By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer – 26 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Not sleeping, the pilots say. They were engrossed in a complicated new crew-scheduling program on their laptop computers as their plane flew past its Minneapolis landing by 150 miles — a cockpit violation of airline policy that could cost them their licenses.
They were so focused on the scheduling — quite a complicated matter for the pilots after Delta Air Lines acquired Northwest Airlines a year ago — that they were out of communication with air traffic controllers and their airline for more than an hour. They didn't realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant about five minutes before the flight's scheduled landing last Wednesday night, the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday.
By then, Northwest Flight 188 with its 144 passengers and five crew members was over Wisconsin, at 37,000 feet.
The pilots — Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., the first officer, and Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain — denied they had fallen asleep as aviation experts have suggested, the safety board said in recounting investigators' interviews with the men over the weekend.
Instead, Cole and Cheney said they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight crew scheduling.
A number of aviation experts — and people wondering about their next airline flights — have been suggesting it was more plausible that the pilots had fallen asleep during the San Diego-to-Minneapolis flight than that they had become so focused on a conversation that they lost awareness of their surroundings for such a lengthy period of time.
Air traffic controllers in Denver and Minneapolis repeatedly tried without success to raise the pilots by radio. Other pilots in the vicinity tried reaching the plane on other radio frequencies. Their airline tried contacting them using a radio text message that chimes.
Authorities became so alarmed that National Guard jets were readied for takeoff at two locations and the White House Situation Room alerted senior officials, who monitored the airliner as the Airbus A320 flew across a broad swath of the mid-continent out of contact with anyone on the ground.
"It's inexcusable," said former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall. "I feel sorry for the individuals involved, but this was certainly not an innocuous event — this was a significant breach of aviation safety and aviation security."
Delta said in a statement that using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies. The airline said violations of that policy will result in termination.
There are no federal rules that specifically ban pilots' use of laptops or other personal electronic devices as long as the plane is flying above 10,000 feet, said Diane Spitaliere, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman.
"I think it depends upon how it's being used," Spitaliere said.
The Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents major U.S. airlines, expects pilots to comply with federal regulations and airline policies, but hasn't taken a position on the use of electronic devices by pilots while in the cockpit, ATA spokeswoman Elizabeth Merida said.
Delta has suspended the two pilots pending an investigation into the incident. FAA is also investigating and has warned Cheney and Cole their pilot licenses could be suspended or revoked.
Pilots' schedules are tied to their seniority, which also determines the aircraft they fly. Those at the top of the list get first choice on vacations, the best routes and the bigger planes that they get paid more for flying. Following Delta Air Lines' acquisition of Northwest, an arbitration panel ruled that the pilot seniority lists at the two carriers should be integrated based on pilots' status and aircraft category.
Cheney and Cole are both experienced pilots, according to the NTSB. Cheney, 53, was hired by Northwest in 1985 and has about 20,000 hours of flying time, about half of which was in the A320. Cole, 54, had about 11,000 hours of flight time, including 5,000 hours in the A320.
Both pilots told the board they had never had an accident, incident or violation, the board said.
The pilots acknowledged that while they were engaged in working on their laptops they weren't paying attention to radio traffic, messages from their airline or their cockpit instruments, the board said. That's contrary to one of the fundamentals of commercial piloting, which is to keep attention focused on monitoring messages from controllers and watching flight displays in the cockpit.
"It is unsettling when you see experienced pilots who were not professional in flying this flight," said Kitty Higgins, a former NTSB board member. "This is clearly a wakeup call for everybody."
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., called the incident "the ultimate case of distracted driving, only this time it was distracted flying."
___
AP Airlines Writer Harry R. Weber contributed to this report from Atlanta.
___
On the Net:
National Transportation Safety Board: http://www.ntsb.gov
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Pilot who overshot airport denies crew was napping
By STEVE KARNOWSKI and BRAD CAIN,Associated Press Writers - Sunday, October 25
MINNEAPOLIS – The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles says he and the captain were not sleeping or arguing in the cockpit but he wouldn't explain their lapse in response and the detour.
