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Old 05-16-2011 | 07:58 PM
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Originally Posted by USMCFLYR
Do you know at who's request or invitation?

USMCFLYR

Unfortunately no, I don't have any contacts close enough on the "inside" and the news reports I've seen have been woefully inadequate. I'd guess there are a lot of agreements re: USA involvement in the finding of the wreck that translate into analysis (e.g. we won't help unless you let us verify analysis of the data.) There is widespread suspicion of the independence of analysis as somebody noted above, so I'd bet they are trying to at least appear transparent to avoid further scandal.

Interestingly, Le Figaro reports already that Airbus is "held harmless" (for those that can read French)

Le Figaro - Flash Actu : INFO LE FIGARO - AF 447 : Airbus mis hors de cause par les boites noires

Likely confirmation of prevailing theory of pitots iced -> reversion to alternate / ?direct law -> crew a bit slow to get to the standard pitch&throttle settings -> stalled as they were already flying near Q-corner -> could not recover from significant upset while faced with innumerable alarms and faults. If so, there will be many arguments regarding "blame" on the pilots and "culpability" of the company.

The company is clearly suffering from bad image as documents such as this float around:

Air Caraibes Airbus A330 memo

(warns about pitot icing incident clusters) which occurred relatively frequently. Most of the guys avoided stalling, likely AF447 didn't. I hope this does not spiral into a terrible finger-pointing endeavor (e.g. look, these other people made it just fine with iced pitots) and instead leads to some significant safety, training, corporate, and cultural improvements.
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