So back to the question, what was the debris from?

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The discussion centers around the mysterious crash of Air France Flight 447, with participants expressing confusion and speculation about the debris found in the Atlantic Ocean. Initial reports indicated that the wreckage was not from the missing plane, leading to conflicting theories about the cause of the crash. An oil slick was found, but officials stated it did not originate from the Airbus, raising questions about its source. Some participants shared personal experiences related to grief and the search for closure, debating the significance of recovering bodies versus wreckage. The conversation also touched on the possibility of other debris being misidentified and the emotional complexities surrounding loss, particularly when bodies are not recovered. Theories about potential mid-air collisions and even alien involvement were humorously suggested, reflecting the mix of serious and light-hearted tones in the discussion. Ultimately, the need for clarity and evidence surrounding the crash remains a key concern among participants.
  • #51
Cyrus said:
Why would you have doubts: are there magical islands in the middle of the Atlantic ocean? Also, how many people survive a crash from 35k + feet?

The doubt is that without finding any evidence of debris from the plane, and with no radar coverage or communication from the flight after some sort of electrical fault, nobody knows that it just suddenly fell from the sky...that's an assumption that it crashed from 35k feet. There can remain doubt that it managed to glide into the water intact and there are survivors floating around in a life raft that hasn't been found yet (not an easy thing to find when you don't even know where to start looking). Though, we also know that even in that sort of "best case" scenario, without fresh water, time has run out. That won't stop the relatives of the victims from holding out hope longer.
 
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  • #52
Ok, wait. From what I understand an oil slick was found with the debris, but was determined to possibly be too large to be from the Airbus. Where the heck did it come from then? I can maybe understand a ship chucking stuff overboard, but you wouldn't dump oil in the middle of the ocean

http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2009/06/search_for_flight_447_continue.html

Cardoso said a large oil slick spotted by search plane pilots was not from the Airbus, but that another slick of kerosene found may have been from the downed passenger jet.

"The oil was not from the plane because there wasn't oil of that quantity (on the plane) to cause that slick," he said.
 
  • #55
Cyrus said:
Why would you have doubts: are there magical islands in the middle of the Atlantic ocean? Also, how many people survive a crash from 35k + feet?

You just need to know how to fall from an airplane. Actually, there are occasional survivors - Plane Fall Survivor Backs Serb Reformers.



Office_Shredder said:
Ok, wait. From what I understand an oil slick was found with the debris, but was determined to possibly be too large to be from the Airbus. Where the heck did it come from then? I can maybe understand a ship chucking stuff overboard, but you wouldn't dump oil in the middle of the ocean

People illegally dump waste in the ocean all the time. In fact, that's one of the causes of the http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVV_gQDsp1m8v7nPcumVc5McYV-Q pirate problem.
 
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  • #56
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  • #57
BobG said:
Actually, there are occasional survivors - Plane Fall Survivor Backs Serb Reformers.
Typically, when people are looking for "closure", it is due to an absence of evidence of anything to indicate a crash (or whatever). When someone just plain disappears, you have no idea what happened to them, so it isn't that unreasonable to hold out some hope. This is why it is so hard for the families of abduction victims. Even though the odds say that after a certain amount of time, they are probably dead, it isn't unreasonable to continue looking for them.

But a plane crash (where the plane plummets from 35,000 feet) isn't like that. A plane crash provides clear evidence that a person almost certainly died, even if the body isn't recoverable.
 
  • #58
Apparently bodies have now been found from the crashed plane: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8087303.stm

Bodies and debris have been found from the Air France plane which went missing over the Atlantic last Monday, the Brazilian air force has said...
 
  • #59
BobG said:
You just need to know how to fall from an airplane. Actually, there are occasional survivors - Plane Fall Survivor Backs Serb Reformers.

Umm...

# Survey landing locations.No parachute, eh? Bummer. Okay, now look down and take a good look at the ground. This may be frightening -- DON'T PANIC. If there are any bodies of water below, you want to steer clear of them. Water is the worst thing to hit. Look especially for hills -- the best way to land is by rolling down a hill. Large inflated crash mats are great, too, but chances are you won't find any handy.

This might be tough over an ocean

People illegally dump waste in the ocean all the time. In fact, that's one of the causes of the Somali pirate problem.

Enough oil to fill a trans-Atlantic flight's fuel tank? Where does this come from, and why is it waste?
 