"It was not a serious event, from a safety issue," pilot Richard Cole said late Friday in front of his Salem, Ore., home. "I would tell you more, but I've already told you way too much."
Air traffic controllers and pilots had tried for more than an hour Wednesday night to contact the Minneapolis-bound flight. Officials on the ground alerted National Guard jets to prepare to chase the airliner, though none of the military planes left the runway.
The jet with 144 passengers aboard was being closely monitored by senior White House officials, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told The Associated Press on Saturday. He didn't say if President Barack Obama was informed.
Many aviation safety experts and pilots say the most likely explanation is that the pilots fell asleep along their route from San Diego. NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said fatigue and cockpit distraction are factors that will be looked into.
"We were not asleep; we were not having an argument; we were not having a fight," Cole said, but would not discuss why it took so long for him and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., to respond to radio calls.
"I can tell you that airplanes lose contact with the ground people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together right away; sometimes it takes awhile before one or the other notices that they are not in contact."
The FAA said Friday letters had been sent informing the pilots they are being investigated by the agency and it is possible their pilot's licenses could be suspended or revoked.
Investigators were in the process Saturday of scheduling interviews with the pilots, Holloway said, and audio from the cockpit voice recorder was downloaded at NTSB headquarters on Friday.
But they may not glean much from it. While new recorders retain as much as two hours of cockpit conversation and other noise, the older model aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes _ only the very end of the flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin.
The NTSB recommended a decade ago that airlines be required to have two-hour cockpit voice recorders. The standard has been 15- to 30-minute recorders.
Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a rule requiring airplanes and helicopters seating 10 or more people to have the 2-hour audio recordings, but gave the industry time to comply. Aircraft made after March 2010 must come equipped with longer recorders, though many manufacturers have already been including them. Existing planes have until March 2012 to comply.
The FAA rule doesn't require cockpit video recordings, which the NTSB had also recommended. Pilots opposed the video recordings.
Northwest, which was acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is also investigating the incident. Cheney and Cole have been suspended. Messages left at Cheney's home were not returned.
The pilots passed breathalyzer tests and were apologetic after the flight, according to a police report released Friday. Cheney and Cole had just started their work week and were coming off a 19-hour layover, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Saturday, citing an internal Northwest document it said was described to the newspaper.
The police report said that the crew indicated they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy.
___
AP Writers Joan Lowy in Washington and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and AP Airlines Writers Joshua Freed in Minneapolis, Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and Dave Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report. Cain reported from Salem, Ore.
___
On the Net:
FlightAware.com tracking of Northwest Flight 188: http://bit.ly/2QV9hX
National Transportation Safety Board http://www.ntsb.gov
MINNEAPOLIS – The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles says he and the captain were not sleeping or arguing in the cockpit but he wouldn't explain their lapse in response and the detour.
"It was not a serious event, from a safety issue," pilot Richard Cole said late Friday in front of his Salem, Ore., home. "I would tell you more, but I've already told you way too much."
Air traffic controllers and pilots had tried for more than an hour Wednesday night to contact the Minneapolis-bound flight. Officials on the ground alerted National Guard jets to prepare to chase the airliner, though none of the military planes left the runway.
The jet with 144 passengers aboard was being closely monitored by senior White House officials, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told The Associated Press on Saturday. He didn't say if President Barack Obama was informed.
Many aviation safety experts and pilots say the most likely explanation is that the pilots fell asleep along their route from San Diego. NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said fatigue and cockpit distraction are factors that will be looked into.
"We were not asleep; we were not having an argument; we were not having a fight," Cole said, but would not discuss why it took so long for him and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., to respond to radio calls.
"I can tell you that airplanes lose contact with the ground people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together right away; sometimes it takes awhile before one or the other notices that they are not in contact."
The FAA said Friday letters had been sent informing the pilots they are being investigated by the agency and it is possible their pilot's licenses could be suspended or revoked.
