It all could have been avoided if they stayed out of the WX. TV

THAT is the key point. For some reason they elected to fly through instead of around the storm. They might have arrived a little late but at least they and the passengers would have been alive to complain! Instead they took a risk that should never have been taken. As a passenger and as a pilot i have subjected and have been subjected to massive diversions to avoid weather.vololiberista

Returning from fantasy land, do you believe that BEA made up the transcripts in its Interim Report No 3?

You're the one in fantasy land with your blind belief in governments and their reports. I also note you repeatedly fail to address the fact both AF and BEA ack'd the CVR transcript as reported by CNN, whch fits your posting strategy of never replying to any evidence that doesn't suit your line of argument. Also terming "fantasy land" to what a fellow poster has to say is in my book just plain rude. Cheers, - jahman.

When you provide evidence of what AF and BEA actually said then I'll take account of it. A journalist's statement that AF and BEA are "roundly condemning the publication of these last two minutes ... " isn't acceptable evidence. I've worked on many engineering schemes during my career and my experience was that about 90% of media reports on them had significant errors. I'd rather put my trust in official reports than in s journalists and authors - especially those who make money by sensationalising the tragic events they write about. Stopping to think about the programme shows that it added nothing of real value to our knowledge of the cause of this incident. Linking this tragedy to the Rainbow Warrior incident is fantasy land. Just as much as suggesting that because the US shot down a civil airliner (Iran Air Flight 655) NTSB reports can't be trusted.

Good of you to decide to actually discuss the evidence (or lack thereof).

When you provide evidence of what AF and BEA actually said then I'll take account of it. A journalist's statement that AF and BEA are "roundly condemning the publication of these last two minutes ... " isn't acceptable evidence.

OK, so you don't believe CNN is being truthful so you don't believe AF and BEA are being quoted correctly. Pretty reckless of CNN to put their journalistic reputation on the line just like that (and expose themselves to be sued by AF and BEA).

I've worked on many engineering schemes during my career and my experience was that about 90% of media reports on them had significant errors.

But in this case your claim against CNN doesn't ranks as a significant error, but goes against the backbone of the story, i.e. what CNN is saying is an outright lie because it's not in the official CVR transcript. Still, let me point out that the money the media might make off sensationalizing reports on the engineering schemes you were involved with pales in comparison with the amount of money Airbus might lose should the extreme FBW implementation of Airbus aircraft be revealed to be untrustworthy as a result of an accurate transcription of the AF447 CVR.

I'd rather put my trust in official reports than in s journalists and authors - especially those who make money by sensationalising the tragic events they write about. Stopping to think about the programme shows that it added nothing of real value to our knowledge of the cause of this incident.

You write as if all scandals journalism has exposed were all lies. You need to get in touch with the real World. Yes, there are cases of corrupt and sensationalistic journalism, but CNN has made its reputation as a serious source of information. It's not like the report comes from News of the World (and even their reports were factually accurate, even though the methods to obtain them were questionable.)

Linking this tragedy to the Rainbow Warrior incident is fantasy land.

No, because:

1. The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by to french secret service agents happened,
2. The operation was signed-off by the french president,
3. The incident shows what the french government is capable of doing to protect its interests, and
4. It proves that your blind trust in said government is misplaced.

Just as much as suggesting that because the US shot down a civil airliner (Iran Air Flight 655) NTSB reports can't be trusted.

IA665 was shot dow due to an inherent, known weakness of the Aegis shield: Attack is its only defense (You can't shoot a missile at a target as a warning, you can only shoot with intent to kill). When for reasons unknown IA655 failed to reply to interrogation, given the narrowness of the Strait of Hormuz, IA655 was already close enough to the USS Vincennes to fire a missile, thus it had to be shot down. The error of course was strategic: Due to its "attack is the only defense", the USS Vincennes should have never been stationed to patrol the Strait of Hormuz, because the time available to identify aircraft (IFF) was too short, thus the IA655 became an incident waiting to happen. The IA655 incident is thus spectacularly different from AF447, down to the fact that getting blown out of the sky by a missile, shot intentionally for that purpose, is not an accident at all (rather a case of military hardware unfortunatelly performing to its fullest capabilities), thus there was no NTSB involvement! The IA655 incident is thus spectacularly different from AF447 down to the fact that getting blown out of the sky by a missile, shot intentionally for that purpose, is not an accident at all, thus there was no NTSB involvement. And yet, IA655 also has a point in common with AF447: The US Navy, from Adm. William Crowe, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, initially tried to cover-up the incident, as reported by Newsweek. Still favour government reports over news reports? :( Cheers, - jahman.

