Recovery of Air France aircraft

[Jan Kruger]

Are any of the Scubaboard members involved in the recovery efforts focussed on recovering the debris etc from the ill fated Air France flight AF 447 that went down over the atlantic on June 1 2009?

I am interested to know about the complete recovery operation as well as problems and hardships caused by bad weather conditions.

I am trying to follow it on the internet but most of the information is official 'handouts' from the various parties involved and not descriptions from people that are actually involved in the recovery operation.

[rjack321]

What isn't floating is in 6,000m of water.

[muddiver]

Anything that is on the bottom, if it can be found, will be recovered using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).

[ivobj]

I know some of the marine divers taking part in the operations, but as posted, the debris and bodies found are floating, so the divers basically jump from helicopters and marine vessels and stay on the surface or very close just to attach the cables to bring whatever is found abord the vessels taking part in the rescue. Many planes are flying over the search area as well and when spot some debri or body they report to the base in Fernando de Noronha that guide nearest vessels and helicopters.

The ocean at that location varies from 3000 to 4500 mt deep and the botton are being searched using various methods, all of them with equipment for picking up the signal emmited from the black box, as the sole purpose of the botton search is the finding the black box, to find the causes of the accident, assembling a full rescue operation for the fuselage and bodies in the botton would be economically not feaseble (although as a consequence of eventually finding the black box, it is expected to find many debris and bodies around (bringing those to surface is complicated though, as they are way bigger than the black box).

The botton search presently is being done by a French nuclear sub, a French research vessel carrying an ROV and a minisub that can take up to 2 people to 6000 mt deep (called Nautile) and vessels from Brazilian marine are towing very sensible radio waves receptors (basically a side scan sonar with increased sensitivity and capable of capturing back not only its own emmited signal, but also the black box frequency).

[roturner]

I heard they detected the pinger from one of the black boxes. Have they recoverd it yet?

R..

[bleeb]

I heard they detected the pinger from one of the black boxes. Have they recoverd it yet?

Official word is that they have not heard the pinger, news reports to the contrary. They've picked up a few signals which turned out not to be the pinger after a second look (so to speak). The problem is the ocean turns out to be a pretty noisy place, and picking up a pinger with a 2 km range is challenging in water 7 km deep. Searchers are getting quite concerned, since the batteries are only spec'ed to last till the end of the month. That's assuming they survived the impact and are actually still attached to the black boxes, which is by means a given.

AWAST: Little Progress in AF447 Recovery Operations (http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/commercial_aviation/ThingsWithWings/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a7a78f54e-b3dd-4fa6-ae6e-dff2ffd7bdbbPost%3aafa8b222-2ddf-4fbe-899d-d618e099cba6&plckCommentSortOrder=TimeStampAscending)