Air France Jet Not Destroyed In Air

Report Says Flight 447 Fell Vertically Into Atlantic Ocean Off Brazilian Coast

(CBS/AP)  Last updated at 7:00 p.m.

Air France Flight 447 slammed into the Atlantic Ocean, intact and belly first, at such a high speed that the 228 people aboard probably had no time to even inflate their life jackets, French investigators said Thursday in their first report into the June 1 accident.

Likening the investigation to a puzzle with missing pieces, lead investigator Alain Bouillard said that one month after the crash, "we are very far from establishing the causes of the accident."

The conclusion stunned the aviation community, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes, which had assumed for weeks that the plane actually broke apart mid flight because the debris field was dozens of miles wide.

Problematic speed sensors on the Airbus A330-200 jet that have been the focus of intense speculation since the crash may have misled the plane's pilots but were not a direct cause, Bouillard said, while admitting that investigators are still a long way from knowing what did precipitate the disaster.

"The investigation is a big puzzle," said Bouillard, who is leading the probe for the French accident agency BEA. "Today we only have a few pieces of the puzzle which prevents us from even distinguishing the photo of the puzzle."

The plane was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it went down in a remote area of the Atlantic, 930 miles off Brazil's mainland and far from radar coverage.

The BEA released its first preliminary findings on the crash Thursday, calling it one of history's most challenging plane crash investigations. Yet the probe, which has operated without access to the plane's flight data and voice recorders, appears so far to have unveiled little about what really caused the accident.

The speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, are "a factor but not the only one," Bouillard said. "It is an element but not the cause," Bouillard told a news conference in Le Bourget outside Paris.

Other elements that came under scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of the crash, such as the possibility that heavy storms or lightning may have brought down the jet, were also downplayed in the BEA's presentation.

Meteorological data show the presence of storm clouds in the area the jet would have flown through, but nothing out of the ordinary for the equatorial region in June, Bouillard said, eliminating the theory that the plane could have encountered a storm of unprecedented power. Other flights through the area shortly after Flight 447 disappeared didn't report unusual weather, Bouillard said.

"Between the surface of the water and 35,000 feet, we don't know what happened," Bouillard acknowledged. "In the absence of the flight recorders, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions."

Representatives of families of the victims said they learned little new and vowed to continue to push for more information.

Charles-Henri Tardivat, lawyer representing victims' families said now that the phase of grief had passed, he expected families to be "even more motivated in trying to get answers and there's going to be significant pressure put on the authorities to continue feeding the facts and the answers that are necessary in this case. "

A burst of automated messages emitted by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search, which has failed to locate the plane's black boxes in the vast ocean expanse.

The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling daily as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the tragic accident may never be known.

One of the automatic messages indicates the plane was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilize its control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over.

The Pitots have not been "excluded from the chain that led to the accident," Bouillard said.

Analysis of the 600-odd pieces of the jet that have been recovered indicate the plane "was not destroyed in flight" and appeared to have hit the water intact and "belly first," gathering speed as it dropped thousands of feet, he said.

He also said investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."

Shortly after the crash, aviation experts indicated that fractures revealed during autopsies of the victims along with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic strongly suggested the plane broke up in the air. There was no immediate explanation for the apparent contradiction between the BEA's findings and those viewpoints.

Bouillard said air traffic controllers in Dakar, Senegal had never officially taken control of Flight 447 after its last radio contact with Brazilian flight controllers at 1:35 a.m., and it wasn't until up to seven hours later that flight controllers in Madrid and Brest, France, raised an alarm. He said the delay was being investigated but was not a cause of the crash.

Brazilian Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said all required information on the plane's flight plan was passed to Senegalese air controllers.

Some members of the crash victims' families said that without a clear cause to blame the accident on, the interim report held little significance.

Marco Tulio Moreno Marques, a 43-year-old lawyer in Rio de Janeiro, lost both his parents in the crash. He did not bother watching the French investigators' public presentation, saying that without the black boxes, he was skeptical of any findings.

"I think it is difficult that they will ever find out what happened," he said. "They can say a flying saucer hit the plane, but if they don't find the black boxes we will never know for certain what happened."

Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said although investigators seem to know very little about what happened due to "a horrendous lack of evidence," it is significant that the plane landed the right way up.

"It suggests they were in some kind of flight attitude," he said.

But he warned that "without finding the black boxes it's going to be phenomenally difficult, maybe impossible, to determine what happened."

Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water. The pilots apparently also did not send any mayday calls.

He said there was "no information" suggesting a need to ground the world's fleet of more than 600 A330 planes as a result of the crash.

"As far as I'm concerned there's no problem flying these aircraft," he said.

Air France said all elements of the investigation "will be fully and immediately taken into account by the airline" and that it is continuing to cooperate with the investigators with "a commitment to total transparency with regard to the investigators, its passengers and the general public."

The black boxes - which are in reality bright orange - are resting somewhere on an underwater mountain range filled with crevasses and rough, uneven terrain. Bouillard said the search for them has been extended by 10 days through July 10, while his investigation would run through Aug. 15.