Guys, Guys!!!Most of the transcript is immaterial in fact. The evidence is in what was done to the controls. Where the transcript is important however, is the evedential clear lack of understanding of the problem at hand. Lack of leadership and crew inter monitoring. The transcript clearly shows these which is why "lack of training" was mentioned in the report.Why did they elect to fly directly into a massive storm?Why then did the Captain leave his post? (He should have stayed at least until they had cleared it)Why did none of the crew identify that it was they that were causing the a/c to fall out of the sky?These questions at least may never be answered in spite of the transcript.Lack of training and lack of basic airmanship are sadly the only conclusions. What the airline and manufactuer can/could do to assuage these problems is hopefully in progress.vololiberista

Let's stick with rhe evidence and compare the CNN transcripts of the CVR with those already published by BEA in its 3rd Interim report for the last 2 minutes from 2;12:26 to 2:14 26 supposedly covered by CNN's transcript, there are only 13 entries in the CNN transcript comapared with 35 in BEA's. Who's hiding what? Also, what does this add to our knowledge? Even the CNN presenter said:

It doesn't add much to what the pilots were doing - we know that already, but it does give us a vision into the confusion that was taking place at the time...

You hid the fact that CNN's source for this was not the but but the Daily Mail newspaper. Compare this with what you published in post #29 where you edited that fact out. I accept official reports until there is reliable evidence to the contrary. I vannot accept that evidence offered by someone who tries to link this tragedy to the Rainbow Warrior affair - that really is fantasy.

The guy didn't try to link the loss of AF447 to the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, he merely cited the sinking incident as an example of what dodgy proceedings the French Government is capable of (as most governments are if we are honest), in response to a suggestion earlier in the thread that the BEA would not make stuff up. The reason for citing it is obvious enough, given that the BEA have been accused of fabricating evidence before where Airbus and Air France is concerned, notably in the investigation of the Habsheim A320 crash in 1988, where there are a number of somewhat suspect aspects as to the veracity of the evidence from the FDR. Thus the suggestion that the BEA might be as dodgy as the French Government clearly was in carrying out an attack on Greenpeace is not an irrelevant contention, although whether the suggestion in relation to the AF447 has any foundation is another matter entirely, although there are clearly many people about (including the pilot of that AF A320) who would not put it past the BEA and AF to indulge in such stuff. Al

Exactly. Thanks, Al! mgh, The relevance of the last 2 minutes introduced by CNN is it shows the total confusion and lack of situational awareness in the cockpit just prior to the crash. Those 2 minutes seem to be important enough for AF and BEA to protest the publication of that portion of the transcript. I would gather most RW pilots and accident experts world-wide would agree that such a high level of disorientation cannot be attributed solely to crew training issues and that somehow the whole Airbus FBW design philosophy needs to be revisited. These last 2 minutes according to CNN do tarnish the image of safety of Airbus aircraft that the very FBW system is supposed to provide and, by extension, the image of french aerospace industry (FBW design now in addition to Thales pitot problems), as well as the potential inferior training of the crew of france's flagship airline. It would be interesting to investigate how BEA reacted to previous Thales pitot-related incidents. Recall if the Thales pitots had been replaced in a timely manner AF447 would likely not have crashed. Cheers, - jahman. The

Sorry typing on my phone... Exactly how does the last two minutes have bearing on the investigation regarding airbus FBW? Air France stated they didn't want parts of the cvr transcript published out of respect to the families of the crew.

Chock Have you any evidence that the French governent is influencing this incident - or any evidence that the US government has infuenced NTSB? or that the UK government has infuenced the AAIB? Or is this just another example of conspracy theory? Jahman As usual you ignore the key points, The BEA transcript contains 35 items. The CNN transcript conmtain only 12. Yet you claim there is BEA cover up. Frankly, I don't see that the CNN "evidence" adds anything new the BEA transcript shows the crew were confused - which is what the BEA transcripts shows. You also ignore that you concealed that CNN were merely reporting what some one else, the Daily Mail. had said, UK members will know the Daily Mail's reputation. You say that you "would gather most RW pilots and accident experts world-wide would agree that such a high level of disorientation cannot be attributed solely to crew training issues and that somehow the whole Airbus FBW design philosophy needs to be revisited." Can you provide evidence to support that? Do you dispute that facts are: 1 -The flight crew flew the aircraft into a storm 2 -The air speed readings became unreliable probably because of pitot icing 3 - The flight crew did not follow the required procedure fin the case of unreliable aircpeed indication. I believe this is a memory procedure. 4 -The flight crew did nor react to stall warnings 5 - The flight crew took the aiorcraft outside its flight envelope The flight crew could not recover the aircraft. As far as I am concerned, the remaining key question is, was it possible the recover the aircraft from its state outside its flight envelope?

