Second Air France Crash Black Box Found

PARIS (Reuters) – Search parties scouring the sea bed off Brazil's northeast coast have recovered the second of two flight recorders from the Air France aircraft that crashed into the Atlantic in June 2009, investigators said on Tuesday.

The discovery of the audio recorder, two days after the flight data recorder was fished up, brings investigators even closer to the cause of the crash as it should hold recordings of cockpit conversations during the flight's final moments.

"We can now hope to find out what truly happened within the next three weeks," French Transport Minister Thierry Mariani told RTL radio.

The investigation team identified the Cockpit Voice Recorder at (2150 GMT) on Monday 2 May, 2011, France's BEA air accident inquiry office said in a statement. The device was hauled up to the team's ship at 0240 GMT on Tuesday.

A BEA spokeswoman said the black box would be shipped back to France, probably by the end of next week.

"The outside appears to be in relatively good shape," she said, adding that it would only be possible to see if the recorder was "usable" once it was opened, which would not happen until it was back in France.

A photograph of the recorder on BEA's website shows a bright orange cylindrical device that looks scuffed and battered but otherwise intact. So-called black boxes are painted orange so that they can be spotted more easily in wreckage.

The Airbus 330-203 airliner plunged into the sea off Brazil en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro in June 2009 after hitting stormy weather, killing all 228 passengers and crew.

The discovery of the two flight recorders follows nearly two years of on-off search efforts over a 10,000 square kilometer area of seabed.

Theories about the cause of the disaster have focused on the possible icing up of the aircraft's speed sensors, which seemed to give inconsistent readings before communication was lost.

Depending on how much data can be retrieved and how clearly it pinpoints the cause of the crash, lawyers say information from the black boxes could lead to a flood of liability claims.

Any fresh conclusions on the cause will also be fed into a judicial probe already under way in which Airbus and Air France have both been placed under formal investigation.

(Reporting by Jean-Stephane Brosse, Catherine Bremer and Brian Love, editing by Tim Pearce)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[fishnetdiver]

02:13 AM on 05/04/2011

here's hoping the families and friends of the passangers and crew can finally have some closure...

[ThinkCreeps]

08:36 AM on 05/04/2011

... and moreover that future passengers and crew can avoid the same fate based on lessons learned.

[waldopepper]

01:15 AM on 05/04/2011

I will be very impressed and surprised if they manage to get anything usable from these two devices. Fingers crossed.

[PootiePoot]

12:24 AM on 05/04/2011

from my simple POV looks like the tail fell off of another Airbus. I have been purposely avoiding Airbus flights for the last few years because there have been so many incidents.

[MajorKong]

10:25 AM on 05/04/2011

If you look at the numbers, Airbus has a very good safety record. The A320 family has had 17 hull-loss accidents for 4,619 aircraft. My Boeing 757 has had 8 hull-loss accidents for 1000 aircraft.

[PootiePoot]

01:32 PM on 05/04/2011

I am sure that all of those stats are correct but I still refuse to fly airbus. I don't want to fly in a plane where the computer can overrule a pilot's judgement. I also have an old friend who worked for Airfrance in the maintenance department at Charles De Gaulle airport, his father worked in the same department. After hearing crazy stories about all kinds of scary things involving Airbus....I am going to skip the Airbus. I mean obviously most Airbus flights are safe but I am just neurotic enough to avoid going there. I am not pro Boeing in any real sense besides feeling more safe for some odd reason while flying Boeing. Not that it matters but my Grandfather who was a full bird Colonel in the Airforce and also an aeronautical engineer and flew numerous types of Aircraft and even helped design some aircraft and consulted for Nasa, well he always preferred Boeing but who knows?? There are obviously problems everywhere.

[Grant Morrison]

11:48 PM on 05/03/2011

..

But STILL no black boxes from 9-11.

Curious.

.

[mech126]

02:18 AM on 05/04/2011

Like we didn't know what happened on 9/11

[mmkay]

05:08 AM on 05/04/2011

How much black do you want, Grant?

[Cinnamonape]

10:36 PM on 05/03/2011

For those interested in this tragic event and the potential causes of the disaster watch NOVA's "Crash of Flight 447" specifically on this event.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/crash-flight-447.html

[me817]

09:50 PM on 05/03/2011

The black boxes seem to be in very good condition from the photographs. Are the internal recorders able to withstand the 5800 psi at 12,000 below sea level? How would it be possible for data to survive in freezing temperatures (31 degrees F)and enormous pressure for over two years. Any pilots think this is possible? Doesn't seem to be. Doesn't the manufacturer know if it's possible to survive such conditions. They should be tested under really severe conditions before being placed on a plane, including placing the devices under salt water for two years.

[MajorKong]

09:51 PM on 05/03/2011

I don't know. If the case was breached, I would expect the salt water to have taken its toll.

[Cinnamonape]

10:23 PM on 05/03/2011

I guess we will have to wait and see. Remember though, that the recorders don't have to be "operable"...they simply have to have stored the data from the crash. Freezing temperatures are actually favorable top data storage...what might destroy the data would be chemical deterioration...which doesn't seem apparent on the actually boxes themselves.

[trimotor]

09:31 PM on 05/03/2011

The vertical stabilizer appears relatively intact and may have separated from the airframe as with a similar Airbus crash in New York.

[MajorKong]

09:54 PM on 05/03/2011

It's possible. However the A300 in New York was the result of a wake turbulence encounter and a First Officer who "walked" the rudder pedals from stop-to-stop.

