can't give more information without confirming what we have." Two male bodies were later found along with a seat, a nylon backpack containing a computer and vaccination card and a leather briefcase containing a boarding pass for the Air France flight.
Authorities also corrected the misunderstanding about the earlier debris findings: except for the wooden pallet, the debris did come from Flight 447, but rescue aircraft and ships had made the search for possible survivors and bodies a priority, delaying the verification of the origins of the other recovered debris.
On 7 June, search crews recovered the Airbus's vertical stabilizer
Vertical stabilizer
The vertical stabilizers, vertical stabilisers, or fins, of aircraft, missiles or bombs are typically found on the aft end of the fuselage or body, and are intended to reduce aerodynamic side slip. It is analogical to a skeg on boats and ships.On aircraft, vertical stabilizers generally point upwards...
, the first major piece of wreckage to be discovered.
By 17 June 2009, a total of 50 bodies had been recovered in two distinct groups more than 50 miles (80.5 km) apart, and more than 400 pieces of debris from the plane had been recovered. 49 of the 50 bodies had been transported to shore, first by the frigates Constituição
Brazilian frigate Constituição (F42)
The F Constituição is a Niteroi class frigate of the Brazilian Navy. The Constituição was the fourth Niterói class frigate ordered by the Brazilian Navy, on 20 September 1970...
and Bosísio to the islands of Fernando de Noronha
Fernando de Noronha
Fernando de Noronha is an archipelago of 21 islands and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, offshore from the Brazilian coast. The main island has an area of and had a population of 3,012 in the year 2010...
and thereafter by plane to Recife
Recife
Recife is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Brazil with 4,136,506 inhabitants, the largest metropolitan area of the North/Northeast Regions, the 5th-largest metropolitan influence area in Brazil, and the capital and largest city of the state of Pernambuco. The population of the city proper...
for identification. As of 23 June 2009, officials had identified 11 of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash site off the coast of Brazil, by using dental records and fingerprints. Of those identified, ten were Brazilian, although no names had been released. On 25 June, Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
reported that the bodies of the pilot
Aviator
An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
, Marc Dubois, and a flight attendant
Flight attendant
Flight attendants or cabin crew are members of an aircrew employed by airlines primarily to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers aboard commercial flights, on select business jet aircraft, and on some military aircraft.-History:The role of a flight attendant derives from that of similar...
had been retrieved and identified. On 26 June, the Brazilian Military announced it had ended the search for bodies and debris, having recovered 51 bodies with the help of French vessels and French, Spanish and U.S. aircraft.
Following the end of the search for bodies, the search for the flight data recorder
Flight data recorder
A flight data recorder is an electronic device employed to record any instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters...
and the cockpit voice recorder
Cockpit voice recorder
A cockpit voice recorder , often referred to as a "black box", is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flight deck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents...
, the "black boxes", continued with the French nuclear submarine and with two French-contracted ships (towing the U.S. Navy listening devices) trawling a search area with a radius of 80 kilometres (49.7 mi). By mid July, recovery of the black boxes had still not been announced. French search teams denied an earlier report that a "very weak" signal had been picked up from the black box locator beacon. The finite beacon battery life meant that, as the time since the crash elapsed, the likelihood of location diminished. In late July, the search for the black boxes entered its second phase, with a French research vessel resuming the search using a towed sonar array. In July 2009, Airbus announced that they would fund an extended search for the aircraft's black boxes. This announcement came amidst their official backing to determine the root cause of the accident. The second phase of the search ended on 20 August without finding wreckage within a 75 km radius of the last position, as reported at 02:10.
On 13 December 2009, the BEA announced that a search for the recorders for three months more would be conducted using "robot submarines" beginning in February 2010.
The BEA announced that they expected the search to resume in mid-March, depending on the weather. The third phase of the search was planned to take four weeks. Air France, Airbus, the US Navy, and the National Transportation Safety Board were to aid in the search. The new search plan covered an area of 770 square miles (1,994.3 km²) and was to utilize four sonar devices and two underwater robots. Oceanographers from France, Russia, Britain, and the United States each separately analysed the search area, to select a smaller area for closer survey.
The search continued in the beginning of April 2010 and was planned to last for 30 days. In May 2010 the French newspaper Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
suggested that the plane had been heading back to Brazil when it had crashed.
On 6 May 2010, the French Minister of Defense reported that the cockpit voice recorders had been localized to a zone 5 km by 5 km, following analysis of the data recorded by the French submarine during the initial search conducted in mid-2009. On 12 May 2010, it was reported that the search following the 6 May report of the possible location of the voice recorders had not led to any findings and that the search had resumed in a different area from the one identified by the French submarine. The third phase of the search ended on 24 May 2010 without any success, though the French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA) says that the search 'nearly' covered the whole area drawn up by investigators.
In November 2010, French officials announced that a fourth search would start in February 2011, using the most sophisticated technology available.
