Robots Find Wreckage of AF447

Last week we reported on an army of robots searching for Air France 447 over a nearly 4,000 sq mile patch of the Atlantic ocean. Today mriya3 noted that "BEA, the French air accident investigation office, reports that the wreckage of Air France flight 447 has been found. The plane, an Airbus A330, crashed June 1, 2009 while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Investigators hope to find the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. A press conference will be held today."

Comments

will there be data?

[mangu]

What remains to be seen is, even if they find the recorders, will they have readable data?

It's not easy to protect equipment against two years under 4000 meters of water.

Re:will there be data?

[Anonymous Showered]

The flight recorder box is made to withstand deep sea pressure according to this article.

Re:will there be data?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It isn't a sure thing; the entropic forces of the uncaring universe are almost poetic in their creative destruction; but black boxes trade density for robustness in a pretty serious way.

The classic ones, at any rate, are well sealed and record magnetically onto loop of stainless steel wire. Seriously retro in terms of data density; and you don't just plug it into the nearest USB port(which is why many aircraft also have flight data recorders designed for non-emergency use, which are much less survivable; but much more convenient for routine diagnostics); but anything not involving serious corrosion or an excursion above the Curie temperature of the recording loop should be pretty much irrelevant...

Re:will there be data?

[Lord Byron II]

granted salt water and steel wire mix like spaghetti and tuna fish

Yum! That's a great lunch idea!

Re:will there be data?

[Richard_at_work]

The Civil Aviation Authority, which will have the same requirements as EASA who will be the ones regulating the Airbus A330 as its an European aircraft, only requires the FDR (Flight Data Recorder) to withstand sea water immersion for 30 days, and says nothing about pressure at the depths we are talking about here other than the FDR will withstand crushing forces of 5,000 LBF (22.25 kN) for 5 continuous minutes.

http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=33&pagetype=65&appid=11&mode=detail&id=1229

The Cockpit Voice Recorder has similar requirements.

Its unlikely that after this time the FDR nor the CVR are still sealed.

Re:will there be data?

[NevarMore]

Reading the wikipedia article, I got the impression that the current searchers benefited from the previous work to help them narrow down where to look.

Of course they benefited from it. They knew where the wreck was not located.

Re:will there be data?

[Skater]

The AP article indicates that they are confident they can still read the recorders.

Re:will there be data?

[Anonymous Coward]

South African Airways Flight 295 had it's CVR recovered from 4,900 meters of water just over 2 years since the crash. They were able to read the data from it, although in the aforementioned case the fire stopped the CVR before the crash.

Re:will there be data?

[TrisexualPuppy]

So you think that a well-packaged ceramic PGA or a plastic QFP would be susceptible to corrosion down there? We're talking about packages that are about as inert as glass, and even if the pins were somehow corroded away-- somehow corroded away--you could still open the package and bond new leads to the die. We're talking about something that might as well be as passive as glass sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Someone with a datasheet for the IC could come back in a hundred years and recover the data.

And stainless steel wire which is reactive as all get-out and has to be kept in a gas atmosphere is going to fare better? You may have a little chance with the wire recorded, but I wish you the best of luck with it!

--TSP

Re:will there be data?

[Solandri]

requires the FDR (Flight Data Recorder) to withstand sea water immersion for 30 days, and says nothing about pressure at the depths we are talking about here other than the FDR will withstand crushing forces of 5,000 LBF (22.25 kN) for 5 continuous minutes.

I flipped through the PDF and the crushing force you quoted is " a static crush force of 22.25 kN (5,000 lbf) applied continuously but not simultaneously to each of the three axes in the most critical direction, for a period of 5 minutes." In other words, it's not a pressure test, it's a uni-axial crush test.

Its unlikely that after this time the FDR nor the CVR are still sealed.

