INTERNATIONAL

Air France disaster: What we know so far

By Jennifer Leighfield

IT all started like something out of an episode of The X-Files, around the world, the press reported that an Airbus 330-200 had disappeared without a trace with 228 people on board. Soon, the seriousness of the matter began to sink in and authorities reported that there was no chance of finding the aircraft safe.

Flight AF447

Flight AF447 left Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris Charles de Gaulle airport at 1900h (local time) on May 31 with 228 people on board, 216 passengers and 12 crew members. It was due to land at 11.15h (local time). However, during the early hours of June 1, it crossed a ‘blind’ area of the Atlantic which has no radar coverage, where pilots have to call in their coordinates and flight status every so often. Just three and a half hours after take off, the pilot informs they have just flown over the Fernando de Noronha islands, doing 840 kph at 11,000 metres and heading for a storm. This was to be the last call from flight AF447. More than two hours passed without any type of communication from the aircraft before the alarm was officially raised.

Messages

At 0410h, the first of the 24 automated messages is received at Charles de Gaulle airport. It indicates that the automatic pilot has been switched off and the plane is being controlled manually. The speed sensors send contradictory information which suggests the plane is flying too fast. Two minutes later, two other messages report that systems which transmit data such as speed, height and direction, have blocked. This is followed by another message reporting that the electrical system has failed. The last message, received at 0414h made the controllers blood run cold. It reports that the cabin is in a vertical position, plummeting towards the Atlantic Ocean at great speed. Later that morning, on the list of incoming flights at Charles de Gaulle airport, the word ‘delayed’ appears after flight AF447. Over the loudspeakers, the families and friends of the passengers are asked to make their way as quickly as possible to terminal 2D where a crisis management centre is being set up.

Storms

The area where the plane went missing is known for its violent storms. The first hypothesis was that the plane had been hit by lightning, although experts said that this alone could not bring down an aircraft, especially one such as the Airbus 330 which is robust and specifically built for medium to long haul flights. However, lightning may have caused a short circuit which blew out the navigation systems or led to cabin depressurisation.

Why didn’t the pilots avoid the storm?

Planes have systems to detect storms, so it is a mystery why the pilots of flight AF447 didn’t avoid it completely, which is what an Iberia flight, just seven minutes behind them and heading for Madrid, decided to do. The storm clouds are about 15km above ground and can’t be flown over. They can be tens of kilometres wide. If lightning had knocked out the radio equipment and weather radars, the plane may have unwittingly flown straight into the eye of the storm.

Explosion or terrorist attack

Other theories were that the plane might have exploded, although the government of Brazil considered it improbable, and the autopsies on the first bodies recovered from the sea showed that the victims were not burned and were intact, ruling this out. It was also suggested it may have fallen victim to a terrorist attack. The authorities revised passenger lists in search of names linked to Islamic terrorist groups, but any similarities that were found have been confirmed to be mere coincidences and the theory has been rejected. Two names in particular were investigated, but turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Plus, no terrorist group has claimed to have staged an attack.

Victims and debris

From the outset, authorities informed families that there was no chance of finding any survivors due to the conditions of the accident and the temperature of the ocean water. Rescue teams have so far recovered the bodies of 50 victims in an area close to the islands of Sao Pedro and Sao Paulo, uninhabited rocky formations some 1,300km off the coast of Recife (Brazil). More bodies have been sighted off the coast of Senegal. The search is due to continue until at least June 25. However, stormy weather in the area is making rescue missions almost impossible. It has also been said that there is very little chance of finding all 228 bodies. A number of pieces of the fuselage and other remains of the plane have been found.

The first remains to be found were those of two men, a piece of a seat, a backpack, and a case which, amazingly, still had an intact Air France airline ticket inside. Other items include two of the seats used by crew members, small pieces of metal, plastic bottles, and several oxygen masks, mostly intact. The bodies and debris are being found as far as 85km apart, backing up the theory that the plane disintegrated in midair. If it had fallen into the water intact, the bodies would have been closer together, even after several days.

Black boxes

The information recorded by the black box is the only way to find out exactly what happened, but finding them is a race against time because they only send out a signal for one month after the accident. In this case, they may be some 5,000 metres under the ocean. These orange boxes situated at the rear of the plane and equipped with advanced equipment to record flight data and the pilots’ conversations, can are fire resistant and can survive at 6,000 metres under the water. However, experts taking part in the investigation are not optimistic about finding this crucial component.

Search mission

The team searching for the debris is composed of ships and planes from Brazil, France and Spain, as well as the French submarine Nautile, transported with other equipment on the French Oceanographic ship Pourquoi Pas, and which was used to find the wreckage of the Titanic. Nowadays, with remote controlled robots, mini-submarines and probes, there is sufficient technology to comb the ocean floor centimetre by centimetre and find the wreckage of the plane. However, it is unknown how many pieces it will be in. Three merchant ships (one French and two Dutch) are in the area, as well as fighter planes with long distance search range and infrared technology, two Breguet Atlantic 2, a Falcon 50 and an AWAC plane (equipped with Airborne Early Warning and Control systems). The submarine Emeraude will in charge of searching for the black box. The French ship Mistral, found six bodies on June 12.

