Airbus' faulty airspeed sensors 'a factor but not the cause' of crash
A series of automatic system failure messages the Air France plane sent in its final minutes had led to speculation that it broke up in mid-flight while passing through a storm. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
PARIS - THE Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic last month was not destroyed in mid-air - it hit the water intact and at high speed, French investigators said on Thursday.
CRASH SCENARIO
'The plane was not destroyed while it was in flight. It seems to have hit the surface of the water in the direction of flight and with a strong vertical acceleration.'
Flight AF447 went missing during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1 with 228 people on board, and a series of automatic system failure messages it sent in its final minutes had led to speculation that it broke up in mid-flight while passing through a storm.
But Mr Alain Bouillard, who is leading the investigation on behalf of France's BEA air accident board, said: 'The plane was not destroyed while it was in flight. It seems to have hit the surface of the water in the direction of flight and with a strong vertical acceleration.'
He also said the plane's pilots made no distress calls, while no inflated life jackets had been found, suggesting both passengers and crew were taken by surprise.
But he said defective airspeed sensors on the Airbus 330 were 'not the cause' of the crash. Speculation had swirled around the role of the sensors, or pitot probes, which could have fed inconsistent readings to the cockpit in the final minutes of the flight.
Conflicting airspeed data can cause the autopilot to shut down and, in extreme cases, cause the plane to stall or fly dangerously fast, causing a high-altitude break-up.
However, Mr Bouillard said of the sensors: 'It's one of the factors but it's not the only one...It's a factor but not the cause.'
And while the plane sent out 24 automatic messages as it was flying over a mid-ocean area not covered by flight-control radar, he said: 'These alerts don't mean the plane was un-flyable, just that it had to be on manual pilot.'
Overall, the first report to be issued on the disaster appeared to raise as many questions as it answered, with Mr Bouillard also saying control of the flight was supposed to have passed from air traffic controllers in Brazil to their counterparts in Senegal, but that never happened.
He said the pilots of flight AF447 had tried three times to connect to a data system in the Senegalese capital Dakar, but had failed, apparently because Dakar had never received the flight plan. -- REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG
Please read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.