  • #60
Moonbear said:
It depends on the family. For some, they just can't process that the person is really dead and let go of the hope that they might instead be crash landed on a deserted island and living out their own version of Gilligan's Island or Lost if they don't find a body...or at least confirm that the plane really wrecked.

Though, I hope they're carefully examining that NONE of that wreckage is from 447. A mid-air collision with an unregistered flight in an area without radar coverage is certainly more plausible as a reason for a crash than a lightning strike, or it's also possible that dumb luck landed the plane on a boat or ship when it hit the water, and debris are from something struck by the plane in addition to the plane. Otherwise, it seems there are not one, but two incidents to investigate...a bad enough storm to down a jet could have also capsized a boat in the same area (the flash someone else reported could have been a signal flare).
Not two incidents. The report I saw said was that it was flotsam that had been floating around for years. Just more junk that we've dumped into the sea.
 
  • #61
Moonbear said:
The doubt is that without finding any evidence of debris from the plane, and with no radar coverage or communication from the flight after some sort of electrical fault, nobody knows that it just suddenly fell from the sky...that's an assumption that it crashed from 35k feet. There can remain doubt that it managed to glide into the water intact and there are survivors floating around in a life raft that hasn't been found yet (not an easy thing to find when you don't even know where to start looking). Though, we also know that even in that sort of "best case" scenario, without fresh water, time has run out. That won't stop the relatives of the victims from holding out hope longer.
I'll grant that there is some chance the plane could have survived, but there are a lot of "even if's" to those scenarios: The searchers do know where to start looking and even better, life rafts have emergency locator beacons in them! So even if the plane survived the impact and the rescuers were looking in the wrong place and the locator beacons didn't work, but they still got food into the raft and the raft didn't capsize due to the weather...that's just too many "even ifs" to be reasonable.

I don't think grieving people are that completely irrational that they would hold out much hope against such odds.
 
  • #63
russ_watters said:
I'm glad they found it - it really would have been awful if they never had.

I agree. From what the link above now says (the BBC write evolving pages for news stories, so this has just appeared) there seems to be no doubt this time around:

[The Brasilian air force spokesman] later added that two male bodies had been found, as well as objects linked to passengers known to be on the flight, including a suitcase with a plane ticket.
 
  • #64
russ_watters said:
At the very least, drinking small amounts of seawater won't kill a healthy person, but it will harm them. For someone who is dying of thirst it will only serve to hasten their death. He found a raft with food and water in it. Lucky him.

They also had food and water.

Bombard aside, seems like you are suggesting in both cases they had enough food and water to survive several months on the raft. They had not. By all means they should be dead in a days or weeks at most.

Besides, what I am aiming at is that people can survive much longer than one may expect, so saying already that their time has run out is premature. Not that I am suggesting anybody is still alive.

Edit: especially now, in the light of the latest news. And I agree with your list of ifs. I was addressing only one small Moonbear's statement.
 
  • #65
Borek said:
...seems like you are suggesting in both cases they had enough food and water to survive several months on the raft. They had not. By all means they should be dead in a days or weeks at most.
I'm not, but without some to get them started, they are unlikely to have lasted long enough to have figured out how to catch fish without fishing gear and collect their own water (assuming the weather provides you with rain in time to collect it). That second guy had 10 gallons, about enough for 20 days.
Besides, what I am aiming at is that people can survive much longer than one may expect, so saying already that their time has run out is premature.
To me, that logic sounds a lot like the logic lottery players use. It just isn't reasonable.
 
  • #66
  • #67
russ_watters said:
To me, that logic sounds a lot like the logic lottery players use. It just isn't reasonable.

What? I don't see how that looks like 'lottery player' logic (and am not sure what that's supposed to be) and can't see how the argument 'other people have survived in these exact same conditions for months on end, let's not assume they died inside a week' is unreasonable.
 
  • #68
cristo said:
I agree. From what the link above now says (the BBC write evolving pages for news stories, so this has just appeared) there seems to be no doubt this time around:
It's now reported here -
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090606/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane

. . . .
The two male bodies were recovered Saturday morning about 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of where Air France Flight 447 emitted its last signals — roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.

Brazilian air force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said an Air France ticket was found inside a leather briefcase.

"It was confirmed with Air France that the ticket number corresponds to a passenger on the flight," he said.

Admiral Edison Lawrence said the bodies were being transported to the Fernando de Noronha islands for identification. A backpack with a vaccination card also was recovered.

