Flight 447 victims given no warning of crash
Friday December 18 2009
Death came without warning for the 216 passengers -- including three young Irish doctors -- aboard the Air France Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic off Brazil last June.
A new report into the loss of Flight 447, en route from Rio de Janerio, Brazil, to Paris on June 1, has said there is as yet no complete explanation, but it confirmed that faulty speed sensors were partly to blame and again implied possible errors by the crew.
Doctors Aisling Butler (26), from Roscrea, Co Tipperary; Jane Deasy (28), from Dublin; and Eithne Walls (29), from Belfast all perished in the crash.
Study of debris and 51 salvaged bodies showed that passengers had not been told there was an emergency as the aircraft, with 228 aboard including the crew, hurtled towards the ocean.
The cabin crew were not in their seats, no oxygen masks had deployed and life jackets were still in their wrappers.
Fractures
The report from France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said that 43 of the 51 bodies had fractures to spinal columns, pelvises and chests. These reflected the upward shock to seated passengers as the aircraft hit the water belly first, it said.
The aircraft did not lose cabin pressure, and it was not configured for ditching. The report said the two co-pilots may have been flying the aircraft, rather than the veteran captain.
"The captain may have been taking a rest," it said.
Long-haul captains usually rest for a period during night cruises. The captain's body was the only one of the three to have been recovered, which suggested he was not on the flight deck.
The BEA, which has been criticised by relatives of the victims for the slow pace of its work, said that no cause could be established without recovery of the flight data recorders.
A further deep-sea search is to start in the new year in the area where the flight crashed.
The report partly blamed the "pitot tube" external speed sensors. Automatic messages from the aircraft showed it had lost pitot data while flying in a storm. This, in turn, led to a loss of automated controls.
"It was an inconsistency in the measurements that initiated the disconnection of the control systems: autopilot, autothrust and flight director," the report said.
The consensus among pilots and aviation experts is that this failure led the aircraft to enter a high-altitude stall.
The new report angered unions by again implying the pilots may have failed to follow procedures.
Gerard Arnoux, head of the Union of Air France Pilots (SPAF), questioned why the investigators were reluctant to conclude that the aircraft had been in a deep aerodynamic stall, "which it was obviously in".
- Charles Bremner
Irish Independent