2011 search and recovery
On 3 April 2011, during Phase 4 of the search and recovery operation, a team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic InstitutionWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of all aspects of marine science and engineering and to the education of marine researchers. Established in 1930, it is the largest independent oceanographic research...
operating full ocean depth autonomous underwater vehicle
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
An autonomous underwater vehicle is a robot which travels underwater without requiring input from an operator. AUVs constitute part of a larger group of undersea systems known as unmanned underwater vehicles, a classification that includes non-autonomous remotely operated underwater vehicles...
s (AUVs) owned by the Waitt Institute discovered, by means of sidescan sonar, a large portion of debris field believed to be that of flight AF447. Further debris and bodies, still trapped in the partly-intact remains of the aircraft's fuselage, were located in water depths of between 3800 m (2,077.9 fathom; 12,467.2 ft). The debris was found to be lying in a relatively flat and silty area of the ocean floor (as opposed to the extremely mountainous topography that was originally believed to be AF447's final resting place). Other items found were engines, wing parts and the landing gear
Landing Gear
Landing Gear is Devin the Dude's fifth studio album. It was released on October 7, 2008. It was his first studio album since signing with the label Razor & Tie. It features a high-profile guest appearance from Snoop Dogg. As of October 30, 2008, the album has sold 18,906 copies.-Track...
.
The debris field was described as "quite compact", measuring some 200 by and located a short distance to the north of where pieces of wreckage had been recovered previously, suggesting that the aircraft hit the water largely intact. The French Ecology and Transportation Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet
Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet
Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet , often referred to by her initials NKM, is the current Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Housing of France, appointed in November 2010....
stated the bodies and wreckage would be brought to the surface and taken to France for examination and identification. It was not yet possible to quantify how many bodies had been discovered. The French government chartered three vessels – the , the and an American-based vessel, which are normally used by telecommunications companies for deep-ocean cable-laying
Cable layer
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, electricity, and such. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaveshttp://atlantic-cable.com/Cableships/Monarch%284%29/ | History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea...
and the , a deepwater expedition research vessel, to retrieve debris and bodies. An American Remora 6000 remotely operated vehicle
Remotely operated vehicle
A remotely operated vehicle is a tethered underwater vehicle. They are common in deepwater industries such as offshore hydrocarbon extraction. An ROV may sometimes be called a remotely operated underwater vehicle to distinguish it from remote control vehicles operating on land or in the air. ROVs...
(ROV) and operations crew experienced in the recovery of aircraft for the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
were on board the Île de Sein.
The BEA announced that on 26 April, after a 12-hour dive by the Remora 6000, the flight data recorder
Flight data recorder
A flight data recorder is an electronic device employed to record any instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters...
chassis had been found, although without the crash-survivable memory unit, which is the actual data storage medium. On 1 May the memory unit was found and lifted on board the Île de Sein by the ROV. According to the BEA's director Jean-Paul Troadec, the photos of the memory module showed that it had suffered little exterior corrosion, but it was not possible to say whether the memory chip remained readable. The plane's cockpit voice recorder
Cockpit voice recorder
A cockpit voice recorder , often referred to as a "black box", is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flight deck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents...
was found at 2150 UTC (GMT) on 2 May 2011, and was raised and brought on board the Île de Sein the following day.
On 7 May the flight recorders, under judicial seal, were taken aboard the French Navy patrol boat La Capricieuse for transfer to the port of Cayenne
Cayenne
Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the Atlantic coast. The city's motto is "Ferit Aurum Industria" which means "Work brings wealth"...
. From there they were transported by air to the BEA's office in Le Bourget
Le Bourget
Le Bourget is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.A very small part of Le Bourget airport lies on the territory of the commune of Le Bourget, which nonetheless gave its name to the airport. Most of the airport lies on the territory of the...
near Paris for data download and analysis. One engine and the avionics bay, containing onboard computers, had also been raised. On 5 May 2011, efforts to recover the bodies of passengers from the sea bed began. 51 bodies had been previously recovered from the sea.
The BEA confirmed on 16 May that all the data from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder had been successfully downloaded. The data would be subjected to detailed in-depth analysis taking several weeks, after which another interim report would be released during the summer. The download was completed in the presence of two Brazilian investigators of the Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA), two British investigators of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch
Air Accidents Investigation Branch
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch investigates air accidents in the United Kingdom. It is a branch of the Department for Transport and is based on the grounds of Farnborough Airport near Aldershot, Rushmoor, Hampshire.-History:...
(AAIB), two German investigators of the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation (BFU), one American investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board
National Transportation Safety Board
The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine...
(NTSB), an officer of the French judicial police, and a court expert. The entire download was filmed and recorded.
On 3 June, the last 27 bodies from the wreckage were recovered. With this, the number of bodies recovered from the wreckage reached 104 and the total number of recovered bodies was 154. The remaining 74 bodies from the flight were not found.
Investigation
Stall (flight)
In fluid dynamics, a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases. This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the foil is exceeded...
) and hit the ocean surface with its underside at a vertical speed of 150 kph (90 mph) 4 minutes later, breaking up on impact.
The French government opened two investigations:
- A criminal investigation for manslaughter is under way (this is standard procedure for any accident involving a loss of life and implies no presumption of foul playCrimeCrime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
), which since 5 June 2009 is under the supervision of Investigating Magistrate Sylvie Zimmerman from the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance. The judge gave the investigation to the Gendarmerie nationale, which would conduct it through its aerial transportation division (Gendarmerie des transports aériens or GTA) and its forensic research institute (the "Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale", FR).- In June 2009, the DGSE (the external French intelligence agency) revealed that the names of two registered passengers on board corresponded to the names of two individuals thought to be linked to Islamic terrorist groups.
- In March 2011, a French judge filed preliminary manslaughter charges against Air France and Airbus over the crash.
- A technical investigation, the goal of which is to enhance the safety of future flights. As the aircraft was of French registration and crashed over international waters, this is the responsibility of the French government, under the ICAO convention. The Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation CivileBureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'Aviation CivileThe Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile is an agency of the French government, responsible for investigating aviation accidents and making safety recommendations based on what is learned from those investigations. It is headquartered in Building 153 on the grounds...