Investigators were in the process Saturday of scheduling interviews with the pilots, Holloway said, and audio from the cockpit voice recorder was downloaded at NTSB headquarters on Friday.
But they may not glean much from it. While new recorders retain as much as two hours of cockpit conversation and other noise, the older model aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes _ only the very end of the flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin.
The NTSB recommended a decade ago that airlines be required to have two-hour cockpit voice recorders. The standard has been 15- to 30-minute recorders.
Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a rule requiring airplanes and helicopters seating 10 or more people to have the 2-hour audio recordings, but gave the industry time to comply. Aircraft made after March 2010 must come equipped with longer recorders, though many manufacturers have already been including them. Existing planes have until March 2012 to comply.
The FAA rule doesn't require cockpit video recordings, which the NTSB had also recommended. Pilots opposed the video recordings.
Northwest, which was acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is also investigating the incident. Cheney and Cole have been suspended. Messages left at Cheney's home were not returned.
The pilots passed breathalyzer tests and were apologetic after the flight, according to a police report released Friday. Cheney and Cole had just started their work week and were coming off a 19-hour layover, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Saturday, citing an internal Northwest document it said was described to the newspaper.
The police report said that the crew indicated they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy.
___
AP Writers Joan Lowy in Washington and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and AP Airlines Writers Joshua Freed in Minneapolis, Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and Dave Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report. Cain reported from Salem, Ore.
___
On the Net:
FlightAware.com tracking of Northwest Flight 188: http://bit.ly/2QV9hX
National Transportation Safety Board http://www.ntsb.gov
Monday, September 28, 2009
A380 engine failure
PARIS, Sept 27 - A Singapore Airlines
The doubledecker A380 took off from Paris at 12.30 p.m. with 444 passengers aboard and headed for Singapore, but had to turn round after 2 hours 45 minutes because of the engine problem, airline director Jerry Seah said.
The plane landed safely back in France at 5.45 p.m. (1545 GMT) and the passengers were sent to hotels as the airline tried to lay on an alternative flight for them.
Seah told Reuters he believed it was the first time the plane had suffered such a problem since it had started operating the Singapore-Paris route earlier this year.
The giant jet, built by Airbus
The engines on the Singapore A380s are built by Britain's Rolls Royce Group
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Monday, August 17, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Another Plane crash in Iran
AFP - Sunday, July 26 TEHRAN (AFP) - - An Iranian airliner which overshot the runway and hurtled into a perimeter wall killing 16 people appears to have hit the tarmac too fast, an aviation official said on Saturday
"This plane should have landed at a maximum speed of 165 miles per hour but it in fact landed at around 200 mph," acting Iranian Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) director Mohammad Ali Ilkhani told state television.
He said the licence of Aria Airlines, whose plane was involved in Friday's deadly accident in the northeastern city of Mashhad, had been revoked.
The official IRNA news agency cited ICAO spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh as saying a total of 16 people were killed -- 13 crew members and three passengers.
Nine crew members were from Kazakhstan while the other four were Iranians, Jafarzadeh said. The three passengers who lost their lives were all Iranians.
"The plane was carrying 153 passengers, and 31 were wounded in the incident," Jafarzadeh said, adding that the plane belonged to Kazakhstan but was chartered to Iranian carrier Aria Airlines.
"We just heard a boom then the plane swerved to the right and then all I can remember were people praying to God," one survivor, a man with his head covered in bandages, told Iranian state run television.
An old woman, lying on bed in hospital in a gown said people from a nearby village were first on the scene.
"It took the paramedics around 20 minutes to reach us; the ordinary people came first to our aid," she said.
Mashhad, Iran's second city, is a Shiite Muslim pilgrimage destination as it was the burial place of the eighth Shiite Imam, Reza.
Iranian media reported that the managing director of Aria Airlines, Mehdi Dadpey, was among those killed in the accident.
A senior transport official said on Friday that the incoming aircraft had overshot the runway.
