Air France 447: Final Report is out

The French authorities have released a very detailed final report of the crash of flight 447. You may recall that this flight went down off the coast of South America about three years ago. For those of you who might want to start with a short summary, there is a five-age summary found in the press briefing here. The full report with about 11 appendices plus may be found on this webpage.

More on Air France 447

When I posted about the May 27 note from the BEA in France on July 6, I neglected to say that the official reports from the BEA are in French. In most cases they have an english translation and often a translation in Portuguese. My high school French is many years ago, so I am not much of a help in reading the French versions of these reports. I understand from acquaintances who speak and read French (but are not translators), that there will be sometimes when French does not translate well into English. Is that the case in here, I don't know.

But I am going to provide you with a link to the BEA's May 27 notes in French. The earlier reports and press releases from the BEA, in French are found here. Those of you are comfortable reading French may find these documents useful.

Also, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article in the June 6 edition of Aviation Week on the latest updates in the crash of Air France 447, the article may be found here. The one thing missing from theversion of the June 6 Aviation Week found on their website is a text box with some of the data from the flight data recorders. I was able to get my hands a paper version of this article from my local library. Those of you who are interested, may be able to look at a copy at your local library (if they subscribe).

As I read the paper version of this article, I had the May 27 BEA report up on my computer, so I could see that flight recorder data presented in the text box in the June 6 article was based on the the data reported in the BEA report.

I found the article to be interesting and helpful as I again reread the latest report from the BEA after reading the Aviation Week article. Perhaps you will be interested in reading this article.  However, some of you might find the article (and I say "might) find the article to be a little technical. As for me, I found that between the knowledge that I have gained in passing the FAA private pilot exam, my own reading, and conversations with pilots that I was able to make sense of most of the technical aspects in the article. 

I'm not in a position to offer any educated comments on the June 6 Aviation Week article on the latest update in the investigation of the crash of Air France 447. However, I am thinking that at a later time I may write about what I have learned from following the investigation of the crash of Air France 447.

In the meantime, I continue to offer my prayers . . .

Air France 447 - update on investigation (5/27/11)

Some of you know that I have made a couple of posts about the investigation into the fatal crash of Air France flight # 447 off of the coast of Brazil on June 1, 2009. You may find a preview of a Nova (PBS) investigation and link to the Nova site for the full episode here. I wrote a brief article on May 16, 2011 about the recovery of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

On May 27, 2011, the BEA (France), who have been investigating the crash released a "note" with some early facts based on their analysis of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, the english version may be downloaded here (with a link to a pdf file). The BEA has a page indexing their press releases, briefings, reports, etc on the crash of AF 447 that may be found at this location.

I meant to mention this May 27th BEA note a month ago, and failed to do so. I do so now and refer you to the note that I linked to above without comment. I have certainly learned a lot in following this crash. I am not in a position to say more than that, at least at this time. Doing so could do more harm than good.

Perhaps all I can do is to continue to use this space to refer you to updates from the BEA in France as they become available.

My thoughts and prayers continue for the families, friends, colleagues of those who died in the crash. I also offer my thoughts and prayers for the people of Brazil and France as well as all those who participated in the recovery operations this past spring.

Crash of Air France 447 - data recovered

This just in. The French BEA issued a press release earlier today, go here for this press release saying that investigators have successfully downloaded data from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder into a secure computer. According to the BEA press release, this operation was filmed. In addition, observers from the U.S., Great Britain, Brazil, an officer from the French judicial police and a French court expert observed the operation. Data analysis will be ongoing for a few weeks, and the BEA expects to release an interim report later this summer.

You might also want to check out this 5/16/11 New York Times article. The NY Times reports on the data recovery as well as additional details of the ongoing investigation by French agencies.

Crash of Air France Flight 447

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

It is now almost two years since Air France Flight 447 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Brazil to Paris, France. I suspect that many of you know that this crash is again in the news as remains of the crash were recently located by a team of investigators along with the two black boxes. More information on the location of the wreckage on the ocean floor, the recovery of the two black boxes, and other information may be found in these press releases from the French BEA investigation of AF 447.

The folk at PBS's NOVA did there own investigation into the crash of AF 447 in an episode aired in February 2011. This is not to be confused with the investigation currently underway by French authorities. Given that this crash has been in the news recently I thought that some of you might be interested in watching this hour long show, so I am embedding the video here. A link to the video on the PBS is found here and the accompanying NOVA webpage for the crash may be found here.

The show was recorded before the two black boxes were found, so it will be interesting to see what the French investigation into the crash turns up when the report is released. According to this BBC report, the final report on BEA's investigation into the crash of AF 447 will not be released until early 2012 (at the earliest).

If watching shows about airplane crashes is not your thing, than you might not want to watch the video.

Note - Blogger had an outage on May 12 and I have temporarily lost the posts that I made on Wed. May 11, including my original post on the Crash of Air France Flight 447. I recreated the article last Friday, including some updates.

Flight 3407: condolences and prayers

I want to pause in my writing on aircraft stalls and express my condolences to all those who lost family and friends in the crash of flight 3407 in Buffalo NY. And to those in the community where the plane crashed, I can not begin to imagine what you have gone through and what you continue to go through.

I live in New Jersey, where the flight originated. . .

I offer my thoughts and prayers.