Airbus A330 FDR and CVR recovered

BEA (Bureau d’Enquete Aviation) maintain these units will reveal their secrets after 2 years at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. At a depth of 4000 metres the condition of these boxes is remarkably good. Thoeries abound concerning the cause of the crash, where all hands dieds. Initially the cause was focussed on the pitot heads that collect the ram air and compress it through pipes to provide an electronic equivalent signal that drives airspeed indicators and supply many other computers that use the airspeed and altitude signals to attenuate outputs to autopilot, flight directors, flap computers, mach speed indicators, pressurisation, air conditioning and many other systems including download parameters for ATC. The theory is the pitot heads froze up and delivered spurious signals to all these systems. They are picked up on a pulsed basis by ATC downloads. However due to the pulse sequencing the airliner was already lost by the time the signals were monitored on ground. My own theory is the cause of the aircraft loss of contol occured before the spurious signals were transmitted. The most common manufacturer of pitot haeds worldwide is Rosemount in USA. They are generically caled Rosemount probes so common is the term.  Many world airlines and aircraft have Rosemount probes installed without problems. They have internal heating elements prevent icing and on many aircraft have double elements with both AC and DC supplies. The A330 have 4 pitot heads to ensure redundancy capabilites and balanced airspeed signals in turns. The possibility of all 4 probes losing heating capabilities is extremely remote. The operating airline changed all pitot probes on all their fleet aircraft following the aircraft loss.

It is generally accepted the aircraft flew into severe turbulance precipitating the loss of control. This could be a fault of the weather radar as a theory is the Wx radar revealed an area of condensed precipitation, the aircraft avoided this but apparently the displayed picture on the screen masked a region of severe turbulance which the aircraft flew into. this in itself is difficult to understand as there was other air traffic in the area that avoided this turbulance.

Another theory is the aircraft fuselage was damaged on the ground in Rio by a service vehicle (catering, cleaning, fuel truck)  that went unreported. When the aircraft pressurised the possibility is the weakened fuselage failed catastrophically. If this happened it was instantly and without warning thereby resulting in the passengers unprepared in how the recovered bodies were found.

ATC in Brazilian airspace is notoriously bad. It will be interesting to see if the ATC service are culpable. The TCAS will reveal if there was other traffic (manned or unmanned)  involved!

On verra.

About bill

Worked in the technical / engineering area as a Science Laboratory Technician and as an Aeronautics Engineer. The artistic side involves writing under the nom de plume of Billy Olsenn, his recently written play 'A Case of Wine' was staged by the players group Straight Make-Up at the 2012 Birr one act drama festival. It's next staging was in the one act circuit is in Cavan, at Maudebawn on Sat 10 Nov 2012. Then it was performed in the Bray, Co.Wicklow at the very popular one act festival in January 2013. Next play is FEAR. A dark tale about revenge on the cruel death of two pensioners by young thugs. Neighbours hatch a devious and dangerous plan to exact old-style revenge. Bill is a member of the Drama League of Ireland and his plays have been critically vetted and certified as original pieces of work by the DLI. Another literary project is that of commemoration of an aircraft crash on Djouce mountain in Wicklow in 1946. Bill wrote articles for the 50th, 60th and most recently the 70th anniversary, (12 Aug 2016) all were published in the Wicklow Times and ensured the survivors of the crash, all French Girl Guides, were not forgotten. Articles reproduced on this website. But mostly this site gives a more general European and specific French slant on popular and not so popular articles of French news, translated to English by the author. Each article is translated on a paragraph by paragraph basis so easy to read in either language and even possible to improve either language by comparison of the short English and French paragraphs. Amusez vous bien. The author is currently writing an easy to read technical aviation book centered around the Fokker 50. Another interest is that dealt with in another of Bill's websites www.realnamara.net, a Statue of the mother of God, Mary. It was erected in 1972 in Dublin, at the end of the Bull Wall near Clontarf, and my grandfather William Nelson, was the main instigator of that project. I give talks on the history of the statue and my grandfather's adventurous and dangerous life at sea. Technical assistance with each website is by J O'N.
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