The search for AF 447 boxes

[get2flyin]

Air France jetliner did not break up in mid-air: prob

No...Landed on her belly as gently as can be. Evidently, it shoulda been another Sulley story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090702/wl_afp/francebrazilairaccidentprobe

 

[Captain X]

All the news I've been seeing today is saying the aircraft hit relatively intact in a vertical direction. Of course it is the mass media so vertical could mean radome first or the airplane came down like a leaf and pancaked on its belly.

What I find hard to believe though is that the aircraft impacted basically in one piece and they can't even get within sonar distance of the boxes?

Even with the airplane breaking up on impact and pieces drifting off there would be some basic knowledge of currents, etc. that would be able to create some good guess models as to where they would/could drift. Of course there are all kinds of variable there but they could get a rough idea.

That is unless of course the entire empennage departed the airplane somewhere else and the airplane came down in two main pieces -- fuselage/wings and empennage. Which would lend credence to a vertical dive, loss of pressurization, unconsciousness/asphyxia of passengers, no signs of water in lungs of recovered bodies, and no life-vests on or inflated.

 

[Lampshade]

Jun 17th:

In the latest sign that Flight 447 was no longer intact when it plunged into the Atlantic, medical examiners said the bodies had multiple fractures of legs, hips and arms.
Such injuries could mean the plane broke apart in air, forensic experts said. Bodies and debris would be severely fragmented if the jet crashed intact.

July 2nd:

French investigators complained that they had yet to see the results of autopsies being performed on the 51 bodies pulled from the disaster area, despite formal requests to Brazilian authorities.

Seems a little presumptuous to say there was no inflight break up with out autopsies and black boxes. I guess they have a theory that doesn't need that info to support it. Weird.

 

[bubbers44]

With nothing but pieces of wreckage how could they determine if the tail came off in the air or hitting the water? If it was in a flat spin like AA 587 would have ended up in with no vertical stabilizer and no engines the forward motion would have been nil and possibly the plane could have hit the water with the tail in front reference to the direction of impact. The fact they said it hit flat makes me think the engines had already left as in AA587. With thrust available they would have tried to recover in a nose down attitude. My guess is the vs came off in flight starting the sequence of events. I could be totally wrong.