The Mystery of Flight 447 – UPDATED
I’m thinking about the loss of Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, and what troubles me is the apparent suddenness of the disaster.
Facts:
The plane was entering a zone of weather activity and the pilot reported that the plane was experiencing turbulence as it flew into a stormy area. Stratfor notes that the plane issued automated messages over a period of 4 minutes before being lost by radar. There were no human distress calls made. Fox News gives this chronology:
The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time Sunday saying he was flying through an area of black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning.Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.
Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.
The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure — catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.
The plane entered service in 2005 and was serviced most recently in April.
Speculation:
The fact that the pilot didn’t issue a distress call lends me to believe that the plane suffered a catastrophic event that prevented the pilot or copilot from radioing for help. This raises several questions:
1. Can weather cause the plane to break up? According to Fox News/AP, experts discount lightning – but that doesn’t mean that some other weather-related event could not have caused it.
But wouldn’t weather related events have caused a gradual catastrophe? If lightning had knocked out avionics, the pilot should have been able to issue a distress call. After all, the plane itself was able to transmit the automated messages.
Wind sheer could have stressed the airframe beyond tolerance and led to failure of its composite-based components and structures. Was the radar installed in the plane able to read the severity of the weather the pilot was flying in to? Experienced pilots would have avoided the storms and either adjusted course or gone higher to fly over them, but it’s possible that the pilot flew into a severe storm cell without knowing it.
Given the location of the event – in a zone characterized by frequent severe storms – weather may have played a role in the disaster. However planes just don’t suddenly break up in flight for no reason. Planes are strong and flexible aerodynamic structures that are designed to resist all but the worst weather extremes.
2. The detonation of a bomb on board would fit the facts of the disaster as it stands today. Reports – apparently unsourced and not fully confirmed – is that a bomb threat was issued against an Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris. Worse, the names of two passengers match two terrorists on a French watch list.
Consider what would have happened had Richard Reid been successful in his attempt to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb. There would have been no distress calls. Automated messages would have reported the same cabin depressurization and systems failures. A bomb would be easier to get aboard a plane flying from a South American country to France rather than the opposite direction.
At this time we don’t have much evidence. The evidence we do have, although scant, supports either of these two scenarios about the same. So with equal evidence we then apply Occam’s Razor, the namesake of this journal. Given equal evidence the simpler of two explanations is most likely the one that is true. Either a unique weather event compounded by mechanical failure brought the plane down or a bomb did. At the time of writing Occam’s Razor favors the terror scenario.
Evidence is slowly being gathered and each piece can support one or the other of these two scenarios. It could also indicate something else completely. But today logic would seem to dictate that Flight 447 is the worst single terrorist event since September 11, 2001.
UPDATE 6/12/2009:
After the argument put forward by Gerard in the comments thread I was able to confirm that his assertion that the decompression message was one of the last to occur. Based on this I would have to revise my conclusion and state that the evidence isn’t equal anymore and in fact would favor the weather/mechanical failure argument. Occam’s Razor would therefore not apply in this situation (it only can be used with equally weighted evidence).
The link below is best source found so far that lays out the timeline of messages sent by the doomed flight.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/archives/170669.asp
Pay particular attention to the comments section which seemed to attract several intelligent comments from members of the aviation industry. The links to PDF’s giving the raw data of the messages with explanations are also worth reviewing.
In short the current theory is that the disaster is a combination of human error and weather which stressed the plane beyond its tolerances and led to its breakup over the Atlantic Ocean. As Gerard mentions in the comments section of this entry, it’s a pretty terrible way to go.
Update 6/13/2009:
Eurocockpit has what appears to be the official message log shown below. Link to site (French), (English via Google Translator).
It is interesting to note that Eurocockpit places blame on Air France for knowing about the pitot tube problem and doing nothing about it.
Clearly, a few hours after the accident, the BEA, Airbus and Air France had heard the contents of messages and their meaning. Ils savaient qu’il s’agissait – de nouveau – d’un problème sur les tubes Pitot. They knew it was – again – a problem on the Pitot tube.ATA 34 sous-ATA 11/15, et Air France et le BEA viennent nous parler de problèmes électriques, de foudre, de turbulences, d’orages, de FIT, de ZCIT, devant toutes les caméras du monde entier ? ATA ATA-34 in 11/15, and Air France and BEA come talk to us about electrical problems, lightning, turbulence, thunderstorms, of FIT, the ITCZ, before all the cameras around the world?
Gerard:
I follow the news of this tragic accident daily. It must be such a terror to fall down for 35.000feet you would hope for those people it was a bomb and the and was almost instant when it went off. I donn’t think this can be the case according to the follow up of errors sent automaticly.
11 June 2009, 9:53 amWhen a bomb went of I guess the first automatic message would be loss of cabin pressure. It wouldn’t be the last message.
The sequens of messages suggest in my opinion another story.
The first message is the disengagement of the autopilot. This happens through action of a person or through a technical problem of some kind.
The following message is a key computer is switching to alternate power.
This could meane the main powersource (engines)is not available anymore.
Then damage is reported about the controls to keep the plain stable.
Flight systems start deterioating.
3 minutes later systems to monitor airspeed etc. fail, this seems to indicate they worked before this failure, at least no problem was reported.
At last control of wingspoilers is lost and main computer stops. After this decompression and total electic failure is reported.
