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Former NTSB Lead Plane Crash Investigator on Air France Flight 447

Airlines & Airports, Plane Crashes — on June 9, 2009 11:52 am

Sunset skiesThis past weekend, Peter sat down with experts to discuss the crash of Air France Flight 447.

He checked in with Greg Feith, former lead investigator for the NTSB regarding the ongoing accident investigation and recovery efforts.

Peter Greenberg: I know you and I have been busy trying to make sense of all of this. We have very little to go on.

Greg Feith: That’s why it’s so critical that every effort be made to find the flight data recorder and cockpit recorder. They’re going to hold the keys to this mystery.

PG: I go back to Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of France’s Bureau of Investigation, who I know very well from my Dateline special on the Concorde, which crashed back in 2000. His reaction wasn’t very uplifting—he said we may never find out.

Air France logoGF: I was very disappointed to hear the French basically concede that point. Even if they are never found or the wreckage is never fully uncovered, they shouldn’t give up this early—not only from an accident investigation standpoint, but also from the perspective of the families. With multiple national resources available, you’ve got to give it your all. At least say you’ve done everything you possible could, but you can’t give up this early.

PG: The U.S. has already been asked for their help, correct?

GF: They’ve been asked to assist. The French has the lead of course, but they’ve said they don’t have the assets and the U.S. does. But I know that if this accident were under U.S. control, we’d have a flotilla out there, with submarines and everything else, looking for those two boxes.

PG: Where do we go from here? It was a plane built in France, it was operated by a French airlines, it broke up over international waters. But the French don’t have the resources, the Brazilians don’t have the resources, and we’ve been asked to assist. How fast are they getting out there?

NTSB logoGF: I don’t know what the politics are currently. But from our standpoint, that airplane is operated by two carriers here in the United States—US Airways and what used to be Northwest. That aircraft type is being operated in and out of the U.S. under code-share agreements. So if there is a problem with that airplane, the United States should be pushing to go in. We do have the assets and we’ve demonstrated that in the past by going down several thousand feet to pick up a cargo door at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

PG: The cargo door was from a United Airlines 747.

GF: Yes, it was United Airlines Flight 811, in which they lost the cargo door, which killed nine people on board. The door itself sank several thousand feet underwater and they were able to get a remote-operated vehicle out of a submarine down there.

PG: This also reminds me of the terrible tragedy of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. It was flying between Montreal and London when it blew up over the north Atlantic. There were very few clues.

GF: Correct. That whole story line developed from a lot of circumstantial but factual evidence. The true story took a very long time to piece together. While it is not beyond the realm of possibility that [the crash of Flight 447] was an intentional act, we may never have enough information to really support that.

Sunset and stormAnother thing I want to mention is that there are deployable recorders, which have been designed to separate from aircraft under certain conditions. If this airplane had been equipped with deployable recorders—and the military has been using them for 40 years—we would have had a recorder that would have left the airplane during the breakup sequence in-flight, land in the water somewhere, and float. It would have already started to transmit on the search-and-rescue signal, and we could have had a data recorder to analyze what’s going on.

PG: It’s like military fuel tanks are way ahead in technology than commercial airline fuel tanks.

GF: We could have had a good idea of what was going on with the airplane up to the time of the event, until the box stopped recording. Even if we didn’t have the wreckage, it would have given a lot of good data.

PG: You’ve been involved in a number of major accident investigations—the most notable being ValuJet in 1996 when it crashed into the Everglades. Based on your experience with all those investigations, just give me a ballpark guess—where do you think we’re going to go with this?

GF: If we do not find the wreckage, whatever information that was downloaded from that airplane, along with a deep and thorough analysis of the weather condition—unless someone comes forward and says they did something bad to that airplane—we’re probably going to have a cause of an accident that’s undetermined. We’ll have some information that we can put a storyline together, but we’ll never know the true cause of this event.

You can hear the whole interview here: Travel Detectives, Flight 447, and Puerto Rico’s Rainforest.

Previous Air France Flight 447 coverage:

  • amsron

    It’s time to make black boxes redundant and start recording flight data through satellite transmission, directly to land based servers. If it’s not possible to record all flight info, then at a minimum a backup of flight data recorder information for all planes flying over the oceans should be done ASAP. Even something as simple as a GPS on AF447 would have narrowed the search parameters greatly.

