An Air France Airbus A330-200 aircraft with 12 crew and 216 passengers on board has been lost over the Atlantic Ocean. The aircraft (registration F-GZCP), operating as Air France Flight AF447, was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when contact with the aircraft ceased. Now long overdue at its destination and with no further communication, the aircraft is presumed to have been lost.At a press conference several hours ago, Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told reporters, "We are without a doubt faced with an air disaster. The entire company is thinking of the families and their pain."
Air France Flight 447 departed Rio's Galeao International Airport (GIG) at 19:03 local time on Sunday, May 31, 2009 for a scheduled passenger flight to Paris- Charles De Gaulle (CDG). According to Air France, the last communication from the aircraft was at 04:14 Paris time. The aircraft was due to arrive at CDG at 11:10 Paris time.
News reports, quoting Air France officials, say that an 'automated message' received from the aircraft indicated an electrical fault and loss of cabin pressure. The aircraft was believed to be flying through stormy weather and severe turbulence at the time it vanished, but the extent to which the weather contributed to the accident is unclear at this time.
Powered by twin General Electric CF6-80E engines, the aircraft entered service in April of 2005, and is said to have logged 18,870 flight hours. Its last major maintenance check was in April of this year, according to Air France.
Updates will follow here on Aircrew Buzz as more information becomes available.
RELATED:
- Brazil: Debris confirms Air France Flight 447 crash in the Atlantic - AircrewBuzz.com, June 2, 2009
- Air France and BEA press releases regarding the AF447 pitot tube issue - AircrewBuzz.com, June 6, 2009
- Air France Flight 447: Wreckage and human remains recovered, search continues - AircrewBuzz.com, June 7, 2009
- Interim report on the crash of Air France Flight 447 released by French BEA - AircrewBuzz.com, July 2, 2009
- French investigators release second interim report on the Air France Flight 447 accident - AircrewBuzz.com, Dec. 21, 2009
This is an account of a discussion I had recently with a maintenance
ReplyDeleteprofessional who salvages airliner airframes for a living. He has
been at it for a while, dba BMI Salvage at Opa Locka Airport in
Florida. In the process of stripping parts, he sees things few others
are able to see. His observations confirm prior assessments of
Airbus structural deficiencies within our flight test and aero
structures communities by those who have seen the closely held reports
of A3XX-series vertical fin failures.
His observations:
"I have scrapped just about every type of transport aircraft from
A-310, A-320, B-747, 727, 737, 707, DC-3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, MD-80,
L-188, L1011 and various Martin, Convair and KC-97 aircraft.
Over a hundred of them.
Airbus products are the flimsiest and most poorly designed as far as
airframe structure is concerned by an almost obsession to utilize
composite materials.
I have one A310 vertical fin on the premises from a demonstration I
just performed. It was pathetic to see the composite structure
shatter as it did, something a Boeing product will not do.
The vertical fin along with the composite hinges on rudder and
elevators is the worst example of structural use of composites I have
ever seen and I am not surprised by the current pictures of rescue
crews recovering the complete Vertical fin and rudder assembly at
some distance from the crash site.
The Airbus line has a history of both multiple rudder losses and a
vertical fin and rudder separation from the airframe as was the case
in NY with AA.
As an old non-radar equipped DC4 pilot who flew through many a
thunderstorm in Africa along the equator, I am quite familiar with
their ferocity. It is not difficult to
understand how such a storm might have stressed an aircraft structure
to failure at its weakest point, and especially so in the presence of
instrumentation problems.
I replied with this:
"I'm watching very carefully the orchestration of the inquiry by
French officials and Airbus. I think I can smell a concerted effort to
steer discussion away from structural issues and onto sensors, etc.
Now Air France, at the behest of their pilots' union, is replacing
all the air data sensors on the Airbus fleet, which creates a
distraction and shifts the media's focus away from the real problem."
His follow-up:
One gets a really unique insight into structural issues when one has
first-hand experience in the dismantling process.
I am an A&P, FEJ and an ATP with 7000 flight hours and I was
absolutely stunned, flabbergasted when I realized that the majority of
internal airframe structural supports on the A 310 which appear to be
aluminum are actually rolled composite material with aluminum rod
ends.
They shattered.
Three years ago we had a storm come through, with gusts up to 60-70
kts., catching several A320s tied down on the line, out in the open.
The A320 elevators and rudder hinges whose actuators had been removed
shattered and the rudder and elevators came off.
Upon closer inspection I realized that not only were the rear spars
composite but so were the hinges. While Boeing also uses composite
material in its airfoil structures, the actual attach fittings for
the elevators, rudder, vertical and horizontal stabilizers are all of
machined aluminum."
Ground the Airbus?
ReplyDeleteUsed in law, science and philosophy, a rule known as Occam’s Razor requires that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex, and/or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.
We do not know if Air France Flight 447 was brought down by a lightning storm, a failure of speed sensors, rudder problems or pilot error. What we do know is that its plastic tail fin fell off and the plane fell almost seven miles into the ocean killing everyone aboard.
Article at Consortium News: http://consortiumnews.com/2009/062009a.html
Or at Global Research: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14025
To add to my previous post (which was quite long), I will include information from two very good friends of mine, one is a senior flight attendant and her husband is a flight mechanic. He is a completely no-nonsense, totally independent type of fellow. His assessment of the Airbus construction and the quality of the components in its airframe is a dismal report indeed. Not only does the lady refuse to fly in one, she refuses to even be trained for the Airbus. Composite hinges, even for a hollow-core bedroom door, is a failure waiting to happen... and that penny-pinching type of approach in the materials used on the Airbus constitutes the construction of the hinges that hold the tail fins (rudder and elevators) onto the aircraft. Those pivotal components should be manufactured of aircraft aluminum at the least. I personally would prefer stainless steel. They are going to continue to fail, regardless of whatever the greed-driven industry points the finger to in an effort to mislead the pilots and the public. Lightning strikes, malfunctioning sensors, on-board fires, and certainly a plane stalling due to diminished air-speed in level flight (which stalling in level flight seven miles above sea-level is only going to put you into a shallow dive that will bring your airspeed up and therefore your lift, within 4 seconds. The stress on the elevators during such a maneuver is minimal.)... those miss-direction attempts by the industry cannot rip an entire tail fin from an airframe unless the hinges fractured and shattered due to being made of inferior materials and inferior methods. We are not talking about hinges that can experience distress and bend or warp, making it difficult for the flight controls to manipulate them, and therefore can be reported by the pilots to the flight mechanics to investigate and replace. We are talking about hinges that shatter upon experiencing distresses... working completely normal one moment and fragmented the next. No warning. Totally unreliable.
ReplyDeletecan any1 jus tell me airplane crashes which took place due to some sort of problems in airframes..
ReplyDelete