(BEA) is in charge of the investigation. Representatives from BrazilBrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
became involved under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13; representatives of the United States were involved since the engines of the aircraft were manufactured there, and the other representatives could supply important information. The People's Republic of China, Croatia, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Norway, South Korea, Russia, South Africa, and Switzerland appointed observers, since citizens of those countries were on board. The BEA released a press release on 5 June 2009, that stated:
By June 2009 the main task occupying the investigators was the recovery of aircraft parts, primarily the flight recorder
Flight recorder
A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of an aircraft accident or incident. For this reason, flight recorders are required to be capable of surviving the conditions likely to be encountered in a severe aircraft...
s. BEA chief Paul-Louis Arslanian said that he was not optimistic about finding them since they might be under as much as 3000 m (9,842.5 ft) of water and the terrain under this portion of the ocean was very rugged. Investigators were hoping to find the aircraft's lower aft section, since that was where the recorders were located. Although France had never recovered a flight recorder from such depths, there was precedent for such an operation: in 1988, an independent contractor was able to recover the cockpit voice recorder
Cockpit voice recorder
A cockpit voice recorder , often referred to as a "black box", is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flight deck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents...
of South African Airways Flight 295
South African Airways Flight 295
South African Airways Flight 295 was a commercial flight that suffered a catastrophic in-flight fire in the cargo area and crashed into the Indian Ocean east of Mauritius on 28 November 1987, killing everyone on board...
from a depth of 4900 m (16,076.1 ft) in a search area of between 80 and 250 sq nmi (274.4 and 857.5 km2). The Air France flight recorders were fitted with water-activated acoustic underwater locator beacon
Underwater locator beacon
An underwater locator beacon or underwater acoustic beacon is a device fitted to aviation flight recorders such as the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. ULBs are also sometimes required to be attached directly to an aircraft fuselage...
s or "pingers", which should have remained active for at least 30 days, giving searchers that much time to locate the origin of the signals.
On 2 July 2009, the BEA released an intermediate report, which described all known facts, and a summary of the visual examination of the rudder and the other parts of the aircraft that had been recovered at that time. According to the BEA, this examination showed that:
- the airlinerAirlinerAn airliner is a large fixed-wing aircraft for transporting passengers and cargo. Such aircraft are operated by airlines. Although the definition of an airliner can vary from country to country, an airliner is typically defined as an aircraft intended for carrying multiple passengers in commercial...
was likely to have struck the surface of the sea in a normal flight attitude, with a high rate of descent;To clarify: the airliner was considered to be in a nearly level attitude, but with a high rate of descent when it collided with the surface of the ocean. That impact caused high deceleration and compression forces on the airplane, as shown by the deformations that were found in the recovered pieces of the airliner. - There were no signs of any fires or explosions.
- The airliner did not break up in flight. The report also stresses that the BEA had not had access to the post-mortem reports at the time of its writing. Some of these might have suggested otherwise.
On 16 May 2011, Le Figaro reported that the BEA investigators had ruled out an aircraft malfunction as the cause of the crash, according to preliminary information extracted from the Flight Data Recorder. The following day, the BEA issued a press release explicitly describing the Le Figaro report as a "sensationalist publication of non-validated information". They stated that no conclusions had yet been made, that investigations were continuing, and that no interim report was expected before the summer. On 18 May the head of the investigation clarified this contradictory information, stating that no major malfunction of the aircraft had been found so far in the data from the flight data recorder, but that minor malfunctions had not yet been ruled out.
On 27 May 2011, the BEA released a short factual report of the findings from the data recorders without any conclusions. A first analysis of the data was to be expected for the end of July.
Airspeed inconsistency
In the minutes before its disappearance, the aircraft's onboard systems had sent a number of messages, via ACARS, indicating disagreement in the indicated airspeedIndicated airspeed
Indicated airspeed is the airspeed read directly from the airspeed indicator on an aircraft, driven by the pitot-static system. IAS is directly related to calibrated airspeed , which is the IAS corrected for instrument and installation errors....
(IAS) readings. A spokesperson for the BEA claimed that "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear" to the pilots and, on 4 June, Airbus issued an Accident Information Telex
Telex
Telex may refer to:* Telex , , a communications network** Teleprinter, the device used on the above network* Telex , a Belgian pop group...
to operators of all its aircraft reminding pilots of the recommended Abnormal and Emergency Procedures to be taken in the case of unreliable airspeed indication. French Transport Minister Dominique Bussreau said "Obviously the pilots [of Flight 447] did not have the [correct] speed showing, which can lead to two bad consequences for the life of the aircraft: under-speed, which can lead to a stall
Stall (flight)
In fluid dynamics, a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases. This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the foil is exceeded...
, and over-speed, which can lead to the aircraft breaking up because it is approaching the speed of sound
Speed of sound
The speed of sound is the distance travelled during a unit of time by a sound wave propagating through an elastic medium. In dry air at , the speed of sound is . This is , or about one kilometer in three seconds or approximately one mile in five seconds....
and the structure of the plane is not made for resisting such speeds".
Paul-Louis Arslanian, of France's air accident investigation agency, confirmed that there had been previous problems affecting the speed readings on other A330 aircraft stating, "We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330 ... There is a programme of replacement, of improvement". The problems primarily occurred on the Airbus A320, but, awaiting a recommendation from Airbus, Air France delayed installing new pitots
Pitot tube
A pitot tube is a pressure measurement instrument used to measure fluid flow velocity. The pitot tube was invented by the French engineer Henri Pitot Ulo in the early 18th century and was modified to its modern form in the mid-19th century by French scientist Henry Darcy...
on A330/A340, yet increased inspection frequencies.