"Instead of landing at the beginning of the tarmac, the plane landed in the middle of the runway," the ISNA news agency quoted deputy transport minister Ahmad Majidi as saying.
"Because the tarmacs length is short, it went off the tarmac and crashed into the opposite wall.
The crash came just 10 days after another air disaster when a Caspian Airlines plane crashed near the city of Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, killing all 168 on board.
Iran has been under years of international sanctions hampering its ability to buy modern Boeing or Airbus planes and it has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade.
Its civil and military fleets are made up of ancient aircraft in very poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance.
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"This plane should have landed at a maximum speed of 165 miles per hour but it in fact landed at around 200 mph," acting Iranian Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) director Mohammad Ali Ilkhani told state television.
He said the licence of Aria Airlines, whose plane was involved in Friday's deadly accident in the northeastern city of Mashhad, had been revoked.
The official IRNA news agency cited ICAO spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh as saying a total of 16 people were killed -- 13 crew members and three passengers.
Nine crew members were from Kazakhstan while the other four were Iranians, Jafarzadeh said. The three passengers who lost their lives were all Iranians.
"The plane was carrying 153 passengers, and 31 were wounded in the incident," Jafarzadeh said, adding that the plane belonged to Kazakhstan but was chartered to Iranian carrier Aria Airlines.
"We just heard a boom then the plane swerved to the right and then all I can remember were people praying to God," one survivor, a man with his head covered in bandages, told Iranian state run television.
An old woman, lying on bed in hospital in a gown said people from a nearby village were first on the scene.
"It took the paramedics around 20 minutes to reach us; the ordinary people came first to our aid," she said.
Mashhad, Iran's second city, is a Shiite Muslim pilgrimage destination as it was the burial place of the eighth Shiite Imam, Reza.
Iranian media reported that the managing director of Aria Airlines, Mehdi Dadpey, was among those killed in the accident.
A senior transport official said on Friday that the incoming aircraft had overshot the runway.
"Instead of landing at the beginning of the tarmac, the plane landed in the middle of the runway," the ISNA news agency quoted deputy transport minister Ahmad Majidi as saying.
"Because the tarmacs length is short, it went off the tarmac and crashed into the opposite wall.
The crash came just 10 days after another air disaster when a Caspian Airlines plane crashed near the city of Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, killing all 168 on board.
Iran has been under years of international sanctions hampering its ability to buy modern Boeing or Airbus planes and it has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade.
Its civil and military fleets are made up of ancient aircraft in very poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance.
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Air crash in Iran
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press Writer – 51 mins ago
TEHRAN, Iran – An Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed a quarter-hour after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering to pieces. State television said all on board were killed.
The impact gouged a deep trench in the dirt field, which was shown littered with smoking wreckage in footage shown on state TV. It showed a large chunk of a wing, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small pieces, and emergency workers and witnesses picked around the shredded metal for bodies.
The Russian-made Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, state television said. It crashed at about 11:30 am, 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, TV reported.
The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. "It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said.
Iranian Civil Aviation Organization spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state television that 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were on board. State TV said all were killed.
A Caspian Airlines representative told AP in Yerevan that most of the passengers were Armenians, and that some Georgian citizens were also on board. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the press.
Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.
Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993. Iran has frequent plane crashes often because of bad maintenance of its aging aircraft. Tehran blames the problem in part on U.S. sanctions that prevent Iran from getting spare parts for some planes. Caspian Airlines, however, uses Russian-made Tupolevs whose maintenance would be less impaired by American sanctions.
In February 2006, a Russian-made TU-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.
The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards.
AP writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed to this report.
TEHRAN, Iran – An Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed a quarter-hour after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering to pieces. State television said all on board were killed.
The impact gouged a deep trench in the dirt field, which was shown littered with smoking wreckage in footage shown on state TV. It showed a large chunk of a wing, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small pieces, and emergency workers and witnesses picked around the shredded metal for bodies.
The Russian-made Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, state television said. It crashed at about 11:30 am, 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, TV reported.
The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. "It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said.