    The sort of oh, poor us, we can’t do it yet BS that I’m hearing is unacceptable. Pilot concerns over privacy are just as ridiculous. Whatever we’re recording now, on the plane, should be available to investigators immediately after a disaster such as this is confirmed. Lives may depend on it.

  • http://www.petergreenberg.com Ron H.

    I couldn’t agree more. With as many back up systems in place on commercial aircraft as there are today, real time data aquisition should be the primary source of flight info, transmitted to real time servers. The black boxes could be used as a back up system.
    As far as conversations in the cockpits being private holds no validity. The flight crew are responsible for all passengers’ safety. If they’re afraid of retribution for saying something inappropriate, they need to get into another line of work.

  • Tom

    I’m sorry but after this statement:

    “tragedy of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. It was flying between Boston and London when it blew up over the north Atlantic.”

    both you guys lost all credibility with me.

  • http://www.petergreenberg.com Peter Greenberg

    Hi Tom,

    Thanks for catching that–you’re right, the flight was between Montreal and London, not Boston and London. It’s been corrected.

    Thanks,
    The PeterGreenberg.com Staff

  • Evan

    Real time data would definitly be the best senario, however, the servers and systems required to make this possible, to keep continuous recording of the flights would be enourmous. Thats not excuse them from trying it, but i can understand the resistance to it. I’m also finding a lot of people jumping to the conclusion that it was the rudder, but as was said here, nothing can definitivley determined until they have the data recorders, or more wreckage.

  • Bobby

    I couldn’t agree more also .. Like Ron said ,,, “With as many back up systems in place on commercial aircraft as there are today, real time data aquisition should be the primary source of flight info, transmitted to real time servers. The black boxes could be used as a back up system.
    As far as conversations in the cockpits being private holds no validity. The flight crew are responsible for all passengers’ safety. If they’re afraid of retribution for saying something inappropriate, they need to get into another line of work.”

  • Joe

    The vertical stabilizer snapped off. The plane went into a Dutch roll or a flat spin, so the pitot tubes on one side of the plane, would send different reading from the other side. That explains the mixed up speed reading. It’s cheap to replace pitot tubes or blame the pilots. Don’t let Airbus get away with it again! They would have to redesign and retrofit all of their planes, as they all have the faulty vertical stabilizer set up. Airbus’ insurance takes care of paying the loved ones of the victims. Higher insurance premiums are nothing compare to the expense of redoing all Airbus planes.I’m sure the French Navy is trying real hard to find the black boxes (Ha, Ha!). France and other EU members make a boatload of money from Airbus. Remember that lobbyists from Airbus almost were arrested for interfering w/ and investigation after the AA587 crash.

  • http://www.safelander.com Seymour Levine

    For the last ten years there hasn’t been a technical reason why the digital flight recorder data isn’t sent in real-time to the ground (see the BBC/Equinox video “The BOX”, 2000, on the flight recorders). During this ten year interval Boeing and Aerospatiale have had the capability of implementing remote aircraft flight recording. Using a remote aircraft flight recorder, with-in a couple of seconds, you have the planes position/location, its attitude, velocity, etc. safely stored on the ground and used for flight safety, aviation security and cost reduction. This data used in real-time could have also prevented 9/11. We presently have the viable technology to securely do this. This information could be used for flight safety, aviation & national security and cost reduction to the flying public.

    On June 4, 2009 the Los Angeles Times put this into their LETTERS section:

    “There is no technical reason why digital flight recorder data are not sent in real-time to the ground. We have the technology to do this. Then, within a couple of seconds, we would have a plane’s position, altitude and velocity safely stored on the ground. This information could be used for flight safety, aviation security and cost reduction. We don’t know what went wrong on Flight 447, but we would sure know where the plane went down, why it went down and possibly could have saved lives.”

    Getting to the crash site early may save lives, getting the DFDR can prevent recurring fatal crashes. It’s not just position that’s needed it’s all of the data sent to the recorder that is critical to ascertaining the root cause of a crash and should be available to prevent some of the crashes from occurring.