They very well could be. Based on the debris collected so far it looks like the plane crashed belly-first into the ocean, so there's a good chance the housing of the recorders was not damaged by the crash impact. The thing about deep-sea pressure is that it's a compressive force, not a tensile force. So as the FDR and CVR sink down, it increases gradually and uniformly. Unless there's a puncture or a significant amount of air trapped inside, any metal housing should gradually crush down without necessarily creating any breach for seawater to get in. Things like rubber seals can actually perform better under compression (though from talking with guys at Benthos, it will deform the rubber enough to destroy it making it useless for future use)..

Even if the box itself isn't sealed, the ICs which make up the memory should be themselves sealed in something like epoxy to improve their impact resistance. Only the interface pins or contacts would be exposed to corrosion, and they're probably gold plated. The biggest danger I would think would be an air pocket around the solid state memory suddenly collapsing when the metal housing fails due to the pressure, leading to mechanical impact forces damaging the memory.

Good luck

[Dan East]

Seems they had extraordinarily good luck this time around. I think I remember reading that they found it on their 4th day of searching? Previous expeditions had searched for months, so they really did well to find it straight off.

There are new reports this morning that bodies have been found in the wreckage. This is going to provide closure in many ways (emotional, engineering, etc).

Re:Good luck

[tibit]

I know that trolls shouldn't be fed, but this "high static charge" FUD just made me chuckle. It doesn't mean squat. It's like if you said "when an Airbus experiences wakalixes". Just because you use words from a science vocabulary doesn't mean you make sense.

If you mean something, just say it. If there's a known problem, there will be an airworthiness directive about it. Link to it or just shut the fuck up.

Re:Good luck

[jrumney]

As for Airbus being just as safe, there is a known problem with the fly by wire control systems when an Airbus experiences a high static charge. I wouldn't fly on one if it was free and they paid me to go.

Comparing the safety record of the A320, A330, A340, A380 and B777 to other airliners such as the A310 and B737, I'll take your known problem over other known problems any day.

Re:Good luck

[FormOfActionBanana]

Breaking news... Coward refuses to fly on airplane....

TFA

[ElectroPrime]

TFA in English.

get ready for pictures of hagfish on a plane

[circletimessquare]

insert your own samuel l jackson joke

http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/atlantic-hagfish.html

the ocean's morticians, always found near the dead

nastiest things on earth

Re:get ready for pictures of hagfish on a plane

[circletimessquare]

http://www.whaletimes.org/hagfish.htm

'Hagfish have been seen as deep as 16,405 feet (5000 m)'

do not doubt cthulhu's minions

even worse:

'Looking closer, one might discover an alarming sight: Those dead organisms resting on the deep sea floor are actually pulsating! What could cause such movements? Usually, it's a passel of scavenging hagfish feeding on the carcasses from the inside out.'

http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume5/issue7/features/lee.html

I would spare relatives the idea that human bodies would be found pulsating from within as they are consumed by hagfish. hagfish are the fate of all bodies that go to the deep. i don't want to know the details

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/basalfish/myxini.html

'The adjective which best describes the Myxini is "Lovecraftian".'

Re:Only a week

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence needed. According to every conceivable statistic about aircraft safety, Airbus and Boeing are fairly in the same figures. Of course, to speak about "the buzz in the industry" without any proof nor reference is very easy. And probably will be moderated as "informative".

[citation needed]

[Nidi62]

You might even wonder if the French were looking all that hard the first time. The buzz in the industry is that they really don't want to find the flight data recorder, since what it reveals might impact their sales. I can tell you one thing, you *do not* want to fly Airbus, for a variety of reasons.

Really? What "buzz"? My mom works in the pilot's office of a major US airline that flies both Boeing and Airbus, including the A330. She deals with pilots and the head pilot on a daily basis, and has contacts with both senior executives and people in the mechanical and operations departments that she speaks with regularly. I worked there myself for 6 years while going to college. Neither of us have ever heard of any complaints from crew or mechanics regarding the airworthiness or safety of Airbus versus Boeing. People "in the industry" like to talk and gossip a lot, and I have never heard of this anti-Airbus "buzz" you refer to.

