Another Airbus Crashes Into the Sea
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Meanwhile, more is learned about the crash of Air France Flight 447.
A Yemenia Airbus A310 Crashes During Inclement Weather
It was supposed to be a holiday. A Yemenia Airbus A330 was to fly people from Paris and Marseille to the Indian Ocean archipelago of Cormoros. The islands have strong ties to France; many born on Cormoros live in Marseille.
Yet the flight stopped in Yemen, not to pick up or discharge passengers but to exchange the AirbusA330 for an A310. Reuters, 6/30/09.There were 153 passengers and crew on board when the A310 took off for the islands. Reuters, 6/29/09. It never made the airport.
Reminiscent of Flight 447, the crew of the A310 had foul weather to deal with- strong winds (30-40mph) and rough seas. According to an un-named UN official, the control tower was alerted that the plane was going to land, then lost contact with it. The plane simply fell out of the sky into deep, stormy seas about nine miles north of the airport. AOLNews, 6/29/09.
A Miracle Child
Because the wreck was so near its destination, rescuers could get to the scene quickly. When they did they found five bodies, but they also picked a survivor out of the raging sea; a 14 year old girl. Sydney Morning Herald, 6/30/09.Regardless of what brought the plane down, it is a tribute to the captain that he made a rough water landing that someone could survive. She might wind up being the sole survivor.
Information Hard to Obtain
Yemeni officials are not yet allowed to talk to the media, but the French and the European Union are providing information. Two French military aircraft and one ship were quickly dispatched to the scene. Time Online, 6/30/09. We do know that that one of the black boxes has just been located, though it has not been announced whether it is the data recorder or cockpit voice recorder.
French transport minister Dominique Bussereau stated that faults had been found in this particular plane and it has not been allowed to fly to France. Reuters, 6/30/09. But Yemen’s transport minister Khaled Ibraham al-Wazeer claimed that the A310 had been inspected in May under Airbus supervision.
The AirbusA310 is a two engine, wide bodied jet that can carry 220 passengers. This bird was made in 1990, and has been part of the Yemenia fleet since 1999. Currently there are 214 A310s in the service of 41 operators.
Why Did Yemen Swap Planes?
The AirbusA330 was not culpable for any passenger deaths until the tragedy of May 31. The A310 has a history of seven crashes from 1992 through 2006. Though most were pilot error, one resulted from an erroneous stall warning shortly after takeoff. Air Disaster.com. Expect the issue of the switched planes to be raised during the accident investigation and in the inevitable lawsuits. The European Union’s Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani has already announced an investigation into why the passengers were transferred in Yemen. AOL News, 6/29/09. He is planning to propose a global blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe. Reuters, 6/30/09.
As of the moment, we don’t know why the AirbusA310 went down.
Update on the Crash of Air France Flight 447
There was tantalizing news after French vessels detected weak signals that could have come from the black boxes. It dispatched a mini-submarine to search the ocean floor. Nothing has been found yet, and time is running out as does the battery power that sends signals from the boxes. Their information is considered critical. See my article The Tragic Saga of Air France Flight 447, Newsflavor.com., 6/13/09.
A preliminary report will be released on July 2, 2009, boxes or no boxes. But remarks from Paul-Louis Arslanian, Chief of the French Accident Investigation Bureau, strongly suggest that a bug in the plane’s computerized system could have been a cause. Arslanian pointed to “incoherent” airspeed readings sent automatically by Flight 447. The inaccurate speed readings would affect other systems relied on by the crew.
Blocked external sensors alone would not have doomed the craft. Experts think there was a flaw in independent air data devices that collect basic flight information such as speed and altitude.
A similar event caused a near-calamity in a Quantas A330 over Australia when computers falsely indicated an imminent stall. The 447 crew would have had enormous difficulty flying through a violent storm without accurate information.
Obviously, investigators and Airbus engineers must be on a steep learning curve if a repeat of these disasters is to be avoided.