I saw the foto of the vertical stabiliser drifting at sea. Completely intact and hardly damaged. It lookes like it sheared off at the base. It must have come down seperately from the plane in an early stage otherwise it would be totaly destroyed on the hi-speed impact of the complete plain.
This reminds me of a fatal accident a few years ago when an Airbus 300 of similar design lost it’s vertical stabaliser in wake-turbulance of a plane that had taken off just before. This was during relativ low speed and mild turbulence. After the los of the stabiliser the plane started to spin so violently the engines were ripped of due to centrifugal forces. During this extreem spinning and falling it must have been impossible for anyone on board
to move at all and maybe impossible to even speak a word.
What might have happend to flight 447 could be this.
The plane enter turbulence at high altitude. The pilots were working hard to keep the plane stable.
During this the vertical stabaliser sheared off and the automatic pilot was swithed off automaticly or by the pilots.
The plane started spiraling with increasing speed leaving anyone aboard helpless to do anything at all due to centifugal forses.
The engines were ripped off, losing main powersupply. Due to his high groundspeed the plane went on spiraling down covering a also a substantial horizontal distance. In the 4 minutes of transfering messages the plain could cover 60km. In this 4 minutes everything could have happened.
From the moment the stabaliser sheared till the moment of the plane breaking apart on some lower altitude as the decompression sets in and the plane hits the water in big parts.
In my eyes this would be the most horrifying senario for all onbourd and I hope it didn’t went this way. A bomb would be more mercyfull.
Scott Kirwin:
Gerard
If your chronology holds true, then I will have to revise my theory. The weight of evidence would shift towards a mechanical or weather related failure. I’ve had a difficult time coming up with a complete chronology of the disaster. Once I do I will update the post accordingly.
And yes, a bomb would have been merciful under such a scenario.
Thanks for the information.
11 June 2009, 5:58 pmGerard:
The chronology you mention is what I red also more or less but yours seems the most detailed till now. Offcourse it’s all speculation till more info is released. Like you I just wonder. These accidents affect me a lot.
12 June 2009, 2:49 amIf you look at the foto of the recovered tail of flight 587 the comparison with flight 447 is striking. There are more similarities. Flight 587 flew a speed of 470km/h when the stabaliser snapped off. The plane flew on spiraling for 12 sec. covering a distance of around 1.3 km before impact on the ground. Flight 447 flew around 840km/h. Assuming the stabaliser sheared off just before the first automatic message the plane stayed in the air for at least 4 min. till the last automatic message. In this timeframe the plane at a starting speed of 840km/h could have covered a distance of around 60km or more before impact.
Just around the distance debris was found north-east of the last automatic message. We’ll see. I hope to hear the final anwsers soon.
If you have any new info I’ll be glad to hear.
And excuse me for my imperfect englisch. We dutch know how to speak but to write is another story for some of us.. I’ll do my best to improve.
Pj:
Scott – I disagree with your conclusion in this instance. I don’t think you can argue the evidence at this points supports the terror and weather disaster scenarios equally (or indeed favors the terror scenario). Given that the number of plane crashes due to terror attack are dwarfed by the number of crashes due to mechanical failure or weather, a crash due to terror must on its face be considered to be an extraordinary hypothesis. It is also one one that requires a whole series of extra assumptions regarding flight security and law enforcement failures, logistics issues, etc…, etc… beyond the evidence so far gathered. Until this evidence emerges, I think it is safe to say that the simplest explanation remains weather, mechanical or human failure, by far the leading causes of air disasters. Of course, our conclusions must be continually revised as more evidence is gathered. In order for the terror conclusion to be viable one, we will need to start seeing a lot of anomalous evidence that cannot be more easily explained by the weather, mechanical or human failure. The wonderful thing about Occam’s Razor is that it allows us to move towards simple conclusions based upon the evidence received, avoiding the pitfalls of conspiratorial speculation.
12 June 2009, 4:08 amScott Kirwin:
PJ
Relax I haven’t joined the “black helicopter”/tinfoil hat crowd just yet. The great thing about a blog is that you can change your mind and update what you wrote. Gerard is already doing a fine job of convincing me to do just that.
Weather is the leading cause of air disasters, but these occur during takeoffs and landings or in mountainous areas – not when a flight is cruising at altitude above the ocean. In fact if it does indeed turn out that weather took down AF 447, I believe it would be the first instance in history of a modern jet airliner being destroyed in flight and at altitude by weather. I could be wrong but my research hasn’t turned up anything yet. The loss of AF 447 - a five year old jetliner – to weather would be an extraordinary event, perhaps more extraordinary than terrorists downing a plane with a bomb. Pan Am flight 103 and Cubana Flight 455 were taken down at altitude by bombs; and don’t forget Richard Reid’s attempt to blow up American Airlines flight 63.
12 June 2009, 8:54 amDan Smith:
The forensics on recovered bodies should be helpful. Explosives leave residues that can be detected chemically. Finding the black box would yield the final words of the flight crew. In a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure or aerodynamic stabilty I doubt there would be time for a mayday call, as the pilots would be doing their best to fly the aircraft. Movie dialogue might suggest otherwise, but lets face it: if you are flying a plane at 37,000 feet and it is about to crash, a radio call is not going to help, so you do what you can to save the aircraft.
12 June 2009, 2:33 pmThe Mystery of Flight 447 - UPDATED:
[...] problem and doing nothing about it. Clearly, a few hours after the accident, the BEA, Airbus and click for more var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : [...]
15 June 2009, 7:10 am