    The real-time use of the data recorders will save a substantial amount of lives, make our country safer and reduce the cost of flying. Telemetering the flight data to the ground in real-time would assure that we have the data – in many crashes the flight data isn’t recovered (e.g. 9/11, et al) or has errors in it since no one is looking at it, or using it in real-time to find malfunctions. Yet, this valuable digital flight recorder data (DFDR) data has been left to the autopsy mode for post mortem simulations and not utilized proactively in real-time to save lives. We got our astronauts back from the moon by ground personnel monitoring the data in real-time. It was the ground personnel that found the problem and relayed back to the capsule the safe solution that saved the astronauts lives. Yet, the real-time data has been intentionally withheld and stored on operational planes for fear of aviation industry litigation.

    A year prior to 9/11 I spoke in NY at the International Aviation Safety Association meeting on preventing crashes like golfer Payne Stewart’s decompression crash. Nothing was done by the FAA or industry and we got 9/11 (hijacking is about ten percent of aviation fatalities) and the 2005, 100 fatality, Helios decompression crash. When a plane deviates from its approved flight plan we now have the ability to securely take remote control of it and land it safely at a designated airfield. We presently have remote pilot vehicles (RPVs) flying over Afghanistan that are controlled/piloted from continental United States (CONUS). Currently we are utilizing secure high bandwidth communication networks (for our RPVs, submarines, AWACS planes, etc.) and there isn’t a logical reason for not making that technology available for cargo and carrier aircraft. The cost of 9/11 alone is ten times the cost of putting in a safe system and yet nothing has intentionally been done. We would now be accruing additional annual safety and cost benefits.

    When a plane decompresses there is a good possibility if we remotely bring it down in altitude to a point where there is sufficient oxygen and fly it remotely for 15 minutes the pilot and passengers may regain consciousness. At that time the control of the aircraft could be returned to the pilot if they are capable of flying the aircraft or remotely landing it to save the lives of the people who are onboard.

    Billions of dollars are wasted on unnecessary airport runway expansion programs to reduce fatal ground incursions. These incursions wouldn’t even occur if the flight data was shared so pilots and air traffic control had better visibility. But because the digital data isn’t shared automatically the pilot sees only a fraction of the information necessary to prevent a crash and the same hold for the air traffic controllers (ATCs). Crashes such as Tenerife (583 fatalities), Comair (49 fatalities), etc. are directly caused by the lack of visibility due to not sharing the DFDR, ATC and airport runway data in real-time. The real-time use and sharing of the DFDR data to prevent crashes is more important then its present post mortem autopsy mode of operation.

    This, Air France flight 447, is another example of horrific crashes that possibly could have been prevented and saved lives. We surely would be able to use the flight data to prevent recurring crashes of this type and to minimize the anguish of the passengers families and the cost and time of trying to recover the recorders. The data used in real-time: reduces the cost of flying; prevents recurring fatal crashes; prevents a host of fatal crashes that aren’t directly related to Air France Flight 447, and keeps our nation safe and secure.

    Sy Levine

    sylevine1@sbcglobal.net
    levines@wlac.edu

    http://www.safelander.com

    Remote Aircraft Flight Recorder and Advisory System (RAFT) patent #5,890,079, 3/30/1999
    • November 2000, 1st International Aircraft Safety Association Symposium, N.Y. paper, “The Remote Aircraft Flight Recorder and Advisory Telemetry System, RAFT, Can Substantially Reduce Fatal Air Accidents While Enhancing Air Space Capacity, Operational Efficiency and Aircraft Security”

  • http://www.safelander.com Seymour Levine

    The Black Box data should be telemetered to the ground. This storage aboard the plane is to due to aviation industry liability issues. There hasn’t been a technical reason for doing this in over ten years. See the BBC show “The Box” where this was proven to be viable.

    • May 1999, National Transportation Board (NTSB) Symposium on Transportation Recorders paper, “RAFT And Its Ability to Reduce the Fatal Air Accidents by 78 % While Enhancing Air Space Capacity, Operational Efficiency and Aircraft Security”;

    • November 2000, 1st International Aircraft Safety Association Symposium, N.Y. paper, “The Remote Aircraft Flight Recorder and Advisory Telemetry System, RAFT, Can Substantially Reduce Fatal Air Accidents While Enhancing Air Space Capacity, Operational Efficiency and Aircraft Security”