PARIS-A year ago, on June 1, 2009, Air France AF447 flight disappeared on its way back to Paris from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing 228 passengers and crew members. The last communication AF447 had with Brazilian flight controllers was at 1:35 a.m. By 2:15 a.m., the plane had crashed.
The causes of the catastrophe still remain unclear. Several parts of the Airbus A330 plane and bodies of passengers were found, but the flight recorders were never retrieved despite months of military ships searching for it. Additionally, around than 170 bodies and 95 percent of the plane itself have not been recovered and are sitting over 13,000 feet below sea levels.
Speed Calculators at Fault
The last hope of retrieving the flight recorders died this month at the close of the third search campaign in the Atlantic Ocean.
Experts still disagree on the best way to investigate the crash, but all agree at least on the probable cause: defective airspeed indicators known as pitot tubes that are located below the cockpit.
The suspected defect in the sensors forced Airbus to change them on all A330 and A340 planes in July 2009.
The BEA (Bureau d’enquêtes et d’analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile), the French body responsible for technical investigations into civil aviation accidents, released a 128-page interim report on the subject last December. The BEA stated that “no distress messages were received by the control centres or by other airplanes.” However, “twenty-six maintenance messages relative to flight AF447 were received. Twenty-four of them... between 2:10 a.m. and 2:15 a.m.”
Families Criticize the Investigations
The BEA, however, thinks that other factors such as bad weather may have also played a role in the disaster.
Several associations of relatives of the victims held a press conference in Paris on May 31 criticizing BEA’s interpretation as well as what they called the opacity of the investigations.
Le Monde newspaper quoted the groups saying it is strange that the French justice system and BEA “refuse to consider the [pitot tube] defect as an absolutely crucial element.”
“Negating evidence and denying reality should not serve as a pretext to those who failed to assume their duty of flight security.”
“We will not give up” in the search for truth, answered vice-Minister for transportation Dominique Bussereau, who attended a commemorative ceremony in Paris on June 1.
Later the same day, Bussereau announced the creation of an “information committee” to answer the discontent of relatives of the victims who told French media that the only information they could get about the investigations was through the press.
It came to the point that some family members no longer believe that they will ever learn the truth of what happened to their loved ones.
“I’m sure we will never have answers, even if flight recorders are found. Air France is a large company and I don’t have a lot of hope,” said Saïd Benotmane, the relative of a victim, to Le Point newspaper.
According to the SNPL (Syndicat national des pilotes de lignes, or National Airline Pilot Union), that published its own investigation report on June 1, “between 2003 and 2009, 32 instances of pitot tubes icing have been reported on Airbus A330 and A 340. And almost all happened on planes equipped with Thales probes [a device to measure the temperature of the air flow surrounding the airplane]. This does not seem to have warned authorities,” reports Le Figaro newspaper.