On 6 June 2009, Arslanian said that Air France had not replaced pitot probes as Airbus recommended on F-GZCP, saying that "it does not mean that without replacing the probes that the A330 was dangerous." Air France issued a further clarification of the situation:
The recommendation from Airbus was that the Thales model AA pitot tubes which had been installed on the Air France fleet during manufacture should be replaced by Thales model BA pitot tubes, in order to address the problem of water ingress which had been observed. Since it was not an Airworthiness Directive
Airworthiness Directive
An Airworthiness Directive is a notification to owners and operators of certified aircraft that a known safety deficiency with a particular model of aircraft, engine, avionics or other system exists and must be corrected....
(AD), the guidelines allow the operator to apply the recommendations at its discretion. Air France implemented the change on its A320 fleet where the incidents of water ingress were observed, and decided to do so in its A330/340 fleet only when failures occurred.
After discussing these issues with the manufacturer, Air France sought a means of reducing these incidents, and Airbus indicated that the new pitot probe designed for the A320 was not designed to prevent cruise level ice-over. In 2009, tests suggested that the new probe could improve its reliability, prompting Air France to accelerate the replacement program, but this work had not been carried out on F-GZCP. By 17 June 2009, Air France had replaced all pitot probes on its A330 type aircraft.
On 11 June 2009, a spokesman from the BEA reminded that there was no conclusive evidence at the moment linking pitot probe malfunction to the AF447 crash, and this was reiterated on 17 June 2009 by the BEA chief, Paul-Louis Arslanian.
In July 2009, Airbus issued new advice to A330 and A340 operators to exchange Thales
Thales Group
The Thales Group is a French electronics company delivering information systems and services for the aerospace, defense, transportation and security markets...
pitot tubes for tubes from Goodrich Sensors and Integrated Systems
Goodrich Corporation
The Goodrich Corporation , formerly the B.F. Goodrich Company, is an American aerospace manufacturing company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Founded in Akron, Ohio in 1870 as Goodrich, Tew & Co. by Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich. The company name was changed to the "B.F...
.
On 12 August 2009, Airbus issued three Mandatory Service Bulletins, requiring that all A330 and A340 aircraft be fitted with two pitot tubes manufactured by Goodrich Sensors and one Thales model BA pitot (or alternatively three of the Goodrich pitots); Thales model AA pitot tubes were no longer to be used. This requirement was incorporated into Airworthiness Directives issued by the European Aviation Safety Agency
European Aviation Safety Agency
The European Aviation Safety Agency is an agency of the European Union with offices in Cologne, Germany, which has been given regulatory and executive tasks in the field of civilian aviation safety. It was created on 15 July 2002, and it reached full functionality in 2008, taking over functions...
(EASA) on 31 August and by the Federal Aviation Administration
Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration is the national aviation authority of the United States. An agency of the United States Department of Transportation, it has authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S...
(FAA) on 3 September. The replacement was to be completed by January 7, 2010. According to the FAA, in its Federal Register publication, use of the Thales model has resulted in "reports of airspeed indication discrepancies while flying at high altitudes in inclement weather conditions", that "could result in reduced control of the airplane." The FAA further stated that the Thales model probe "has not yet demonstrated the same level of robustness to withstand high-altitude ice crystals as Goodrich pitot probes P/N 0851HL,".
On 21 December 2010, Airbus issued a warning to roughly 100 operators of A330, A340-200 and A340-300 aircraft, regarding pitot tube
Pitot tube
A pitot tube is a pressure measurement instrument used to measure fluid flow velocity. The pitot tube was invented by the French engineer Henri Pitot Ulo in the early 18th century and was modified to its modern form in the mid-19th century by French scientist Henry Darcy...
s, advising pilots not to re-engage the autopilot
Autopilot
An autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. An autopilot can refer specifically to aircraft, self-steering gear for boats, or auto guidance of space craft and missiles...
following failure of the airspeed indicators.
Findings from the flight data recorder
On 27 May 2011, the BEA released an update on its investigation describing the history of the flight as recorded by the flight data recorderFlight data recorder
A flight data recorder is an electronic device employed to record any instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters...
. At 3 hours 55 minutes absolute time (time from planned departure), the captain woke the second pilot and said: "[...] he's going to take my place". After having attended the briefing between the two co-pilots, the captain left the cockpit to rest at 4 hours 1 minute 46 seconds. At 4 hours 6 minutes absolute time, the pilot warned the cabin crew that they were about to enter an area of turbulence. Four minutes later, the pilots turned the plane slightly to the left and decreased its speed from Mach
Mach number
Mach number is the speed of an object moving through air, or any other fluid substance, divided by the speed of sound as it is in that substance for its particular physical conditions, including those of temperature and pressure...
0.82 to Mach 0.8 due to increased turbulence.
