AF447 FDR and CVR data readable.

The data from the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder is readable.

I'm sure that as the French finally get around to releasing transcripts more precise information will emerge and much of the speculation will have been proven to be baseless. A good deal of it, however, will have been shown to be quite sensible.

Its well known that the French investigation is focused on avoiding any allocation of blame. With all the inter-linkages between Airbus, AirFrance and the French government it is clear that the BEA is actually investigating the French government. The level of disclosure tolerated by the French is abysmally low in comparison to what the NTSB would be revealing.

The fact that controllers in Senegal and also Air France lost track of the flight entirely and that therefore Air France was woefully late in launching any search effort has absolutely nothing to do with the cause of any difficulties the plane suffered but it is a clear example of the differences in the type of investigation that is being conducted. The BEA will make no statement critical of Air France or commenting on the elapsed time prior to the initiation of search efforts.

I do so hope the French attitude changes and that the BEA will adopt a more open and informative orientation.

ADDENDUM: After the initial downloading and review of the FDR and CVR data, Airbus has sent a No Immediate Issuance of Any Service Bulletin telex to the aviation community. All the telex really means is that there is no immediately discernible indication of a design fault that would require immediate or extremely prompt servicing. Le Figaro appears to be encouraging the viewing of this Airbus action as some sort of determination that it was pilot error and nothing but pilot error. This is not the proper viewpoint. It will probably be next year before we learn a more complete sequence of events. The computerized flight control system detected a severe difference in pitot indications and dumped the pilots into Alternate Law. What the pilots did as far as attitude, throttle and angle of attack adjustments becomes critical. What the weather impact on the plane was will be critical. Probably the most important question is whether the CVR will reveal a reason for a lack of storm related course deviations. Also of interest will be any indications of whether the radar was operational. The important thing to remember at this point in the process is that the action recently taken by Airbus simply indicates no immediately discernible indication of a design fault that must be attended to immediately. It is not an accusation against the pilots and it is not a declaration that a design defect or deficiency may not later appear.

I remind everyone of the Gimli Glider incident in Canada. An airliner full of passengers suddenly became a glider. Most airline pilots today could not deal with that situation because they not only are not glider pilots they are button pushers who don't really have much "hands on" experience in flying an airliner. The don't know the "feel" of the controls in normal situations much less in emergency situations. The pilot of the flight that suddenly ran out of fuel in mid-air near Gimli happened to be glider pilot. He flew unpowered planes for fun. He suddenly found himself flying an unpowered airplane full of passengers. It was not fun, but he knew what to do and could do it. If Airbus dumps you into Alternate Law mode there no time to figure out what to do and get into Direct Law mode by pressing the overhead buttons. You know how to do it instinctively or you don't. Most pilots don't fly airplanes, they push buttons yet when it comes to the computer having given up and the pilots being forced to fly the plane out of a thunderstorm's downwash you can't call out "checklist", you can't grab for a manual and madly flip pages to find the directions, you can't break open the safe and find the secret code numbers to enter. You have to know what overhead buttons to press and where they are. You have to be able reach them in an unusual attitude with annoying alarms going off, you have to be able to fly the plane when you have to suddenly fly the plane. A simple act of leaving one altitude and climbing to another is done by pressing buttons because it saves fuel for a computer to make hundreds of extremely minute control inputs than to have some heavy-fisted human pilot actually try to level out precisely at a certain altitude. The problem is that when the pilots only have the experience of pressing the buttons and don't have any experience in flying the aircraft, they have no time to learn how to fly. When the computer gives up, they have to know how to get into direct law mode and fly the darn plane by feel even if its the dead of night and they suddenly find themselves in a super cell. The real problem is that any passenger selected at random probably has an much experience actually flying the plane as any of the pilots do. All the pilots have done is push buttons on a computer panel. The pilots do not really get any experience in flying the darn aircraft.

ADDENDUM: One item I've been considering for quite some time is the concept of latency of state. If ice accretion on the pitot tubes did send wildly disparate data to the computers and a program therefore cut out and dropped the pilots into Alternate Law, what happens if the fluctuations in the various readings have moments wherein the coincide within the accepted reference range. Is there a resumption of a Fly By Wire state wherein pilots are restrained from certain control inputs? Even in Alternate Law mode there are some systems working and a tendency to have a pronounced pitch-up. Its night, its stormy, the pitot condition may not have been noticed until there was the sudden cut-out and the computers that had been trying to deal with the speed signals suddenly realized the signals were spurious. Pitch and throttle settings had been changed to deal with the erroneous data during the time such erroneous data was well within the acceptable parameters, but once the data discrepancy exceeded the established parameters the pilots were in Alternate Law mode and in an unusual attitude with an unusual power setting.

Further ADDENDUM: A formal announcement is expected near the end of this week that will reflect a preliminary statement regarding the pilot's failure to react to a stall indication as automatic adjustments to pitch and thrust were made pursuant to erroneous pitot data prior to the computer declaring the pitot data to be unreliable and putting the plane in Alternate Law mode. Essentially its an instantaneous mental overload for the pilots who don't know that there has been a dangerous pitch up due to declining static pressure and the iced-up erroneous pitot readings. That reduced thrust and high angle of attack situation needs immediate attention and the pilots were probably so overwhelmed with a flurry of error messages and unreliable instruments that they just didn't have time to sort things out before they simply totally ran out of time and altitude. When you train people to push buttons on a computer rather than really flying the airplane its difficult for them to do what is right when that computer suddenly turns itself off. Increasing thrust with underslung engines and a somewhat aft center of gravity won't help the situation much. If they didn't realize what had happened immediately going into alternate sixty degree banks should have worked but it would take time. They had 35,000 feet to sort things out. It turned out not to be enough.