Air France jetliner hit Atlantic intact
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:24:04 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=99669§ionid=351020603
BEA's Alain Bouillard explains the recent findings on the Air France Flight 447.
A new report indicates that the Air France Flight 447 crashed almost vertically into the Atlantic Ocean with its entire fuselage undamaged.
The French investigating body in charge of aviation security mishaps, BEA, has in its latest account revealed that passengers of the ill-fated flight had no time to react in the face of a sudden sharp descent that plunged the airliner into the ocean.
Alain Bouillard, head of the BEA inquiry team, also ruled out earlier speculations that pointed to a speed sensor glitch as a key contributor to the incident, noting the faulty acceleration gauge on the Airbus A330, known as Pitot tubes, might have deluded the pilots but could not create such an accident on its own.
"It is an element but not the cause," Bouillard told reporters, referring to the aircraft's external speedometers which were originally considered to have frozen, resulting in transmit of erroneous messages.
The recent findings publicized on Thursday also downplay the role of severe weather and lightning believed to have blown up the plane midair.
Bouillard went on to admit that the Air France June 1 plane crash remains “a big puzzle” for the investigators as the flight's event recorders, the black boxes, have not been recovered.
"We are very far from establishing the causes of the accident." He said. "Between the surface of the water and 35,000 feet, we don't know what happened."
228 people onboard the Air France Airbus A330 lost their lives while en route a journey from Rio in Brazil to Paris, France.
Despite the recovery of just over 50 bodies related to the crash, the mystery surrounding root causes of the episode has yet to be unraveled.
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