At 4 hours 10 minutes and 5 seconds absolute time the autopilot disengaged as did the engines' auto-thrust systems 3 seconds later. The pilot made a left nose-up input, as the plane began rolling to the right. The plane's stall warning sounded briefly twice due to the angle of attack tolerance being exceeded by short vertical accelerations due to turbulence. 10 seconds later, the plane's recorded airspeed dropped sharply from 275 knots to 60 knots. The plane's angle of attack
Angle of attack
Angle of attack is a term used in fluid dynamics to describe the angle between a reference line on a lifting body and the vector representing the relative motion between the lifting body and the fluid through which it is moving...
increased, and the plane started to climb. The left-side instruments then recorded a sharp rise in airspeed to 215 knots. This change was not displayed by the Integrated Standby Instrument System (ISIS) until a minute later (the right-side instruments are not recorded by the recorder). The pilot continued making nose-up inputs. The trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) moved from 3 to 13 degrees nose-up in about 1 minute, and remained in that latter position until the end of the flight.
At around 4 hours 11 minutes into the flight, the plane had climbed to its maximum altitude of around 38,000 feet. There, its angle of attack was 16 degrees, and the thrust levers were in the TO/GA detent (fully forward), and at 4 hours 11 minutes 15 seconds the pitch attitude was slightly over 16 degrees and falling, but the angle of attack rapidly tracked towards 30 degrees. Lift was lost from the wing and the aircraft became stalled. At 4 hours 11 minutes 40 seconds, the captain re-entered the cockpit. The angle of attack had then reached 40 degrees, and the plane had descended to 35,000 feet with the engines running at almost 100% N1
N1
-Aviation:* N1, in jet engine terminology, the gas generator section RPM* N1 , a Soviet Union rocket* N-I rocket, a Japanese rocket* AEG N.I, a German World War I night bomber* Caproni Campini N.1, a 1940 early motorjet-powered test aeroplane...
(the rotational speed of the front intake fan, which delivers most of a turbofan
Turbofan
The turbofan is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used for aircraft propulsion. A turbofan combines two types of engines, the turbo portion which is a conventional gas turbine engine, and the fan, a propeller-like ducted fan...
engine's thrust). The stall warnings stopped, as all airspeed indications were now considered invalid by the aircraft's computer due to the high angle of attack and/or the airspeed was less than 60 knots. In other words, the plane was oriented nose-up but descending steeply.
Roughly 20 seconds later, the pilot decreased the plane's pitch
Pitch
Pitch may refer to:* Pitch , a viscous substance produced by plants or formed from petroleum* Pitch * sales pitch** elevator pitch, a very short sales pitch such as that made during an elevator ride* Pitch accent-Music and acoustics:...
slightly, air speed indications became valid and the stall warning sounded again and sounded intermittently for the remaining duration of the flight, but stopped when the pilot increased the plane's nose-up pitch. From there until the end of the flight, the angle of attack never dropped below 35 degrees. During the last minutes, the thrust levers were in the "idle
Idle (engine)
When an engine running on idle or idles, the engine runs without any loads but the engine accessories.Effort has been made to reduce the amount of time engines spend idling, chiefly due to fuel economy and emissions concerns, although some engines can also be damaged if kept idling for extended...
" detent position. The engines were always working, and responsive to commands.
The recordings stopped at 4 hours 14 minutes and 28 seconds absolute time (02:14:28 UTC), or 3 hours 45 minutes after takeoff. At that point, the plane's ground speed was 107 knots, and it was descending at 10,912 feet per minute, with the engines' N1's at 55%. Its pitch was 16.2 degrees (nose up), with a roll angle of 5.3 degrees left. During its descent, the plane had turned more than 180 degrees to the right to a compass heading of 270 degrees. The plane was stalled during its entire 3 minute 30 second descent from 38,000 feet.
While the incorrect airspeed data was the apparent cause of the disengagement of the autopilot, the reason the pilots lost control of the aircraft remains a mystery, in particular because pilots would normally try to lower the nose in case of a stall. Multiple sensors provide the pitch (attitude) information and there was no indication that any of them were malfunctioning. Some reports have described this as a deep stall, but this was a steady state conventional stall. A deep stall is associated with an aircraft with a T-tail
T-tail
thumb|right|Grob motor gliderA T-tail is an aircraft tail stabilizer configuration in which the horizontal surfaces are mounted to the top of the vertical stabilizer. Traditionally, the horizontal control surfaces are mounted to the fuselage at the base of the vertical stabilizer...
, but this aircraft does not have a T-tail.
In October 2011, a transcript of the voice recorder was leaked and published in the book Erreurs de Pilotage (Pilot Error) by Jean Pierre Otelli. According to the book, three seconds before impact, the transcripts records a crew member saying, "Damn it, we're going to crash, this can't be true!" The BEA and Air France both condemned the release of this information however, calling it "sensationalized and unverifiable information" that "impairs the memory of the crew and passengers who lost their lives."
Third interim report
On 29 July 2011, the BEA released a third interim report, in French, on safety issues it found in the wake of the crash. It was accompanied by two shorter documents in other languages summarizing the interim report and addressing safety recommendations.The third interim report stated that some new facts had been established. In particular:
- The pilots had not applied the unreliable airspeed procedure.
- The pilot-in-control pulled back on the stick, thus increasing the angle of attackAngle of attackAngle of attack is a term used in fluid dynamics to describe the angle between a reference line on a lifting body and the vector representing the relative motion between the lifting body and the fluid through which it is moving...
and causing the plane to climbClimbthumb|right|An [[Embraer ERJ 145]] climbingIn aviation, the term climb refers both to the actual operation of increasing the altitude of an aircraft and to the logical phase of a typical flight following take-off and preceding the cruise, during which an increase in altitude to a predetermined...
rapidly. - The pilots apparently did not notice that the plane had reached its maximum permissible altitude.
- The pilots did not read out the available data (vertical velocity, altitude, etc.).
