Air France, Again

How often are bomb threats called in to airlines? Hard to say, but when the bomb threat is on the same route as a mysterious crash over the Atlantic that has yet to be conclusively explained it's a bit more interesting than normal...

A spokesman for Air France in Brazil said the bomb threat was phoned in to Rio's international airport by a female voice about 30 minutes after the plane took off.

The control tower contacted the jet and the decision was made to land in Recife, the Air France spokesman said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

The spokesman said authorities had not found any explosives and the jet was expected to be cleared to continue to Paris.

However, Infraero, in an early Sunday statement, said the plane had yet to be cleared and that passengers were being taken to hotels until the jet was ready to continue, indicating it was unlikely to resume its flight to Paris until Sunday morning.

This may be nothing, of course. People have been known to call in bomb threats when running late to delay the plane so they can catch it. At any rate, four days before ill-fated AF 447 took off there was a bomb threat, but to a flight originating in Buenos Aires. Air France is not likely to give up the frequency of such threats so bloggers can speculate as to normality, but in hindsight it's too bad they haven't found the black boxes on 447 so theories such as this can be put to rest:

Oil stains found among the debris of doomed Air France Flight A447 could prove the plane was not blown out of the sky by terrorists, Brazil's defence minister said today.

If a bomb had exploded on board the Airbus 330-200 the plane's fuel would have burned away, he said.

And with more debris from the jet carrying 228 people being found scattered over a 55-mile area, he said it was looking more likely that the plane broke apart in the air.

That's assuming the theoretical bomb would have blown up the fuel tanks rather than say an explosive device in the luggage compartment ripping the fuselage at a critical time in high-altitude flight, causing a gradual breakup. Still, the weather-related instrument malfunction scenario seems most likely based on media reports but it would be nice to get some closure one way or the other. Accident post-mortems are designed for learning and changing but if they never officially come out it's kind of hard to respond.

MORE 7/11/10

According to this Fox report the plane was searched and they found nothing. Then it says they are still checking the luggage. Here's a story with AP video of the search. The explanation about crew rest sounds plausible as does the fact they didn't fly in another plane to pick up the stranded passengers (in case one of them was a suspect). Air France has no scheduled service from Recife, meaning they wouldn't have other aircraft sitting around to commandeer.

The aircraft was a Boeing 747-400, with 405 passengers. It's mildly interesting that the AP story used in many US publications did not identify the type, while the AFP (French story) had no trouble pointing out the fact it wasn't an Airbus.

Unsolved Mysteries

Still lots of uncertainty about the crash of AF 447 but the evidence is slowly providing some clues:

The paper also reported that some victims were found with little or no clothing, and had no signs of burns.

That lack of clothing could be significant, said Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, D.C., who is a former accident investigator. "In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away."

That, combined with being shock-exposed to temperatures from -30F to -40F, should have been enough to put most of the victims to sleep well before hitting the water, perhaps a small comfort to the victms' families.

As to the theory, a break-up/ejection theory comports with an extreme turbulence event. They found the tail fin largely intact, which some have compared to AA 587 (downed due to wake turbulence) except in this case the rudder section was intact, unlike 587. Of course it also comports with an explosion as per former NTSB member John Goglia:

Lack of burn evidence would not necessarily rule out an explosion, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

If something caused the lower fuselage to burn or explode, "passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage" and the plane would still disintegrate in flight," Goglia said. "These are scenarios that cannot be ruled out."

Identification of the bodies is also critical, as pointed out by former NTSB Managing Director Peter Goelz:

"If the victims found in one part of the ocean mostly came from one part of the plane, and the victims in the other area came from another part of the plane, that is really telling you something," he said - perhaps what parts of the plane had broken up in the air.

The above two gentlemen were involved in the TWA 800 crash investigation during the 90s, another airliner that broke up and plunged into the ocean, reputedly from a fuel tank explosion (the one directly under the passenger compartment):

Goelz noted that the pattern of injuries found on passengers of TWA Flight 800 - which went down in 1996 off the coast of Long Island, New York - helped investigators confirm that the nose broke off and fire blew back from the fuel tank.

Since they are bringing up flight 800 please allow a short detour for comparion, beginning with the phrasing, 'the nose broke off and fire blew back from the fuel tank'. The quote, assuming it was direct, begs for more explanation. It's as if they believe the causative event, a fuel-air explosion, which was massive enough to split the aircraft in two, would have allowed the nose-less section to simply fly along intact spraying flaming fuel back through the rear seats. OK then, the initial theory was that this rear section with wings included was zoom-climbing upwards another 2000 feet trailing a flaming fuel spill, which looked like an ascending missile.

How much fuel was left to burn in the near empty center tank after the explosion? Especially since it must be assumed the wing tanks were functioning since the engines were still producing thrust to propel the plane upwards. Presumably the wing tanks did not explode when the nose was sheared off by the initial explosion. An exercise in hair splitting perhaps, but puzzling nevertheless. Maybe that's why the NTSB has gradually climbed down off that explanation over the years.

In comparison, the only thing remotely weird about 447 so far was the eyewitness report of a large flash in the vicinity, which clearly could have been lightning. Autopsies will obviously be critical in clearing up some of the mysteries here but very little official information was ever publicly released on the autopsies from flight 800, which prompted an engineer to file a FOIA with the FBI in an effort to determine the properties of small 'bb-like' fragments found in some of the bodies. It seems logical to think that metallurgical tests on these fragments could have helped rule out a bomb or missile, providing concrete support for the spark theory. But it didn't happen.