Iranian Civil Aviation Organization spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state television that 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were on board. State TV said all were killed.
A Caspian Airlines representative told AP in Yerevan that most of the passengers were Armenians, and that some Georgian citizens were also on board. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the press.
Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said.
Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993. Iran has frequent plane crashes often because of bad maintenance of its aging aircraft. Tehran blames the problem in part on U.S. sanctions that prevent Iran from getting spare parts for some planes. Caspian Airlines, however, uses Russian-made Tupolevs whose maintenance would be less impaired by American sanctions.
In February 2006, a Russian-made TU-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board.
The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards.
AP writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, contributed to this report.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Air France Crash
By GREG KELLER and EMMA VANDORE,Associated Press Writers AP - Friday, July 3
LE BOURGET, France - Air France Flight 447 slammed into the Atlantic Ocean, intact and belly first, at such a high speed that the 228 people aboard probably had no time to even inflate their life jackets, French investigators said Thursday in their first report into the June 1 accident.
Likening the investigation to a puzzle with missing pieces, lead investigator Alain Bouillard said that one month after the crash, "we are very far from establishing the causes of the accident."
Problematic speed sensors on the Airbus A330-200 jet that have been the focus of intense speculation since the crash may have misled the plane's pilots but were not a direct cause, Bouillard said, while admitting that investigators are still a long way from knowing what did precipitate the disaster.
"The investigation is a big puzzle," said Bouillard, who is leading the probe for the French accident agency BEA. "Today we only have a few pieces of the puzzle which prevents us from even distinguishing the photo of the puzzle."
The plane was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it went down in a remote area of the Atlantic, 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) off Brazil's mainland and far from radar coverage.
The BEA released its first preliminary findings on the crash Thursday, calling it one of history's most challenging plane crash investigations. Yet the probe, which has operated without access to the plane's flight data and voice recorders, appears so far to have unveiled little about what really caused the accident.
The speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, are "a factor but not the only one," Bouillard said. "It is an element but not the cause," Bouillard told a news conference in Le Bourget outside Paris.
Other elements that came under scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of the crash, such as the possibility that heavy storms or lightning may have brought down the jet, were also downplayed in the BEA's presentation.
Meteorological data show the presence of storm clouds in the area the jet would have flown through, but nothing out of the ordinary for the equatorial region in June, Bouillard said, eliminating the theory that the plane could have encountered a storm of unprecedented power. Other flights through the area shortly after Flight 447 disappeared didn't report unusual weather, Bouillard said.
"Between the surface of the water and 35,000 feet, we don't know what happened," Bouillard acknowledged. "In the absence of the flight recorders, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions."
Representatives of families of the victims said they learned little new and vowed to continue to push for more information.
Charles-Henri Tardivat, lawyer representing victims' families said now that the phase of grief had passed, he expected families to be "even more motivated in trying to get answers and there's going to be significant pressure put on the authorities to continue feeding the facts and the answers that are necessary in this case. "
A burst of automated messages emitted by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search, which has failed to locate the plane's black boxes in the vast ocean expanse.
The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling daily as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the tragic accident may never be known.
One of the automatic messages indicates the plane was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilize its control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over.
The Pitots have not been "excluded from the chain that led to the accident," Bouillard said.
Analysis of the 600-odd pieces of the jet that have been recovered indicate the plane "was not destroyed in flight" and appeared to have hit the water intact and "belly first," gathering speed as it dropped thousands of feet, he said.
He also said investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."
Shortly after the crash, aviation experts indicated that fractures revealed during autopsies of the victims along with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic strongly suggested the plane broke up in the air. There was no immediate explanation for the apparent contradiction between the BEA's findings and those viewpoints.
Bouillard said air traffic controllers in Dakar, Senegal had never officially taken control of Flight 447 after its last radio contact with Brazilian flight controllers at 1:35 a.m., and it wasn't until up to seven hours later that flight controllers in Madrid and Brest, France, raised an alarm. He said the delay was being investigated but was not a cause of the crash.