The vertical stabilizer, by design, is stressed for ONE throw to full stop at maneuvering airspeed. If you slam it from stop to stop, you build up dynamic forces that can overstress it.

Except for takeoff and landing, I don't normally even keep my feet on the rudder pedals.

[Air Vice Marshal Park]

11:41 PM on 05/03/2011

Nobody touches the rudder pedals in cruise. A simple tweak of the HDG knob does whatever I need enroute.

[Krisgi]

05:59 PM on 05/03/2011

Funny how lawsuits suddenly make you find stuff that could never be found.

[killaw]

07:05 PM on 05/03/2011

It is not lawsuits that are pushing these researches... It is the will to avoid any other similar disaster, to find, determine and possibly fix any material cause of that one... Stop being cynical for one second and study a bit aviation history...

[independentcynic1228]

08:20 PM on 05/03/2011

Absolutely. Nothing worse than not knowing for sure what caused a plane to crash, especially for investigators, manufacturers or the flying public. They had that 737 crash in Colorado Springs in 91 I think that they never could figure out what caused it to go down. It took another plane to crash 5 years later, and a near loss of another before they could determine for sure that it was a simple hydraulic valve that got stuck and then would operate in reverse from the commands given by the pilots. For the investigators of that accident, I can only imagine how bad they felt that they couldn't figure it out after the first accident because if they had 100 other people wouldn't have died. So that's why they don't stop looking, not because of lawsuits.

[BurtonDesque]

09:10 AM on 05/04/2011

You think finding things 12,000 feet under the sea is easy?

[ThinkCreeps]

06:54 PM on 05/03/2011

They're orange. Maybe they should be called speaker boxes.

[AZterritory]

07:09 PM on 05/03/2011

Nice one.

[Dosadi]

09:34 PM on 05/03/2011

Slick!

[William Reese]

05:26 PM on 05/03/2011

Funny, we can find a 6 inch long device in the bottom of the ocean but we can't find a 7-foot arab in a million dollar home in Pakistan??

[GaryNOVA]

05:33 PM on 05/03/2011

I believe we indeed did find a 7 foot Arab in a million dollar home in pakistan.

[Dosadi]

09:35 PM on 05/03/2011

Oh yeah we did.

[Air Vice Marshal Park]

10:22 PM on 05/03/2011

Where did you get the idea that CVRs are six inches long?

[marignymitch]

04:12 PM on 05/03/2011

Consider me awe-struck.

[cornel]

03:59 PM on 05/03/2011

It wouldn't astound me if they find out that Qaddafi was behind the tragedy !

[ThinkCreeps]

07:08 PM on 05/03/2011

I didn't realize that the world's longest-serving non-hereditary head of state can control the weather.

[HighDesertBob]

03:58 PM on 05/03/2011

I certainly hope there is something definitive on the cockpit voice recorder. Hopefully they will be able to download the data from the flight data recorder and analyze what happened.
With over 36 years of aircraft experience, I find it difficult to understand how a modern airliner could be brought down by weather alone. Virtually every surface has anti-icing and/or de-icing capabilities and with redundant systems feeding redundant computers that constantly compare the input, again, I find it difficult to believe. I suppose a violent storm could have caused some sort of wind shear that caused the aircraft to snap roll and cause major structural failure, but the flight data recorder should show that.
I will be following this story closely to see how it plays out.
No word on if they intend to recover some of the bodies they found. I suspect some of the families will have mixed emotions on how to handle this.

[sean62965]

04:08 PM on 05/03/2011

Stress on the body? How many planes were just removed from service due to cracks and holes?

[HighDesertBob]

04:33 PM on 05/03/2011

I seriously doubt structural failure was the cause of this crash. It is extremely rare, in any event. The A-330 was not a hight cycle aircraft.
Again, as someone with over 36 years in aviation and having investigated several crash sites, I find it difficult to believe this aircraft was brought down by structural failure alone. Now, it is possible some freak weather phenomenon cause untold stress on the airframe and caused it to fail, which is more likely.

[PootiePoot]

04:17 PM on 05/03/2011

I agree. I have only limited knowledge in the field of aviation but I understand that Airbus planes have a back up system or two for every single part in the plain in case of failure. How can something like this happen. My vote goes to pilot error of some sort or catastrophic weather.

[HighDesertBob]

04:41 PM on 05/03/2011

Pilot error? I wouldn't think so, not at cruise altitude. As for backup systems, aircraft have had duplicate systems for many years, many from the beginning of flight. Two pitot tubes feed airspeed into the flight computers. That data is taken and compared against an electronic version and constantly compared for errors or deviations. When one is outside the parameters expected, that data is discarded so as to not skew the flight computers. The same goes for aircraft attitude, elevation, engine data and a whole host of other functions. One is compared against the other and the one that is outside the expected parameters is discarded.
Again, I suspect they will find some freak weather phenomenon, or other outside force, caused this aircraft to drastically change its flight attitude causing major structural failure and the ultimate loss of the aircraft.

[Cinnamonape]

10:41 PM on 05/03/2011

Watch "The Crash of Flight 447"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/crash-flight-447.html

Experts reconstruct the events as being a combination of weather, a mechanical failure of a necessary sensor under those extreme weather conditions, and that triggering a cascade of erroneous telemetry about a potential stall. Then the pilots, having no experience with this situation, actually did a standard response, which aggravated the problem.

[The Revolving Diet]

03:56 PM on 05/03/2011

Long time coming - it will hopefully give those left to grieve some type of closure.

[Michael Ludin]

03:41 PM on 05/03/2011

I hope this gives people some closure and not more uncertainty...