And yes, I know anecdotes =/= data, but at least I can show my connection to airlines and the aviation industry and am not just some random guy off the street talking out of my ass.

Re:Only a week

[Richard_at_work]

The main reason being you are an ignorant, biased little shit stirrer?

Airbus have sold over 10,000 aircraft and have delivered over 6,500. The airlines have every confidence in what they are buying, they wouldn't buy anything they considered dangerous because people will avoid the type once the crashes start happening.

Not one of you crap throwers have ever come up with any statistical evidence that Airbus aircraft are more dangerous or risky than Boeing.

Re:Only a week

[antifoidulus]

Yeah, choosing which type of plane you fly on because you are worried about safety is folly, you should be much more worried about the airline operating the vehicle. Very, VERY few airlines go down because of engineering or manufacturing defects, most go down because of operational problems at the airline, poor or improper maintenance(either due to negligence on the part of the workers or greed on the part of management) or improper hiring, training, or management of pilots(again usually done to cut costs, though to a certain extent that shows how braindead management can be in certain areas, they are willing to take a cut-rate pilot to handle their multi-million dollar planes....)

Re:Only a week

[cmdahler]

No they don't. They make junk. Compared to Boeing, their fly-by-wire (night) is completely flaky and has killed many people, and let's forget their flimsy carbon-fiber (plastic).. and the 380, right out of the box, after all that testing, and the engine still can't contain itself.... Read the damn accident reports yourself. I'm not doing your homework. Airbus should be grounded.

Because Boeing doesn't use carbon fiber on their airframes, right? (Hint, that Southwest Airlines 737 that just had its top peeled off didn't develop those cracks in carbon fiber.) Because Boeing doesn't use fly-by-wire systems, right? (Hint: only difference between Boeing and Airbus since the 1990s has been that Boeing kept a yoke in the cockpit and Airbus went with a sidestick, but it's all connected to wires these days, and can you provide even one example of an accident of either Boeing or Airbus that was directly tied to the fly-by-wire system failing on the airplane? Right, I thought not.) Because Boeing aircraft are never powered by Rolls Royce engines, right? (Hint: the A380 incident didn't have anything at all to do with Airbus, it was a problem with the engine that was manufactured by Rolls Royce.) There are so many fools who think they know what they're talking about. When I read this comment I pictured Cliff Claven from Cheers.

Yes my child.

[eyenot]

Yes it is their SOULS that are down there. Quick! Go down there, and get thee their SOULS!

Re:Only a week

[Wyatt Earp]

Airbus didn't make the engine of the A380 that blew up, Rolls Royce did, RR also had an engine for the Boeing 787-8 blow up on the test stand. So if you want to hammer on RR vs CFM vs GE vs Engine Alliance, go for it. But Airbus didn't build the problem engine and Airbus didn't tell Qantas they had to use the RR engine in question.

If Carbon Fiber is do goddamned flimsy, then why is everyone and their mother going to carbon fiber over aluminum? Look at the 787, A-350 for current examples, oh plus military aviation and whatever Boeing comes out with to replace the Boeing 737 Next Gen.

Re:Only a week

[Wyatt Earp]

B-777 is safer than the A-340, while there have been no fatalities in either type, the A340 has had five hull loss accidents while the B-777 has only had one.

There are only 375 A-340s compared to 919 B-777s

Re:Only a week

[Capt. Skinny]

"I'm not doing your homework" == "I'm too lazy to support my arguments with evidence"

Photos from a Brazilian news site

[pdcull]

The Brazilian Globo news site has photos which were taken yesterday: http://g1.globo.com/mundo/fotos/2011/04/destrocos-do-voo-447.html

hull rapture

[dtmos]

Y'know, as a kid the whole "rapture" thing puzzled me -- how do the believers get to heaven if they're flying, and sealed inside a pressurized metal tube? Now it's clear: A hole opens up in the roof of the airplane. Thanks!

;-) No offense intended -- it was just too good to pass up :-)