Brazilian Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said all required information on the plane's flight plan was passed to Senegalese air controllers.
Some members of the crash victims' families said that without a clear cause to blame the accident on, the interim report held little significance.
Marco Tulio Moreno Marques, a 43-year-old lawyer in Rio de Janeiro, lost both his parents in the crash. He did not bother watching the French investigators' public presentation, saying that without the black boxes, he was skeptical of any findings.
"I think it is difficult that they will ever find out what happened," he said. "They can say a flying saucer hit the plane, but if they don't find the black boxes we will never know for certain what happened."
Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said although investigators seem to know very little about what happened due to "a horrendous lack of evidence," it is significant that the plane landed the right way up.
"It suggests they were in some kind of flight attitude," he said.
But he warned that "without finding the black boxes it's going to be phenomenally difficult, maybe impossible, to determine what happened."
Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water. The pilots apparently also did not send any mayday calls.
He said there was "no information" suggesting a need to ground the world's fleet of more than 600 A330 planes as a result of the crash.
"As far as I'm concerned there's no problem flying these aircraft," he said.
Air France said all elements of the investigation "will be fully and immediately taken into account by the airline" and that it is continuing to cooperate with the investigators with "a commitment to total transparency with regard to the investigators, its passengers and the general public."
The black boxes _ which are in reality bright orange _ are resting somewhere on an underwater mountain range filled with crevasses and rough, uneven terrain. Bouillard said the search for them has been extended by 10 days through July 10, while his investigation would run through Aug. 15.
Bouillard said French investigators have yet to receive any information from Brazilian authorities about the results of the autopsies on the 51 bodies recovered from the site.
But a spokesman for the Public Safety Department in Brazil's Pernambuco state _ in charge of the autopsies _ denied that.
"French medical examiners are working together with Brazilian medical examiners and they have full access to all the information obtained from autopsies," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity according to department rules.
Families of the victims met with officials from BEA, Air France and the French transport ministry before the report was released. An association of families addressed a letter to the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, demanding answers to several questions about the plane.
Investigators should have an easier time recovering debris and black boxes in the crash of a Yemeni Airbus 310 with 153 people on board that went down Tuesday just nine miles (14.5 kilometers) north of the Indian Ocean island-nation of Comoros.
Vandore reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Cecile Brisson at Le Bourget, Angela Charlton in Paris, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
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LE BOURGET, France - Air France Flight 447 slammed into the Atlantic Ocean, intact and belly first, at such a high speed that the 228 people aboard probably had no time to even inflate their life jackets, French investigators said Thursday in their first report into the June 1 accident.
Likening the investigation to a puzzle with missing pieces, lead investigator Alain Bouillard said that one month after the crash, "we are very far from establishing the causes of the accident."
Problematic speed sensors on the Airbus A330-200 jet that have been the focus of intense speculation since the crash may have misled the plane's pilots but were not a direct cause, Bouillard said, while admitting that investigators are still a long way from knowing what did precipitate the disaster.
"The investigation is a big puzzle," said Bouillard, who is leading the probe for the French accident agency BEA. "Today we only have a few pieces of the puzzle which prevents us from even distinguishing the photo of the puzzle."
The plane was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it went down in a remote area of the Atlantic, 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) off Brazil's mainland and far from radar coverage.
The BEA released its first preliminary findings on the crash Thursday, calling it one of history's most challenging plane crash investigations. Yet the probe, which has operated without access to the plane's flight data and voice recorders, appears so far to have unveiled little about what really caused the accident.
The speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, are "a factor but not the only one," Bouillard said. "It is an element but not the cause," Bouillard told a news conference in Le Bourget outside Paris.
Other elements that came under scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of the crash, such as the possibility that heavy storms or lightning may have brought down the jet, were also downplayed in the BEA's presentation.
Meteorological data show the presence of storm clouds in the area the jet would have flown through, but nothing out of the ordinary for the equatorial region in June, Bouillard said, eliminating the theory that the plane could have encountered a storm of unprecedented power. Other flights through the area shortly after Flight 447 disappeared didn't report unusual weather, Bouillard said.
