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The search for AF 447 boxes

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Captain X

Who is John Galt?
Joined
Feb 10, 2002
Posts
948
June 23, 2009

Signals from the flight data recorders of an Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located, Le Monde newspaper said on Tuesday.

But a spokeswoman from the BEA, the French air accident authority, noted that many sounds were picked up on the sea bed and investigators were not sure that what they had detected was from the flight recorders.

"It's not the first time sounds have been heard and we will be verifying this with all the equipment we have at our disposal," she said. "The search is continuing and we haven't found the recorders."

An Air France spokeswoman also said she could not confirm the newspaper report.

Le Monde said French naval vessels had picked up a weak signal from the flight recorders and that a mini submarine had been dispatched on Monday to try and find the "black boxes" on the bottom of the rugged ocean floor.

The search has been focused on the black boxes which may contain vital information that could help explain what happened when the Airbus A330 crashed into the sea en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1.

Locator beacons, known as "pingers," on the flight recorders send an electronic impulse every second for at least 30 days. The signal can be heard up to 2 km (1.2 miles) away.

French vessels involved in the search operation include a nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment and a research ship equipped with mini submarines.

The remote location in the Atlantic as well as the depth and surface of the ocean floor have made the search especially difficult and the wreckage could lie anywhere between 1 km (0.6 miles) and 4 km (2.5 miles) down.

(Reuters)

Update - http://www.reuters.com/article/AIRLIN/idUSLN67711020090623
 
False

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/2...ery-deepens-black-box-signal-deemed-false.htm

Air France 447 crash mystery deepens as black box signal is deemed false

Posted 23 June 2009 @ 02:54 pm BST



Hopes of solving the mystery behind the Air France 447 crash received yet another blow as the sonar signals detected by the French navy were not from the black box of the Air France 447.

The French newspaper Le Monde reported that faint beacon signals that the black box emits every second for up to thirty days was detected by the French navy vessels searching for the black box.

The conflicting reports caused confusion given the serious implications of locating and recovering the black box. However, these reports proved to be unfounded as French officials confirmed that the signals were not from the Air France 447 black box.

The reports were confirmed by a close aid to Jean-Louis Borloo, the head of the French transport ministry.

The aide to the transport chief said "black boxes have not been detected," and added that some sounds were heard underwater by the ships scouring the area for the black box but these proved to be false.

The Airbus A330 carrying 228 people disappeared from the radar on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew onboard are presumed dead and so far, only 50 of the bodies were recovered from the Ocean.

<a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/topics/air-france-disaster-flight-447-plane-crash/page1.htm">FOR FULL COVERAGE OF THE AIR FRANCE CRASH CLICK HERE</a>

The investigators have pleaded for patience as they swift through the 400 plus debris of the Air France flight that crashed.

Unless the black box is recovered the investigators face a daunting task in solving the mystery.

The French authorities have warned that the black box of the flight may never be found and it was a race against time to locate and recover the device before the battery powering the beacon "pingers" signal fades off.

In other developments, the Air France has offered to pay a compensation of £15,000 to the families of the crash victims.

The identification process of the recovered bodies have led to 11 bodies being identified. Ten of the bodies are said to be Brazilian with half being males, the eleventh person is a foreigner whose nationality was not released.


<a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/topics/air-france-disaster-flight-447-plane-crash/page1.htm">FOR FULL COVERAGE OF THE AIR FRANCE CRASH CLICK HERE</a>



Read the full article of:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/20090623/air-france-447-crash-mystery-deepens-black-box-signal-deemed-false.htm
 
normally i am not a conspiracy theorist...however, does anyone else think that it is odd having the French Navy search for a piece of evidence that could invariably implicate another big French industry...Airbus?

i didn't read the entire article, but i hope that there are a multi national team searching!
 
I still say no way they will ever recover those recorders. Otherwise the French could be blamed for a whole lot on this accident. Even if they're located, they will never be brought up from the sea.
 
I agree as well.

With the exception of sending high tech equipment, I am surprised the US Navy did not get more involved. I bet they would of loved the challenge.
 
does anyone else think that it is odd having the French Navy search for a piece of evidence that could invariably implicate another big French industry...Airbus?

French National Airline, French Airplane, mostly French citizens. Yeah.... Real strange that the French are spearheading the search.....

Who do you think should conduct the search and who do you think would search for a Boeing product operated by an American Carrier?

As for industry cover ups..... I don't think there is a manufacturer without out some guilt lurking in the closet. The DC10 cargo door cover up jumps to mind pretty easily.
 
Last edited:
Guys, it gets worse. Here is the link to a pretty well done website on the 1988 Paris Airshow crash. The captain went to jail, even after he proved that Airbus had switched flight data recorders during the investigation. Airbus/French government are deeply intertwined and lots of bad stuff has happened to keep a smiley face going.
The Black Boxes


The Black Boxes (the DFDR and the CVR), major pieces of evidence, have been out of control of the investigating court at Mulhouse for 10 days. The CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) records the pilots' voices. The Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) records the flight parameters, for example the altitude, speed, acceleration/deceleration, engine speed etc. According to the French Penal Procedure the police should have confiscated the black boxes immediately after the accident for further examination by independent experts. Instead the black boxes have been illegitimately in possession of the DGAC (Direction Génerale de l'Aviation Civile) from June 26 (the day of the accident) to July 6, when Germain Sengelin, investigating magistrate at Mulhouse, had ordered their confiscation.
The Black Boxes from which the official report has been made show a series of anomalies, which has led a lot of critical people since 1988 to call in question their authenticity:

  • The black boxes have been physically opened, the magnetic tape has been cut. Normally you put the black boxes into a reading machine without opening them - the same way you read a cassette in a video recorder.
  • 8 seconds are missing in the recording, 4 seconds are missing just before the impact. That means that the DFDR would have stopped accidentally just before the impact.
  • The DFDR and the CVR are 4 seconds out of synchronization during the last part of the recording.
  • There is no indication of longitudinal deceleration at the impact. This might be expected in a collision with a mountain, but in Habsheim the recorders should have been able to operate until the aircraft disintegrated. Any crash which could be survived by all but 3 passengers should not have caused an abrupt stop in the DFDR recording.
Due to these anomalies, and the fact that the Black Boxes were in the hands of the DGAC, it has always been supposed, and is finally proven since May 1998, that the Flight Data Recorder confiscated on July 5 from the DGAC is NOT the one which was taken from the aircraft after the crash.
 
The black box of an Airbus that crashed during an air show in France in 1988 was replaced with another after the accident, a report shows. Three people died when an A320 airliner piloted by Michel Asseline ploughed into a forest and burst into flames after a low pass over an airfield near the eastern French city of Mulhouse. Mr. Asseline, a former Air France pilot, was sentenced to ten months in jail by an appeal's court for manslaughter and bodily harm over the crash, but he always maintained that the flight data used by investigators and displayed at the trial was a fabrication.

I would bet that weird stuff is going on in the ocean right now. A nuclear sub?
 
normally i am not a conspiracy theorist...however, does anyone else think that it is odd having the French Navy search for a piece of evidence that could invariably implicate another big French industry...Airbus?

i didn't read the entire article, but i hope that there are a multi national team searching!



And who else do you want to look for them? It was an Air France airplane.
If it had been a Delta or American Airlines flight, I am sure the US Navy would be looking for them.
 

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