- The stall warning sounded continuously for 54 seconds.
- The pilots did not comment on the stallStall (flight)In fluid dynamics, a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases. This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the foil is exceeded...
warnings and apparently did not realize that the plane was stalled. - There was some buffeting associated with the stall.
- The stall warning deactivates by design when the angle of attack measurements are considered invalid and this is the case when the airspeed drops below a certain limit.
- In consequence, the stall warning stopped and came back on several times during the stall; in particular, it came on whenever the pilot pushed forward on the stick and then stopped when he pulled back; this may have confused the pilots.
- Despite the fact that they were aware that altitude was declining rapidly, the pilots were unable to determine which instruments to trust: it may have appeared to them that all values were incoherent.
The BEA assembled a panel of aviation and medical experts to study pilots' responses as to why they reacted in certain ways.
A brief bulletin by Air France indicated that "the misleading stopping and starting of the stall warning alarm, contradicting the actual state of the aircraft, greatly contributed to the crew’s difficulty in analyzing the situation."
Passengers and crew
| Nationality | Passengers | Crew | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
 Argentina |
2 | 0 | 2 |
 Austria |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Belgium |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Brazil |
58 | 1 | 59 |
 Canada |
1 | 0 | 1 |
| 9 | 0 | 9 | |
 Independent State of Croatia |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Denmark |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Estonia |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Early Modern France |
61 | 11 | 72 |
 Gabon |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Germany |
26 | 0 | 26 |
 Hungary |
4 | 0 | 4 |
 Iceland |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Republic of Ireland |
3 | 0 | 3 |
 Italy |
9 | 0 | 9 |
 Lebanon |
3 | 0 | 3 |
 Morocco |
3 | 0 | 3 |
 Netherlands |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Norway |
3 | 0 | 3 |
 Philippines |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Poland |
2 | 0 | 2 |
 Kingdom of Romania |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Russia |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Slovakia |
3 | 0 | 3 |
 South Africa |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 South Korea |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Spain |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 Sweden |
3 | 0 | 3 |
 Switzerland |
6 | 0 | 6 |
 Turkey |
1 | 0 | 1 |
 United Kingdom |
5 | 0 | 5 |
 United States |
2 | 0 | 2 |
| Total (33 nationalities) | 216 | 12 | 228 |
The aircraft was carrying 216 passengers and 12 aircrew
Aircrew
Aircrew are the personnel who operate an aircraft while in flight. The composition of the crew depends on the type of aircraft as well as the purpose of the flight.-Civilian:*Aviator** Pilot-in-command** First officer** Second officer** Third officer...
in two cabins of service. Among the 216 passengers were one infant, seven children, 82 women, and 126 men. There were three pilots: 58-year-old flight captain Marc Dubois had joined Air France in 1988 and had approximately 11,000 flight hours, including 1,700 hours on the Airbus A330; the two first officers, 37-year-old David Robert and 32-year-old Pierre-Cedric Bonin, had over 9,000 flight hours between them. Of the 12 crew members, 11 were French and one Brazilian.
According to an official list released by Air France on 1 June 2009, the majority of passengers were French, Brazilian, or German citizens. Attributing nationality was complicated by the holding of multiple citizenship
Multiple citizenship
Multiple citizenship is a status in which a person is concurrently regarded as a citizen under the laws of more than one state. Multiple citizenships exist because different countries use different, and not necessarily mutually exclusive, citizenship requirements...
by several passengers. The nationalities as released by Air France are shown in the table to the right.
Air France had gathered approximately 60–70 relatives and friends to pick up arriving passengers at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Many of the passengers on Flight 447 were connecting to other destinations worldwide, so other parties anticipating the arrival of passengers were at various connecting airports.
On 20 June, Air France announced that each victim's family would be paid roughly €17,500 in initial compensation. Wrongful death lawsuits maintaining that design and manufacturing defects supplied pilots with incorrect information, rendering them incapable of maintaining altitude and air speed, have been filed in US Courts.
Notable passengers
- Prince Pedro Luís of Orléans-BragançaPrince Pedro Luís of Orléans-BraganzaPrince Pedro Luís of Orléans-Braganza was the son of Prince Antônio of Orléans-Braganza, and was expected, on the deaths of his father and childless uncles, to eventually become a pretender to the former imperial crown of Brazil....
, third in successionLine of succession to the Brazilian throneThe Brazilian monarchy came to an end on November 15, 1889, following a military coup which overthrew Emperor Dom Pedro II. The current Brazilian Imperial Family is split into two branches: the Petrópolis and the Vassouras...
to the now extinguished throne of Brazil. He had dual Brazilian-Belgian citizenship. He was returning home to Luxembourg from a visit to his relatives in Rio de JaneiroRio de JaneiroRio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
. - Silvio BarbatoSilvio BarbatoSilvio Sergio Bonaccorsi Barbato was an Italian-Brazilian opera conductor and composer. He died on board Air France Flight 447.-Life and career:...
, composer and former conductor of the symphony orchestras of the Brasilia National TheatreNational Theatre (Brasilia)The Claudio Santoro National Theater is a theater in Brasilia, Brazil. Construction began on July 30, 1960, and ended in 1966. It was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and it has a Modern architectural style...
and the Rio de Janeiro Municipal TheatreTheatro Municipal (Rio de Janeiro)The Theatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro is located in Cinelândia in the city center of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Built in the beginning of the twentieth century, it is one of the most beautiful and important theatres in the country.The building is designed in an eclectic style, inspired by the...
