New Report Indicates AF447 Did Not Break Up In Flight

Reports indicate that the plane did not break up in flight, but instead crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil in a nearly vertical position.

"The plane went straight down, almost vertically, towards the surface of the water, very very fast."

The Airbus A330 was unable to fly on autopilot at the time of the crash, air accident investigator Alain Bouillard told reporters in Paris.

That was because the autopilot was not receiving speed, wind or direction information, he said.

"These tell us that the plane has to be, in this case, directed by the pilot," he said. He did not immediately say if the pilots were in control of Air France 447.

Investigators will continue searching for the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder -- commonly known as "black boxes" -- until July 10, he said.

"They normally give a signal for 30 days. We will keep listening another 10 days," he said.

Flight 447 went down in stormy weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Brazil called off the search for bodies on June 27, having found 51 of the 228 people who died when the plunged into the sea June 1, according to the military.

Airbus is facing serious trouble over this incident, and the crash this week of another Airbus plane flown by Yemeni Airlines that killed 153 people and had a single survivor, a 13 year-old girl.

Some are calling for Airbus to ground all its long range aircraft.

That's the headline from a story today on the website of the Times of London. The publication writes "Airbus is expected to face calls to ground its worldwide fleet of long-range airliners tomorrow when French accident investigators issue their first account of what caused Air France Flight 447 to crash off Brazil on June 1." The Times writes French officials are likely to cite weather as a factor, but will say that "faulty speed data and electronics were the main problem in the disaster that killed 228 people."

The European Aviation Safety Agency "has a legal and moral obligation to get to the bottom of this problem now. If there is a defective system and the aircraft is unsafe then it should be grounded,"James Healy-Pratt of Stewarts Law in London says to the Times. The firm represents the families of 20 of the victims of Flight 447 and specializes in aviation issues, according to the Times. Despite the Times' report, however, a universal grounding of long-range Airbus jets is unlikely

The issues relate to faults within the air data systems, including the pitot tubes used in determining air speed.

Suspicion over the air data systems on the Airbus 330 and 340 series has increased after the disclosure that the aircraft had experienced 36 episodes similar to the one that brought Flight 447 down as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Airbus first reported problems with the speed sensors — known as pitot tubes — in 1994, it emerged this week. The company advised remedies, but no mandatory action was taken.

Last weekend, the US National Transportation Safety Board, began looking into two incidents in which Airbus A330s flying from the US suffered critical episodes apparently similar to that of AF447.

This raises the prospect of a possible US order on modifications to the Airbus.

The first US incident occurred on May 21 when a TAM Airlines flight from Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil, lost primary speed and altitude information while in cruise flight. The other was on a Northwest Airlines flight, on June 23, from Hong Kong to Tokyo.

Accounts on the internet from the pilots report a desperate struggle to keep the jet in the air.

The fate of Flight 447 would probably have remained an eternal mystery had the aircraft not automatically transmitted data back to the Air France maintenance base.

Meanwhile, there is a call for an international blacklist of airlines with substandard safety records, which would cull those airlines that don't follow international mandates and required safety upgrades. However, the Yemeni crash was likely the result of weather as the wind near the airport at the time was blowing at near hurricane force (71mph).