Bouillard said French investigators have yet to receive any information from Brazilian authorities about the results of the autopsies on the 51 bodies recovered from the site.

But a spokesman for the Public Safety Department in Brazil's Pernambuco state - in charge of the autopsies - denied that.

"French medical examiners are working together with Brazilian medical examiners and they have full access to all the information obtained from autopsies," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity according to department rules.

Families of the victims met with officials from BEA, Air France and the French transport ministry before the report was released. An association of families addressed a letter to the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, demanding answers to several questions about the plane.

Investigators should have an easier time recovering debris and black boxes in the crash of a Yemeni Airbus 310 with 153 people on board that went down Tuesday just nine miles north of the Indian Ocean island-nation of Comoros.

[alpharohslayer]

Stop Flocking You Sheep.
It was HAARP. This is clearly staged. On the day they decided to stop the search for the black boxes there was another plane crash involving Yemen. It obviously involved more french innocents. They used Haarp or some other type of Raytheon Directed Energy Weapon to bring both planes down.
There is a New World Order upon us.

These weapons also killed:
John F. Kennedy JR - Jul 16 1999
Mel Carnahan - Oct 17 2000
Paul Wellstone - Oct 25 2002
Michael Connell - Dec 19 2008
Beverly Eckert - Feb 12 2009

[sylevine1]

For the last ten years there hasn?t been a technical reason why the digital flight recorder data isn't sent in real-time to the ground (see the BBC/Equinox video ?The BOX?, 2000, on the flight recorders). During this ten year interval Boeing and Aerospatiale have had the capability of implementing remote aircraft flight recording. Using a remote aircraft flight recorder, with-in a couple of seconds, you have the planes position/location, its attitude, velocity, etc. safely stored on the ground and used for flight safety, aviation security and cost reduction. This data used in real-time could have also prevented 9/11 (see http://www.safelander.com). We presently have the viable technology to securely do this.

On June 4, 2009 the Los Angeles Times put this into their LETTERS section:

?There is no technical reason why digital flight recorder data are not sent in real-time to the ground. We have the technology to do this. Then, within a couple of seconds, we would have a plane?s position, altitude and velocity safely stored on the ground. This information could be used for flight safety, aviation security and cost reduction. We don?t know what went wrong on Flight 447, but we would sure know where the plane went down, why it went down and possibly could have saved lives.?


The real-time use of the data recorders will save a substantial amount of lives, make our country safer and reduce the cost of flying. Telemetering the flight data to the ground in real-time would assure that we have the data - in many crashes the flight data isn't recovered (e.g. 9/11, et al) or has errors in it since no one is looking at it, or using it in real-time to find malfunctions. Yet, this valuable digital flight recorder data (DFDR) data has been left to the autopsy mode for post mortem simulations and not utilized proactively in real-time to save lives.

A year prior to 9/11 I spoke in NY at the International Aviation Safety Association meeting on preventing crashes like golfer Payne Stewart?s decompression crash. Nothing was done by the FAA or industry and we got 9/11 (hijacking is about ten percent of aviation fatalities) and the 2005, 100 fatality, Helios decompression crash. When a plane deviates from its approved flight plan we now have the ability to securely take remote control of it and land it safely at a designated airfield. We presently have remote pilot vehicles (RPVs) flying over Afghanistan that are controlled/piloted from continental United States (CONUS). Currently we are utilizing secure high bandwidth communication networks (for our RPVs, submarines, AWACS planes, etc.) and there isn't a logical reason for not making that technology available for cargo and carrier aircraft. The cost of 9/11 alone is ten times the cost of putting in a safe system and yet nothing has intentionally been done. We would now be accruing additional annual safety and cost benefits.


Billions of dollars are wasted on unnecessary airport runway expansion programs to reduce fatal ground incursions. These incursions wouldn?t even occur if the flight data was shared so pilots and air traffic control had better visibility. But because the digital data isn?t shared automatically the pilot sees only a fraction of the information necessary to prevent a crash and the same hold for the air traffic controllers (ATCs). Crashes such as Tenerife (583 fatalities), Comair (49 fatalities), etc. are directly caused by the lack of visibility due to not sharing the DFDR, ATC and airport runway data in real-time. The real-time use and sharing of the DFDR data to prevent crashes is more important then its present post mortem autopsy mode of operation.

This, Air France flight 447, is another example of horrific crashes that possibly could have been prevented and saved lives. We surely would be able to use the flight data to prevent recurring crashes of this type and to minimize the anguish of the passengers families and the cost and time of trying to recover the recorders. The data used in real-time: reduces the cost of flying; prevents recurring fatal crashes; prevents a host of fatal crashes that aren?t directly related to Air France Flight 447, and keeps our nation safe and secure. The aviation industry must stop fearing and supressing the free use of this safety data.

Sy Levine

[e-mail]
[e-mail]

http://www.safelander.com

Remote Aircraft Flight Recorder and Advisory System (RAFT) patent #5,890,079, 3/30/1999

[farmerbb]

Baloney. That plane came apart in mid-air. Anyone who has ever investigated plane crashes can tell you the force of a plane hitting the ground intact, that is, flying at regular speed, let alone high speed, will cause the passenger bodies to come apart into tiny pieces. In this case they found several bodies almost intact. In addition, the early reports said there were two areas of debris, many miles apart. How the heck did THAT happen if it flew into the water in one piece ? There is something funny going on with this latest claim.

