AF447 FDR's Data Module recovered.

The Data Module that apparently was dislodged from the Flight Data Recorder upon impact was located and roboticly recovered. It appears to be intact based upon gross examination but it is likely to be two weeks before it is known if data can be recovered from it. It is likely to be considerably longer, however, before any recovered data is released to the aviation community or the public. Shear forces on the bolts of the data module and the ultrasonic pinger are unknown but separation of the data module from the chassis of the FDR has taken place in prior crashes involving impact with water. The BEA has not released definitive data on the pinger but it is believed that signals were recorded by the French submarine involved in the search but not detected at the time by sonar operators. Later data scrubbing is said to have provided a computerized detection of the pings.

There are so many questions as to why the plane went into an unusual attitude and most particularly as to why there was no recovery despite there being 35,000 feet in order for their to be recovery from a stall. It is possible that a pilot's attempt to re-establish computerized flight control created an additional upset since there is a difference between the plane's attitude and the computer systems processing of the attitude information. Essentially it would be a physical recovery from the stall followed by a systems induced control input that re-established the stalled condition as an unrecoverable deep stall.

There has been much ado about extreme turbulence and the plane's presumed entry into a supercell whose location was masked by a radar detection of a smaller but nearer cell. The trouble with all this turbulent weather assumptions is that other planes transited the area without incident and nothing in the wreckage or bodily injury data indicates that the plane ever encountered severe weather. Galley equipment was not secured and dogged-down as it would be had there been a severe turbulence warning nor was there any indication that all passengers had seat belts securely fastened.

The ACARS system indicates pitot icing problems causing a discrepancy in the speed data the flight computers were receiving. As the computer put the plane into Alternate Law mode and therefore no computer would override pilot input, there would have to have been prompt and proper action by the crew. I can not envision a pilot attempting to re-engage computer controlled flight until the plane itself was known to have recovered from any stalled situation. There was massive loss of data to the pilots and massive cognitive overload as whatever data that was available was unreliable.

As yet, there has been no word concerning the other "black box", the Cockpit Voice Recorder.

Undercarriage lowered on AF447?

Even though Phase 4 is still underway and the FDR and CVR have not been located, it seems the suspense is growing. A very small debris field, high vertical descent component suspected. Did the crew fixate on a problem and not realize they were in a gentle descent? Or did they attempt to increase drag by lowering the undercarriage? Why would they attempt such a thing? I just can't wait for the Flight Data Recorder to be recovered and analyzed, though I don't know how complete the information would be. Its possible that the data was changing so rapidly the recording of averages will be deceptive.

It just doesn't seem reasonable that the pilots would descend all the way from Level 35 to sea level without realizing they were descending, no matter how fixated on some other item they might have been. Also during any such gentle descent, the lateral travel from the LKP would be greater no matter what the direction of that travel was, even if they did a 180 whether it be intentionally or by happenstance. Being dumped into Alternate Law mode suddenly and losing so many instruments without warning may have overloaded the crews ability to cope with sensory input, but the plane would travel in some direction even if they lost engines.

I had thought a deep stall but this appears to be so very unlikely since it is not known how to put that plane into a deep stall and yet have it strike the water in a mainly downward direction consistent with a flat spin. So perhaps the answer is simply that there was no flat spin. Yet extending the undercarriage would indicate pilot attention and desperation. It would also indicate an over speed condition, not an under speed condition, though it is possible that a desperate crew could have extended the gear even if the airspeed was minimal simply as an attempt to lower the nose to re-stablish laminar flow over the wing and gain an attitude wherein an engine re-start might take place. However, I do think that only impact forces affected the main landing gear and the main landing gear doors. I doubt there was any inflight attempt to lower the landing gear.

Some are focusing on WX and pilot induced oscillations leading to a loss of longitudinal dynamic stability so that the plane was tail heavy and both engines had flamed out. No control surfaces effective, no way to restart, not much flight from LKP, high vertical component, low horizontal one. Not a good situation to be in at all and certainly not at night while inside a thunderstorm. Of course the problem is that other aircraft flew pretty much the same track not long before and not long after AF447 and had no problems at that flight level. So while its hard to imagine longitudinal stability problems its sort of harder to imagine anything else.

If the initial data from the iced pitot tube resulted in the throttles being retarded sufficiently to induce an underspeed stall and that stall progressed to a fully stalled situation with the nose down sixty degrees and neither the wings nor the horizontal stabilizer generating lift it is possible that leading edge vortexes impinged on the vertical stabilizer. Such vortexes when combined with commanded inputs from a desperate flight crew could result in a catastrophic failure at altitude but I would expect the fuselage to impact in a more vertical rather than horizontal attitude. So it seems that the vertical stabilizer did indeed remain attached until impact.

At impact the transmission would cease but the intermittent interruptions in the ACARS transmissions and unavailability of the signal is thought by some to have been caused by the antenna being occluded by an inverted fuselage but this is undetermined.