Instead the FBI was very unresponsive, which led to an appeal, which led to a decision. As with all conspiracies this engineer could just be a partisan crank out to blast Bill Clinton or make a quick buck, as could this person. This post will be called conspiratorial, as will anyone who argues against the official story, which is why most steer clear. But the evidence says what it says. Actions speak louder than words. To wit--after nearly 13 years we're still awaiting the nitrogen fuel inerting system retrofit. Imagine if they find that 447 was brought down due to exploding fuel vapors.

That's why it's so critical to find the black boxes, especially the CVR. In the 800 event it provided very little aside from a curious comment about a fuel-flow indicator (common on 747s according to NTSB) followed by nothing. If this French A330 was brought down by turbulence alone there will almost certainly be conservation pertaining to the problem prior to the event.

More Thoughts on AF447

This report may or may not mean anything:

Two pilots and a passenger who was in the galley of the plane “suddenly saw far away a strong and intense flash of white light” which plunged vertically downwards and disappeared in six seconds, the pilot wrote.

The pilot had also observed storms with electric activity and cloud formations near his route.

A bright white flash and 6 second plunge into the ocean suggests a catastrophic ending, which doesn't seem to jibe with published reports about 10-15 minutes of failure alerts beamed back to Air France HQ before it disappeared.

Assuming for a moment there was a small bomb detonated in a cargo hold, such a thing could account for a gradual loss of systems leading to eventual breakup and perhaps a final fuel vapor explosion. The problem with that is the witnesses--they reported a "bright white" flash, not a fireball.

During the TWA 800 crash it was noted there were two flashes, one bright white initial flash followed by a fuel-air fireball as the plane fell into the sea. The explanation of the first bright white flash was atomized fuel vapors in the near empty Center Wing Tank being ignited by a spark in a frayed wire inside the tank, which caused a structural breakup of the aircraft. The forward section plummeted immediately into the ocean while the remaining section continued upwards a few thousand feet before finally exploding and plunging into the sea downrange.

The debris field was crucial in making those judgments (even if some believe the theory of a climbing nose-less plane was not credible) so likewise, finding a debris field here would go a long way towards explaining the event.

It's possible the folks on the Spanish plane saw an intense flash of lightning obscured by clouds that made it appear circular and brilliant, then after learning of the crash it seemed more important in retrospect. Authorities should be able to track both aircraft on a map to see whether a sighting was even possible. The NTSB has long questioned the reliability of eyewitness accounts in plane crashes.

Even if a sighting was possible the ultimate discovery of the CVR and FDR would almost certainly explain whether the white flash theory holds any merit after studying detailed meteorological analysis alongside the flight path and data readouts. This is assuming they ever find the correct debris field or that one still exists. This gentleman put things into perspective rather nicely:

The French armed forces spokesman, Christophe Prazuck, said: "Everyone has doubts about everything at the moment and we do not have the slightest beginnings of an answer yet."

Plane crashes are perhaps the most traumatic events known to man and always garner wild speculation and headlines, which is why al Qaeda and other terrorists choose aviation as a vessel for their attacks. Sadly, we usually see the media at their factual worst in the days and weeks after crashes in the rush for answers, so it's prudent to be as patient as possible--which also applies to bloggers.

MORE 6/5/09

Speaking of their factual worst, the Brazilian military was adamant yesterday that search crews had found a key piece of the airplane:

"I can confirm that the five kilometers of debris are those of the Air France plane," Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told reporters at a hushed press conference in Rio. He said no bodies had been found and there was no sign of life.

Now today:

The confusion started when the Brazilian military said on its Web site Thursday that it had recovered an 8-foot long structural support piece, a pallet, used in the cargo area of airplanes. But by Thursday night, the military had retracted that and said that the pallet — wooden — did not, in fact, belong to Flight 447.

And away the media goes, leaving the impression that no debris from the plane was actually found when indeed:

Air Force Brig. Gen. Ramon Cardoso insisted Friday that at least some of the debris spotted from the air — an airplane seat, a slick of kerosene and other pieces — are from the plane that vanished Sunday with 228 people on board. The Brazilian air force also distributed images pinpointing where the material was found.

Here's a map of everything found so far. When the news hit this morning I was wondering where an airliner seat would have come from if not from an airliner, so this makes more sense.

MORE 6/7/09

The discovered bodies, although unbearably grisly and heartbreaking for the families, will be tremendously important to accident investigators in determining whether a bomb was onboard the aircraft based on the presence of any metal fragments.

While anything's still possible it certainly looks increasingly like 447 had an encounter with a thunderstorm that didn't go well. Most pilots avoid these monsters like the plague, especially the one seen around 2 1/2 degrees north latitude early Monday morning. An earlier post here was erroneous as to the flight path; here's a better map based on later evidence. The white box shows the last known position based on the ACARS data transmission of the crippled aircraft at 0214Z; this image was time-stamped for 0215Z or one minute later.

Enhanced satellites plot cloud temperature, with brighter colors being colder, ie, higher cloud tops. Domestic flights almost always steer clear of such things but protocol might be different in the tropics. At any rate, it seems prudent to ask if or why trans-oceanic flights wouldn't have access to onboard weather data to show satellite images over the open ocean where ground based weather and air traffic radar don't exist. Airborne radar is good but it can sometimes attenuate distant (and perhaps bigger) cells if blocked by rain closer to the airplane's antenna.

There's more to learn here, such as the nature of interaction between Air France meteorologists and dispatchers with the flight crew and how attentive the pilots were to the weather ahead, something the CVR may be able to clear up.