Passengers

Most of the passengers were French (61), there were 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese, nine Italians, six Swiss, five British, five Lebanese, four Hungarians, three Slovakians, three Norwegians, three Irish, two North Americans, two Spanish, two Moroccans, two Polish, and one passenger from each of the following countries: South Africa, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Gambia, Holland, Iceland, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Sweden and Turkey. The passengers included a member of the fallen Brazilian royalty, an orchestral conductor, a man who was returning to Germany just to get the necessary paperwork to get married and return to Rio de Janeiro to settle; seven children and a baby.

Identification

After initial examination on the Fernando de Noronha islands, the bodies are being taken to Recife to be identified by means of DNA samples taken from the families, fingerprints, photos and dental records. Most of this work will be carried out by French experts. The clothing and personal effects found on each victim will be catalogued. Most of the bodies have been found with little or no clothing on them, which suggests they were sucked out of the plane, indicating it fragmented while in the air. The water temperature in the area where the plane probably went down is 28ºC, this accelerates the process where a body rises to the surface, floats and sinks again, making them harder to find. An intact body can float for two to three weeks, but the number of fish in the area could mean the bodies are fragmented and will sink sooner.

Most of the bodies have multiple fractures to the upper and lower limbs and the hips, this occurs when they hit the water at great speed. So far, none of the bodies analysed shows the cause of death as drowning, proving they were dead before hitting the water. The fact that the lower limbs are fractured may also indicate that the victims were still sitting, meaning that at least part of the fuselage entered the water in a horizontal position.

The aircraft

This particular Airbus 330-200 had accumulated some 18,800 flight hours during 2,500 flights since it was given to Air France straight off the production line in 2005. It has CF6-80EI engines, 12,500km autonomy and capacity for 253 passengers. There are currently 600 in operation with 82 different airlines. The model is considered to be extremely trustworthy and the only other accident with mortalities ever registered by an Airbus 330 was during a test flight in extreme conditions in Toulouse in 1994. There was another critical moment in 2001, when a Transat flight ran out of fuel on the Toronto to Lisbon route and had to make an emergency landing in the Azores. And nine months ago, a Qantas flight suffered a system failure which caused the automatic pilot to disengage and the plane to plummet. Fortunately, pilots rectified the error and Airbus found the cause and informed airlines on how to prevent it. There is a system to allow the plane to automatically perform the manoeuvres to prevent an accident, but sometimes, the Airbus doesn’t allow for this system to be overridden. (Airbus photo by Cristopher Weyer)

Sensors

Although Air France spokespersons said they did not believe that the speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, were to blame for the accident, it is known that some aircraft of the same model had registered problems and the sensors were due to be changed. In fact, the new sensors arrived just two days before the flight took off. The chances of a plane splitting in half mid-flight are slim, but one possible reason could be loss of control due to structural overload. This occurs when fissures in the fuselage become holes, depressurise the cabin and cause it to split. One cause of this could be if the structure was forced to endure excessive speed.

Airbus has reported that the Pitot sensors will be changed before the scheduled date and are considering grounding the 1,000 Airbus A330 and 340 in operation until this task is completed.

Mayday

Experts are baffled over why the pilots never sent out a mayday alert. If lightning caused an electrical failure, back-up generators should have kicked in. Even if the electricity had gone, the engines should have still been running and the pilots would have had 40 minutes in which to attempt to land the plane and call for help. However, maybe they were too busy attempting to rectify a plummeting plane to call over the radio. If the cabin had depressurised, the outside temperature, 70 below zero, would have instantly paralysed them. Whatever happened, it was quick and brutal.

Law suits

So far, only one family has decided to bring a civil lawsuit against the airline, and two others are presenting a charge of involuntary manslaughter. They claim to feel that the truth has not been revealed to them. They will be allowed to see the official reports of the investigation. Public Prosecutors in Paris are also presenting charges of involuntary manslaughter although the case is not against anyone in particular, this is the routine procedure when French citizens die abroad. The ruling judge will be Sylvie Zimmerman.

Previous accidents

Just two days before the accidents, a Lufthansa Boeing 747-400 travelling from Sao Paulo to Frankfurt on the same route also hit extreme turbulence. According to passengers, trolleys, luggage, crockery, and other objects flew around the cabin and one man had to receive stitches for a head wound after he was thrown violently out of his seat and began to haemorrhage.

Statistics

Almost 50 per cent of aircraft accidents occur during landing, and only six per cent when the plane is cruising, more than 10km above the ground.

Fate

A woman from Bolzano (Italy) and her husband had been spending a holiday in Brazil but missed flight AF447. However, one week later, their car was hit by a lorry in Kufstein (Austria). The woman died and her husband was critically injured.

The lucky ones

The plane was packed. One Montpellier doctor attempted to buy a ticket at the last minute. There were none, so he remained in Brazil. A Brazilian citizen had reserved a seat on an earlier flight, at 1620h, but was told that he was booked on flight AF447, luckily for him, he refused to postpone his exit and insisted he be allowed on the flight he had reserved. Another man had crossed Brazil to catch flight AF447, but a series of problems made him late. His missed the flight, but saved his life.

Did you know…?

The world’s deadliest aircraft disaster was the collision between two Boeing 747s on the runway of Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife (Canary Islands) in 1977, leaving 583 fatalities. The accident was due to human error, as a misunderstanding in instructions from the control tower led one plane to taxi into the path of another about to take off.

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