The finds could potentially establish a more precise search area for the crucial black box flight recorders that could tell investigators why the jet crashed, although Brazilian authorities refused to comment on implications for the search.

Investigators have been searching a zone of several hundred square miles (square kilometers) for debris. A blue plane seat with a serial number on it has been recovered — but officials were still trying to confirm with Air France that it was a seat belonging to Flight 477.

. . . .

The article cites problems with pitot tubes. Apparently the manufacturer was recommending changing out the pitot tubes on A330s and A340s - to a model that was 'less' susceptible to those weather conditions. :rolleyes:
 
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  • #69
HallsofIvy said:
Not two incidents. The report I saw said was that it was flotsam that had been floating around for years. Just more junk that we've dumped into the sea.
Even the large oil slick? What carries more fuel/oil than a jet flying a transAtlantic trip short of an oil tanker? A fishing vessel with barrels of fuel on board maybe? If it was just debris, garbage tossed overboard or whatever would have seemed totally reasonable to me, but I thought it was the oil slick that got their attention most, leading them to think it was a wreckage.

russ_watters said:
I'll grant that there is some chance the plane could have survived, but there are a lot of "even if's" to those scenarios: The searchers do know where to start looking and even better, life rafts have emergency locator beacons in them! So even if the plane survived the impact and the rescuers were looking in the wrong place and the locator beacons didn't work, but they still got food into the raft and the raft didn't capsize due to the weather...that's just too many "even ifs" to be reasonable.

I don't think grieving people are that completely irrational that they would hold out much hope against such odds.

I wasn't expecting them to get food and water into the raft, which is why I suggest time has run out even if there were initially survivors. What would they have as food? Maybe if they were REALLY lucky, they'd have the airplane peanuts from the galley, but planes only carry enough food for one meal, two tops, and I'd expect even if some were salvaged, most would have gotten away during a crash.

It's more of what I think families might try hanging onto as hope when they simply don't know what has happened at all. I'm actually glad to read they now think they have found another potential crash site with wreckage and some bodies. We rationally know that there are no survivors to be found, but without any evidence of wreckage, people will hold out hope for a very long time. At least they know the plane definitely crashed over water.

I guess had no wreckage been found, there would also be the scenario that upon losing electrical systems and radio signal, the pilot could have tried turning it around to return to the nearest land...with faulty airspeed and possibly other readings in the cockpit, who knows where they could have wound up if they were off radar and flying blind. If they made it back to land, one would presume they'd have been picked up on radar again. But they could have been in a completely different direction by the time they crashed than where people are currently searching based on the last received signals.
 
  • #70
russ_watters said:
I'm calling BS on that one.

At the very least, drinking small amounts of seawater won't kill a healthy person, but it will harm them. For someone who is dying of thirst it will only serve to hasten their death.

A person would be better off drinking their own urine than drinking seawater.

Seawater is about 4% salt. Salt concentration of urine varies a lot, but would be about 2% max. If the person was well hydrated before being stranded, the first couple cycles of urine would probably be well below that, but, since the person is just reingesting waste, the concentration would quickly build up.

The person might gain an extra day or so if he's stranded for a short time - at least he's maximumizing the concentration of the little liquid he does have to expel.

If more than a very few days, he's not prolonging anything - he's not getting rid of toxic wastes from his body. The only advantage over seawater is that at least the person wouldn't be adding salts from external sources.
 
  • #71
Just out of curiosity, this flight disappeared from radar. Why aren't aircraft tracked by GPS? Is there no permanent contact/tracking with an aircraft?

Jared
 
  • #72
GPS is one-way/passive. The receivers don't communicate with the satellites. And I don't think the plane near enough to land to be on radar - it was transmitting its position via some radio based communication network. That's why it was so easy to find the crash site.
 
  • #73
Surely there are better tracking systems? I somehow find you saying it was easy to find the crash site a bit unbelievable. Took them a fair bit of time, plus they didnt confirm the debris straight away (hence this thread).
 
  • #74
jarednjames said:
Surely there are better tracking systems? I somehow find you saying it was easy to find the crash site a bit unbelievable. Took them a fair bit of time, plus they didnt confirm the debris straight away (hence this thread).

For a long time, there's been emergency beacons that transmit a signal to some NOAA satellites (http://searchandrescue.gsfc.nasa.gov/dass/cospas_sarsat.html ). There's some limitations inherent in the current system - high rate of false alarms, hours to pinpoint the location, etc.