[cattlekate1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uJHIzXQWXk

Here is a video of a Russian disaster - flat stall, I guess. WHY IS THIS STORY LEAVING THE FRONT PAGE IN FAVOR OF MICHAEL JACKSON?

This is a big deal - I will never fly a flybywire aircraft again until we get answers. There are so many conflicting reports - clothing on bodies versus no clothing. Aircraft breakup versus belly flop. Debris field 50 miles apart versus intact aircraft belly-hitting. "Vertical ACCELERATION" versus frontal impact. The physics do not match up from the broadcast reports.

[gravyboat4000]

I recieved an email from a friend with two pictures that were taken inside the plane,"allegedly", from a camera phone. It shows the passengers with their oxygen masks on, and a huge hole in the back of the plane. The second picture shows a passenger being sucked out of the hole.

Has anyone else seen these?

[michaelm07]

Okay, so it wasn't destroyed in the air. Could it have been disabled in the air. A device could have disable the operation of the control surfaces (fins, stabilizers, computers, etc.)
The shoe bomber wouldn't have blown up the plane but would have blown a hole in it or affected the controlling means.

[magoo2u1]

What a lucky break for the makers of Air Bus aircraft. whew! Perhaps tomorrow they will declare the plane didn't crash. In future they can save a few dollars and remove "black boxes" from the jets and hire psychics and purchase devining rods for the searchers. They can't have any scientific evidence at all at this point and this is aimed at saving air bus from economic injury after experiencing continued air sensor issues.

[tautomer]

Imagine that in all of Aviation history nobody has ever thought to make black boxes that float!

[Sloughfoot]

French investigators are going to come th the conclussion that is least incriminating for the French Airbus Company. The French have always done their business in that manner and always will.

[gosstom]

Airbus--Your Ticket to Eternity

[Questionews]

There's nothing more comforting than knowing that you are at the mercy of the airline that chose the lowest bidder. I bet they saved at least a couple million by choosing Airbus over Boeing.

[stickdog3]

Why do they keep putting up these kinds of reports, why don't they just wait for the final conclusion, instead of all this rhetoric, and fairy tales. I'm not a structural engineer, but, I do have common sense. If something that large, falls that far (35,000 feet) that plane is going to break up into a literally million pieces. Not one of those bodies would be intact like they're finding them. The rudder and tail wouldn't be intact like they were found last month, come on please, give me a break.

[pegalys]

Errors can creep up on the autopilot slowly because it is only responding to signals it gets from various sensors. If the pitot tubes gradually frost over evenly, and fool the autopilot into thinking it needs to add power, the plane will start accelerating, and this exacerbates the frosting over. Pretty soon the plane is up against the sound barrier, and the slightest turbulence it encounters can be disasterous.

[easternairlines1950]

We are only being told what we are to know.........there is a lot behind all of this. Any airline cpt. would tell you that flew during the 50-80's.....it can happen....

although, there was a cash, Easten Airlines fight, in everglades in the early 70s and i believe it went straight down, and it was the auto pilot switch which caused it.......and then there was another plane, same thing straight down in the everglades,cause was cylinders in the luggage department. Only the black box will tell, and the FAA will find the truth, just hope we get to know the truth.

[pegalys]

Admitting that the pitot tubes were flawed in the most basic logic would be huge, because all aircraft have the exact same arrangement.

[darthcheney345]

On the other news sources, this same report is being quoted as saying the plane plunged to the ocean and struck BELLY FIRST.

Airplanes don't plunge vertically BELLY FIRST.

They just don't.

This report is sounding less and less credible.

[pegalys]

The kind of failure we have here would be instantaneous and catastrophic. My guess would be that the wing literally tore off and took a large part of the cabin along with it. Instant depressurization. The passengers that were found may have been the ones thrown clear during the wing breakaway, the rest may have torpedoed into the ocean in a relatively intact fuselage. Most of the passengers were never found. The tail is very fragile and would most likey have detached.

[easternairlines1950]

Many factors to consider on this crash. What the press writes, is what the press is allowed to write. We only get to know what our government wants us to know............wake up people!!!!!!!!

[darthcheney345]

Alain Bouillard, leading the investigation into the June 1 crash for the French accident investigation agency BEA, also says life vests found among the wreckage of the plane were not inflated.
------------

OK, if the plane didn't break up, don't you think SOMEBODY would have inflated a few life vests on the way down????

[darthcheney345]

The flight computer did it.

Look up the crash of China Airlines Flight 140 in Japan in 1994.

The computer has the power to overrule the pilot.

It did, and the plane crashed.

Yes, it is very strange for an airplane to plunge into the ocean with no structural failure.

Unless the airplane is an Airbus.

[darthcheney345]

This also sounds like the Yemeni plane that crashed this week.

Airbus jetliners are death traps.

They should be banned.