; he was en route to KievKievKiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
for engagements there. - Fatma Ceren NecipoğluFatma Ceren NecipoğluFatma Ceren Necipoğlu was a Turkish harpist and university lecturer for piano and harp. She was aboard Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, France, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009....
, Turkish classical harpist and academic of Anadolu UniversityAnadolu UniversityAnadolu University is a public university in Eskişehir, Turkey and the fourth largest university in the world by enrollment.- History :...
in EskişehirEskisehirEskişehir is a city in northwestern Turkey and the capital of the Eskişehir Province. According to the 2009 census, the population of the city is 631,905. The city is located on the banks of the Porsuk River, 792 m above sea level, where it overlooks the fertile Phrygian Valley. In the nearby...
; she was returning home via Paris after performing at the fourth Rio Harp Festival. - Pablo DreyfusPablo DreyfusPablo Dreyfus was an Argentine arms control expert that worked in South America, particularly Brazil, to help end the illegal weapons trade prevalent in South America...
from Argentina, a campaigner for controlling illegal arms and the illegal drugs trade.
Other incidents
Shortly after the crash, Air France changed the number of the regular Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight from AF447 to AF445.Some six months later, on 30 November 2009, Air France Flight 445 (F-GZCK) made a mayday
Mayday (distress signal)
Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It derives from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me"....
call due to severe turbulence around the same area and at a similar time to when Flight 447 had crashed. Because the pilots could not obtain immediate permission from air traffic controllers to descend to a less turbulent altitude, the mayday was to alert other aircraft in the vicinity that the flight had deviated from its normal flight level. This is standard contingency procedure when changing altitude without direct ATC authorization. After 30 minutes of moderate to severe turbulence the flight continued normally. The plane landed safely in Paris six hours and 40 minutes after the mayday call.
On 6 September 2011, the French media reported that the BEA was investigating a similar incident on an Air France flight from Caracas to Paris. The aircraft in question was an Airbus A340.
There have been several cases where inaccurate airspeed information led to flight incidents on the A330 and A340. Two of those incidents involved pitot probes.For an explanation of how airspeed is measured, see Air Data Reference. In the first incident, an Air France A340-300 (F-GLZL), en route from Tokyo, Japan, to Paris, France, experienced an event at 31000 feet (9,448.8 m) in which the airspeed was incorrectly reported and the autopilot
Autopilot
An autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. An autopilot can refer specifically to aircraft, self-steering gear for boats, or auto guidance of space craft and missiles...
automatically disengaged. Bad weather, together with obstructed drainage holes in all three pitot probes, were subsequently found to be the cause. In the second incident, an Air France A340-300 (F-GLZN), en route from Paris to New York, encountered turbulence followed by the autoflight systems going offline, warnings over the accuracy of the reported airspeed and two minutes of stall alerts. Another incident on TAM Flight 8091, from Miami to Rio de Janeiro on 21 May 2009, involving an A330-200, showed a sudden drop of outside air temperature, then loss of air data, the ADIRS
Air Data Inertial Reference Unit
An Air Data Inertial Reference Unit is a key component of the integrated Air Data Inertial Reference System , that supplies air data and inertial reference information to the pilots' Electronic Flight Instrument System displays as well as other systems on the aircraft such as the engines,...
, autopilot
Autopilot
An autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. An autopilot can refer specifically to aircraft, self-steering gear for boats, or auto guidance of space craft and missiles...
and autothrust. The aircraft fell 1000 metres (3,280.8 ft) before being manually recovered using backup instruments. The NTSB also examined a similar 23 June 2009 incident on a Northwest Airlines
Northwest Airlines
Northwest Airlines, Inc. was a major United States airline founded in 1926 and absorbed into Delta Air Lines by a merger approved on October 29, 2008, making Delta the largest airline in the world...
flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo.
The Flight 447 accident could have some relevant similarities to other A330 incidents with other carriers. Three reports are on file at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau
Australian Transport Safety Bureau
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is Australia’s national transport safety investigator. The ATSB is the federal government body responsible for investigating transport-related accidents and incidents within Australia. It covers air, sea and rail travel. The Australian Transport Safety...
(ATSB) relating to Airbus A330s with flight computer problems, plus one which involved a Boeing 777.Malaysia Airlines
Malaysia Airlines
Malaysian Airline System Berhad , DBA Malaysia Airlines , is the government-owned flag carrier of Malaysia. Malaysia Airlines operates flights from its home base, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and its eastern hub in Kota Kinabalu. It has its headquarters on the grounds of Sultan Abdul Aziz...
9M-MRG, 1 August 2005, a Boeing 777-200; Qantas Flight 68 on 12 September 2006, an Airbus A330-300; Qantas Flight 72
Qantas Flight 72
Qantas Flight 72 was a scheduled flight from Singapore Changi Airport to Perth Airport on 7 October 2008 that made an emergency landing at Learmonth airport near the town of Exmouth, Western Australia following an inflight accident featuring a pair of sudden uncommanded pitch-down manoeuvres that...
on 7 October 2008, an Airbus A330-300; Qantas Flight 71 on 27 December 2008, an Airbus A330-300. In October 2008, a malfunctioning ADIRU caused Qantas Flight 72
Qantas Flight 72
Qantas Flight 72 was a scheduled flight from Singapore Changi Airport to Perth Airport on 7 October 2008 that made an emergency landing at Learmonth airport near the town of Exmouth, Western Australia following an inflight accident featuring a pair of sudden uncommanded pitch-down manoeuvres that...
