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...French team leading the investigation into the Air France Flight 447 crash works through the multitude of likely and less likely disaster scenarios - from the repercussions of stormy conditions to an act of terrorism - perhaps among the most difficult to assess will be possible flight computer malfunctions. Air France CEO Pierre-Henry Gourgeon noted on Monday that immediately preceding AF447's disappearance, automatic messages sent by the plane indicated "multiple technical failures." As details emerge regarding these messages, experts will struggle to understand whether they were the inevitable result of the plane's breaking up or indicators of the failures...
...that moments before the plane is believed to have plunged into the ocean, its autopilot became disengaged and the plane sustained damage to its stabilizing controls and flight systems, as well as a failure of the systems that were monitoring the aircraft's speed, altitude and direction: the ADIRU (Air Data Inertial Reference Units) and the ISIS (Integrated Standby Instruments System). These are key components in fly-by-wire systems, which use computers and wires instead of mechanics and hydraulics to control a plane's flight. (Watch TIME's video of the rescue of US Airways flight...
...According to Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon, any comparisons between the Qantas and Air France flights are fundamentally misleading. "One thing that has got to be clear is that there are more than one manufacturer of ADIRUs, and the ADIRU manufacturer for the Qantas case is not the same for the Air France case," he tells TIME. As reported in the aviation trade magazine Air Transport News, manufacturer Northrop Grumman makes the ADIRUs for Qantas, and Honeywell for Air France. "There are no similarities in ADIRUs between the two cases," says Dubon. (Q&A: How to survive a plane crash...
...could result in loss of one source of critical altitude and airspeed data and reduce the ability of the flight crew to control the airplane." Dubon says these issues are "totally unrelated ... Our safety people have informed me that is not relevant to either the Qantas case or the Air France case...
...some people have firsthand experience of ADIRU failures on Air France flights: Air France pilots. Julien Gourguechon, International Secretary General of the French Pilots Union (SNPL) and an Air France pilot of 10 years, says ADIRU failures are not foreign to him, his colleagues or other French pilots flying for other companies and the military. "For sure there are pilots from SNPL who have experienced ADIRU problems," he says. But, he adds, this is "very rare ... You don't have more fly-by-wire technical failure with them than you do with hydraulic, mechanic or engine failure." As for Flight...