Well as I'm sure everyone here does too, I have the deepest sympathy for the families of all who died on AF447, passengers and crew, but the point of an investigation is to find out what happened and so hope to prevent it happening again, and if sensitivities get affected, then that's just the way it has to be in order to prevent even more such tragedies. If the last two minutes of conversation on the flight deck reveal that the crew was in confusion over systems and how to operate them, then it is relevant to the investigation, as it points to a possible problem with either the man-machine interface, or the level of training given in order to use it. It would not be the first time such a haptic/understanding fault has been found on the Airbus - see the Air Inter A320 crash for evidence of that. Al

Al, it has been clear since the release of the cvr that they were confused the whole way down. The new transcript adds nothing except the fact they knew they were going to die.I still dont, understand why some of you feel the last two minutes with gory details reveal anything new. FBW had nothing to do with the situation except for the autotrim full nose up due to pilot input, no magic hidden computers interfered with the aircraft handling, roll was direct and pitch was alternate providing autotrim, no conspiracy and nothing new learnt.

Chock Have you any evidence that the French governent is influencing this incident - or any evidence that the US government has infuenced NTSB? or that the UK government has infuenced the AAIB? Or is this just another example of conspracy theory?

Pretty much every AAI presents some evidence of that kind of thing if you want the truth, although not not always to a high or very visible degree. As you may or may not be aware, Annex 13 allows for several participants in any air accident investigation, although principally it will usually involve investigators from the country or origin for the flight, the country where the aircraft crashed or the ATC controlling the sector if over water, the country of manufacture for the aircraft, and the country the airline is from. A classic example of where this can lead to attempts to influence the conclusions drawn from such an investigation is the Tenerife accident where two 747s collided at Los Rodeos airport; that investigation involved the US (for Pan Am and Boeing), the Spanish (for the location and their ATC) and the Dutch (for KLM). The Dutch blamed the Spanish, the Spanish blamed the Dutch and the Americans and blamed the Spanish a bit but mostly the Dutch. Personally I'd blame the KLM captain alone, but that's just me. All of them selectively chose to include or omit various things to prove their points. It happens a lot in AAIs, but back with AF and the BEA, the BEA was accused by many sources of switching the FDR in the Habsheim crash, which is dodginess on an entirely more sinister level, and this is not without some justification, since there is a photograph of it being recovered from the crash site and one with it later at court, and one shows it with an orange case with a white stripe and the other shows it as orange all over with no white stripe, leading many to suspect the FDR was switched or doctored in some way, which may or may not be true, but that was some fairly convincing evidence and the pilot has had many legal battles over this exact contention, since he claims that the engines did not spool up in a timely manner when he applied thrust. I don't necessarily believe his contention, since he would say that wouldn't he? but it is nevertheless the case that he made such a claim, and when literally billions of Francs in aircraft sales is at stake, it is not beyond belief to imagine some covering up went on. I'm not suggesting I know for sure that on this occasion the French Govt is influencing the thing, but given that it involves their flag carrier and one of their principle industries, I'd frankly be amazed if they were not trying to pull at least some strings, although which strings and by how much we may never know, since by its very nature covert stuff tends to stay covert, as do conversations and pressure applied behind closed doors in government offices. Thus no evidence of something does not mean it does not happen, although by the same token it does not mean it did. So like yourself, I simply do not know for sure. Al

I'm not suggesting I know for sure that on this occasion the French Govt is influencing the thing, but given that it involves their flag carrier and one of their principle industries, I'd frankly be amazed if they were not trying to pull at least some strings, although which strings and by how much we may never know, since by its very nature covert stuff tends to stay covert, as do conversations and pressure applied behind closed doors in government offices. Thus no evidence of something does not mean it does not happen, although by the same token it does not mean it did. So like yourself, I simply do not know for sure. Al

As I thought - no evidence, just conspiracy theory.

Yup, but a not unlikely one. Al