, en route from Singapore to Perth, Western Australia
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, to enter a dive resulting in injuries to passengers and damage to the aircraft. This incident similarly started with ADIRU failure messages, inconsistent speed indications, and the automatic pilot disengaging. The same airframe and ADIRU were also involved in an earlier incident, in 2006, Qantas Flight 68. The Qantas aircraft was equipped with ADIRUs manufactured by Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American global aerospace and defense technology company formed by the 1994 purchase of Grumman by Northrop. The company was the fourth-largest defense contractor in the world as of 2010, and the largest builder of naval vessels. Northrop Grumman employs over...
, while Flight 447 was equipped with an ADIRU manufactured by Honeywell
Honeywell
Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....
. A memo leaked from Airbus suggests that there was no evidence that the Flight 447 ADIRU malfunction was similar to the failure in the Qantas incidents.
Media speculation
- On 30 May 2010, BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
in the United Kingdom broadcast the documentary "Lost: The Mystery of Flight 447", a one hour documentary detailing an independent investigation into the crash employing the skills of an expert pilot, an expert accident investigator, an aviation meteorologist and an aircraft structural engineer. Using the publicly-available evidence and information, without the black boxes, a critical chain of events was postulated:- flying into an intense thunderstorm which had been hidden on the aircraft weather radarWeather radarWeather radar, also called weather surveillance radar and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, estimate its type . Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to the...
by a smaller nearer storm. - reducing aircraft speed to anticipate impending turbulence.
- configuring the aircraft to avoid a stall by trimming aircraft pitchFlight dynamicsFlight dynamics is the science of air vehicle orientation and control in three dimensions. The three critical flight dynamics parameters are the angles of rotation in three dimensions about the vehicle's center of mass, known as pitch, roll and yaw .Aerospace engineers develop control systems for...
with the elevatorsElevator (aircraft)Elevators are flight control surfaces, usually at the rear of an aircraft, which control the aircraft's orientation by changing the pitch of the aircraft, and so also the angle of attack of the wing. In simplified terms, they make the aircraft nose-up or nose-down...
, but not noticing that the autothrust system reduced aircraft speed (without corresponding thrust lever movement). - simultaneous failure of all three pitot tubes due to supercooled water very rapidly forming ice.
- aircrew being unable to interpret a large number of flight deck failure alerts caused by the loss of air data.
- suffering a catastrophic loss of altitude due to a stall.
- falling uncontrollably to the sea and breaking up on impact.
- flying into an intense thunderstorm which had been hidden on the aircraft weather radar
- A Nova TV seriesNOVA (TV series)Nova is a popular science television series from the U.S. produced by WGBH Boston. It can be seen on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries...
science/documentary episode about the accident was broadcast on 16 February 2011.
See also
- Colgan Air Flight 3407Colgan Air Flight 3407Colgan Air Flight 3407, marketed as Continental Connection under a codeshare agreement with Continental Airlines, was a daily U.S. regional airline commuter flight from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey to Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York State.A Bombardier...
- 2009, commercial airliner stalled and crashed due to pilot error - Birgenair Flight 301Birgenair Flight 301Birgenair Flight 301 was a flight chartered by Turkish-managed Birgenair partner Alas Nacionales from Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic to Frankfurt, Germany via Gander, Canada and Berlin, Germany...
- 1996, crash attributed to suspected obstruction of the pitot tubes, followed by pilot error - Aeroperú Flight 603AeroPeru Flight 603Aeroperú Flight 603 was a scheduled flight from Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, Peru , to Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport in Santiago, Chile , which crashed on October 2, 1996....
- 1996, crash following instrument failure due to obstructed static ports, leading to confusion among pilots and ATC - Northwest Airlines Flight 6231 - 1974, crash attributed to erroneous airspeed readings caused by pitot tube icing, followed by pilot error
External links
- BEA report 2 July 2009 (First interim report ): English version, French version
- BEA report 17 December 2009 (Second interim report ): English version, French version
- BEA report 29 July 2011 (Synopsis of the Third interim report): English version, French version
- BEA report 30 July 2011 (Third interim report, including CVR transcripts) English version, French version
- Air France Flight 447 – Air France
- Information on the investigation – Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile
- Informações sobre o voo AF 447 – Brazilian Air Force /
- Manuel Garcia Jr, CounterPunchCounterpunchCounterpunch can refer to:* Counterpunch , a punch in boxing* CounterPunch, a bi-weekly political newsletter* Counterpunch , a type of punch used in traditional typography* Punch-Counterpunch, a Transformers character...
, 1 July 2009, Clouds, Computers and Composites: The New Crisis in Aviation - "Air France Crash Stories." Sky NewsSky NewsSky News is a 24-hour British and international satellite television news broadcaster with an emphasis on UK and international news stories.The service places emphasis on rolling news, including the latest breaking news. Sky News also hosts localised versions of the channel in Australia and in New...
- By Hichri, Hédi. "Flight AF 447 – Analysis of Air France’s crisis communications." (Archive) Fleishman-Hillard France, September 2009.
- "Timeline of Flight AF 447." BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Wednesday 10 June 2009. - N.V. "The Difference Engine: Wild blue coffin corner." The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
. 25 March 2011. A clear description of the "coffin cornerCoffin corner (aviation)The coffin corner is the altitude at or near which a fast fixed-wing aircraft's stall speed is equal to the critical Mach number, at a given gross weight and G-force loading. At this altitude the airplane becomes nearly impossible to keep in stable flight...
", where a small change in air speed causes either stalling or breaking up of the aircraft.