The follow-on system, http://searchandrescue.gsfc.nasa.gov/dass/index.html , should be much more effective and compatible with the emergency beacons already used with SARSAT. The primary advantage is that this will be a secondary payload on GPS satellites and there will almost always be at least 4 GPS satellites in view.

NASA Search and Rescue overview
 
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  • #76
Moonbear said:
I wasn't expecting them to get food and water into the raft, which is why I suggest time has run out even if there were initially survivors. What would they have as food? Maybe if they were REALLY lucky, they'd have the airplane peanuts from the galley, but planes only carry enough food for one meal, two tops, and I'd expect even if some were salvaged, most would have gotten away during a crash.

There were two links posted about people who survived for extended (months) lengths of time on rainwater and fish
 
  • #77
Some of the wreckage has been found and so have several more bodies.

The Brazilian Air Force has found 15 bodies floating in the ocean near where investigators believe doomed Air France Flight 447 crashed.

They also discovered further debris from the plane yesterday, including a section of fuselage bearing the Air France logo.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...t-447-disappeared-bodies-recovered-ocean.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane
 
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  • #78
BobG said:
A person would be better off drinking their own urine than drinking seawater.

Seawater is about 4% salt. Salt concentration of urine varies a lot, but would be about 2% max. If the person was well hydrated before being stranded, the first couple cycles of urine would probably be well below that, but, since the person is just reingesting waste, the concentration would quickly build up.

The person might gain an extra day or so if he's stranded for a short time - at least he's maximumizing the concentration of the little liquid he does have to expel.

If more than a very few days, he's not prolonging anything - he's not getting rid of toxic wastes from his body. The only advantage over seawater is that at least the person wouldn't be adding salts from external sources.

What are the odds that anyone surviving an airplane crash into the middle of the ocean still had a full bladder as they were climbing into life rafts?

Office_Shredder said:
There were two links posted about people who survived for extended (months) lengths of time on rainwater and fish
They started out with fresh water supplies and some food in each of those cases, and had the means to catch fish. When you are in a life raft full of passengers from a crashed flight, you don't start out with supplies. This isn't even the sort of life raft that a fishing vessel would have with a canopy and flares. As far as I know, on a commercial flight, it's the inflatable slide used for exiting the doors that can be detached for use as a life raft.

Crashing during a storm, I'm not even sure people would have managed to stay in such a raft as it was tossed in the waves.
 
  • #79
jarednjames said:
Surely there are better tracking systems? I somehow find you saying it was easy to find the crash site a bit unbelievable. Took them a fair bit of time, plus they didnt confirm the debris straight away (hence this thread).
They found several debris fields within a day or two and I'm assuming one was the right one. It took several days to confirm only because it took ships a while to get on site and the weather was bad.
 
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  • #80
Moonbear said:
This isn't even the sort of life raft that a fishing vessel would have with a canopy and flares.
I'm not sure that's true. These things are huge and weigh a good hundred pounds - I'd be surprised if they don't throw in 10lb of key provisions/equipment like a flare gun, mirror, fishing pole, and hand-crank RO machine.
 
  • #81
russ_watters said:
I'm not sure that's true. These things are huge and weigh a good hundred pounds - I'd be surprised if they don't throw in 10lb of key provisions/equipment like a flare gun, mirror, fishing pole, and hand-crank RO machine.

Just a thought, but if people had certain things on them, plastic or something couldn't they construct something to convert salt water to fresh(ish) water? An evaporator? wouldn't need to be that big but would give something. Obviously they would need some rather specific things, a carrier bag for instance.

Jared
 
  • #82
RO (reverse osmosis) machine is just that.

Edit: something like that for example: http://www.campingsurvival.com/kahaemdewama.html - these things exist and I suppose they are part of the life raft equipment.
 
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  • #83
russ_watters said:
I'm not sure that's true. These things are huge and weigh a good hundred pounds - I'd be surprised if they don't throw in 10lb of key provisions/equipment like a flare gun, mirror, fishing pole, and hand-crank RO machine.