"Between the surface of the water and 35,000 feet, we don't know what happened," Bouillard acknowledged. "In the absence of the flight recorders, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions."
Representatives of families of the victims said they learned little new and vowed to continue to push for more information.
Charles-Henri Tardivat, lawyer representing victims' families said now that the phase of grief had passed, he expected families to be "even more motivated in trying to get answers and there's going to be significant pressure put on the authorities to continue feeding the facts and the answers that are necessary in this case. "
A burst of automated messages emitted by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search, which has failed to locate the plane's black boxes in the vast ocean expanse.
The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling daily as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the tragic accident may never be known.
One of the automatic messages indicates the plane was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilize its control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over.
The Pitots have not been "excluded from the chain that led to the accident," Bouillard said.
Analysis of the 600-odd pieces of the jet that have been recovered indicate the plane "was not destroyed in flight" and appeared to have hit the water intact and "belly first," gathering speed as it dropped thousands of feet, he said.
He also said investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."
Shortly after the crash, aviation experts indicated that fractures revealed during autopsies of the victims along with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic strongly suggested the plane broke up in the air. There was no immediate explanation for the apparent contradiction between the BEA's findings and those viewpoints.
Bouillard said air traffic controllers in Dakar, Senegal had never officially taken control of Flight 447 after its last radio contact with Brazilian flight controllers at 1:35 a.m., and it wasn't until up to seven hours later that flight controllers in Madrid and Brest, France, raised an alarm. He said the delay was being investigated but was not a cause of the crash.
Brazilian Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said all required information on the plane's flight plan was passed to Senegalese air controllers.
Some members of the crash victims' families said that without a clear cause to blame the accident on, the interim report held little significance.
Marco Tulio Moreno Marques, a 43-year-old lawyer in Rio de Janeiro, lost both his parents in the crash. He did not bother watching the French investigators' public presentation, saying that without the black boxes, he was skeptical of any findings.
"I think it is difficult that they will ever find out what happened," he said. "They can say a flying saucer hit the plane, but if they don't find the black boxes we will never know for certain what happened."
Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said although investigators seem to know very little about what happened due to "a horrendous lack of evidence," it is significant that the plane landed the right way up.
"It suggests they were in some kind of flight attitude," he said.
But he warned that "without finding the black boxes it's going to be phenomenally difficult, maybe impossible, to determine what happened."
Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water. The pilots apparently also did not send any mayday calls.
He said there was "no information" suggesting a need to ground the world's fleet of more than 600 A330 planes as a result of the crash.
"As far as I'm concerned there's no problem flying these aircraft," he said.
Air France said all elements of the investigation "will be fully and immediately taken into account by the airline" and that it is continuing to cooperate with the investigators with "a commitment to total transparency with regard to the investigators, its passengers and the general public."
The black boxes _ which are in reality bright orange _ are resting somewhere on an underwater mountain range filled with crevasses and rough, uneven terrain. Bouillard said the search for them has been extended by 10 days through July 10, while his investigation would run through Aug. 15.
Bouillard said French investigators have yet to receive any information from Brazilian authorities about the results of the autopsies on the 51 bodies recovered from the site.
But a spokesman for the Public Safety Department in Brazil's Pernambuco state _ in charge of the autopsies _ denied that.
"French medical examiners are working together with Brazilian medical examiners and they have full access to all the information obtained from autopsies," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity according to department rules.
Families of the victims met with officials from BEA, Air France and the French transport ministry before the report was released. An association of families addressed a letter to the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, demanding answers to several questions about the plane.
Investigators should have an easier time recovering debris and black boxes in the crash of a Yemeni Airbus 310 with 153 people on board that went down Tuesday just nine miles (14.5 kilometers) north of the Indian Ocean island-nation of Comoros.
Vandore reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Cecile Brisson at Le Bourget, Angela Charlton in Paris, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
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