For a commercial flight, I don't think they have much other than a flare gun, a radio, light and locator signal thing. I suspect the rest of the regulations for "extended overwater flights" apply to things like Coast Guard helicopters that are likely to be pushing their fuel supply limits, since there's no way a commercial airline has 2 days of water per occupant in one of those inflatable slides/rafts (that would be an awful lot of stuff to get out of the way if using it for a slide!)

http://www.winslowliferaft.com/fars.asp

Though I missed this story earlier this year...I don't know if this is resolved yet, or if your best bet for an empty seat next you is still American Airlines 767s. That was their solution to not having enough life rafts...leave empty seats on the plane.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/business/FAA-Looks-Into-American-Airlines-Life-Raft-Shortage.html
 
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  • #84
Borek said:
RO (reverse osmosis) machine is just that.

Edit: something like that for example: http://www.campingsurvival.com/kahaemdewama.html - these things exist and I suppose they are part of the life raft equipment.

I do apologise, I read it in a rush and thought it said row, as in oars or something.
 
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  • #85
Moonbear said:
What are the odds that anyone surviving an airplane crash into the middle of the ocean still had a full bladder as they were climbing into life rafts?

Just another thing to think about as you're plunging towards the ocean. Those that have exercised forethought and self-control just get a lot luckier than the others.

I, for one, am not sharing.

Well, unless one of the other survivors is really hot looking, of course.
 
  • #86
Eight more bodies also were found, bringing the total recovered to 24 since Air France Flight 447 disappeared with 228 people on board, according to Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane
 
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  • #87
Autopsies suggest Air France jet broke up in sky
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090617/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane
SAO PAULO – Autopsies revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, a Brazilian official said Wednesday. Experts said those injuries — and the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic — strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air.

With more than 400 bits of debris recovered from the ocean's surface, the top French investigator expressed optimism about discovering what brought down Flight 447, but he also called the conditions — far from land in very deep waters — "one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation."

French investigators are beginning to form "an image that is progressively less fuzzy," Paul-Louis Arslanian, who runs the French air accident investigation agency BEA, told a news conference outside Paris.

"We are in a situation that is a bit more favorable than the first days," Arslanian said. "We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism. ... (but) it is premature for the time being to say what happened."

A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press that fractures were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.
. . . .
Presumably bodies when flying in numerous directions and hitting the water at terminal speed would be fatal. Most people would likely have been unconscious once the pressure dropped - at about 34,000 ft (~10 km) the pressure is about 0.24 atm / 3.47psia / 23.93 kPa.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-altitude-pressure-d_462.html

And the air is rather cold: -52.4°C / -62.2°F
http://www.boeing-727.com/Data/fly odds/standard alt.html

And the plane was probably doing about 500 mph.
 
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  • #88
  • #89
I was talking with someone who mentioned that they (Airbus) didn't know until recently that they had all this data from the Airplane because each Airbus Aircraft has a satellite link that sends information about the airplanes status during the flight so that if it needs repairs they have the parts ready by the time the airplane lands. This reduces downtime and generates more money for the airline companies. Welcome to the future.
 
  • #90
Cyrus said:
I was talking with someone who mentioned that they (Airbus) didn't know until recently that they had all this data from the Airplane because each Airbus Aircraft has a satellite link that sends information about the airplanes status during the flight so that if it needs repairs they have the parts ready by the time the airplane lands.

Do you mean Airbus didn't know what they put on their planes? Like "OMG, I have just learned - after over forty years - that my left hand have five fingers"?

From the very beginning we were all the time told about 24 (or something) failure messages sent automatically by plane. From what was repeated - ad nauseam - by media, these messages serve just the purpose you have mentioned - they help in servicing the plane once landed. I suppose s/he referred to these messages? Or is there something new?
 
  • #91
Borek said:
From the very beginning we were all the time told about 24 (or something) failure messages sent automatically by plane. From what was repeated - ad nauseam - by media, these messages serve just the purpose you have mentioned - they help in servicing the plane once landed. I suppose s/he referred to these messages? Or is there something new?

Airbus obviously know they fit an ACARS, but how much data they configure it to send and if they log and/or store the messages is upto the individual airline or sometimes the maintenance contractor. So the airframe maker cannot rely on the messages for accident investigation.
Rolls-Royce particularly log a huge amount of data for their engines which the airframe maker and the airline wouldn't know about and wouldn't normally have access to.

The ACARs is also used by the airline to generate ontime departure/arrival info which has led to allegations of some flight crews (not AirFrance!) being a little naughty by opening the door while still taxiing (so the ACARS logs an earlier arrival time for a late flight) or pulling fuses if they are over hours.
 

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