EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo has vanished from Radar

Good news.

Egyptian officials on Saturday said repairs were successfully carried out on EgyptAir Flight 804’s cockpit voice recorder, bringing investigators closer to being able to determine what onboard problems pilots were battling before the plane crashed.

wsj

Cairo,2 july 2016


Extensive examinations that were carried out at the French aircraft accident Investigation Bureau; on the electronic board components of the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of the A320’; showed that none of the memory ships of the electronic board was damaged .

However some other supportive components associated with communication to and from the memory chips had to be removed and replaced with new ones; whereas advanced high technology will be used to extract the recordings of these units .

After the replacement of the CVR board components; tests results were satisfactory as it enabled the reading of the recorders of the CVR memory unit .

The investigation committee members are planning to return back soon to Cairo with the fixed boards to continue reading and analyzing the FDR and CVR at the central department for aircraft accident at the Ministry of Civil Aviation .

It is worth mentioning that collecting human remains continues according to planned standard procedures.


civilaviation.gov.eg

a reply to: earthling42

Just curious, how do they expect to recover any human remains when their decomposing bodies have been submerged in the Mediterranean for more than a month? What would be left of them to recover?

a reply to: ColdWisdom

how cold is the water, didn't they say the debris is down about 10,000 feet...doesn't it get colder the farther down you go? you got tobe made of hardy stuff to do that job......I imagine the families appreciate having something of their loved ones

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Not much, the water in the mediterranean is warm, the dissolution of a body is quite fast in water above about 20 degrees.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Bones, teeth, personal effects (minimally). However, with the depth of the crash site being 3300m (10,000 ft.) the water temperatures are about 34F (just above freezing), so there's probably quite a bit of remains to be recovered actually.

Flight MS 804 lies in a zone known as the Bathypelagic Zone (the Midnight Zone). Microbial life doesn't really thrive below 1000m (which is the bottom of the Mesopelagic Zone). The zone near the surface where most fish and microbial life live is called the Epipelagic Zone and extends down to about 200m).

a reply to: earthling42

The water is much, much, colder than that at the depth of the crash site.

Once you get below about 200-300m below the surface, air temperature and latitude have little effect on ocean temps. Temperature becomes a function of pressure. And the pressures at the depth of the crash site are immense, upwards of 5,000psi.

I said a while back I would not expect any information to come to light before the end of the Euro championship. If this was indeed a terrorist attack it would have major complications for France as there will be thousands and thousands of fans leaving to return home very soon. The thought that a plane that departed Paris could have harbored someone would be problematic to say the least.

It does also raise the question that if it comes to light it was a technical issue either with systems on board or a fault when servicing why where the first "official" reports so hell bent on it being a terrorist attack?. A fair amount of water has gone under the bridge since this incident and the current wreckage showing signs of fire is troublesome as no doubt if it is a faulty system them a number of planes will need service checks logged, and in a situation like this I personally like to know that there are no known issues on a certain type when I fly..

RA

another missing plane. - easy to make big stuff dissapear these days.
not heard of any missing planes since over the last few years.

a reply to: Agit8dChop

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Thanks

a reply to: slider1982

Conversely, using your same theme relative to the Euro Championship, if it was a mechanical failure why would they wait to announce it?

I'm agreeing with you by the way, just phrasing the question a little differently.

Audio from the flight deck voice recorder of EgyptAir MS804 indicates an attempt to put out a fire on board the jet before it crashed into the Mediterranean, sources on the investigation committee said on Tuesday.

Reuters

So, there was a fire on board, it is all the more strange that there was no emergency call from the PIC.

The CVR confirms a fire on board, and attempts by the crew to fight it, but that's all they've released so far.

According to at least one source, investigators are looking closely at the avionics bay as where the fire started.

a reply to: Zaphod58

There is usually a trap door in the floor of the cockpit on commercial jets that would give the pilots access.
If the problem stemmed from a delayed maintenance issue we would have heard about it by now.
Are the crew allowed to use devices like smartphones in the cockpit?

a reply to: Cauliflower

It depends on the airline but most use an iPad style tablet for checklists and other information now.

The search for remains has ended, and the deepwater salvage ship that was doing the recovery has returned to Alexandria.

Investigators have said that the Cockpit Voice Recorder has the crew talking about a fire on board, and the word "fire" is clearly heard.

Why are we hearing only fragments of what the CVR alleges to reference, and not the actual words?

How about an actual transcript of the conversation leading up to the time of the disappearance?

Why is everything about this disappearance so cryptic?

Investigators are still trying to determine the cause, but the fire occurred near, or in the cockpit. The crew was relaxed, and playing music, when the captain suddenly said that there was a fire, and asked the first officer to get a fire extinguisher. Those were the last human sounds recorded according to investigators. The aircraft broke up prior to impacting the water.

www.nytimes.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

The aircraft broke up prior to impacting the water.

Which is almost certainly an over-speed, outside flight envelope, structural failure. I seriously doubt the fire directly caused the structural airframe failure (aside from the fact it caused loss of control of the aircraft).

It would also appear to be a highly accelerated fire which would suggest oxygen was involved. Rarified air at that altitude, even at high pressure, would likely not accelerate a fire that fast so as to lose complete control.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Ethiopian lost a 777 when an oxygen line in the cockpit was ripped by a bolt it was rubbing on. The wiring shorted and ignited the oxygen in the system and it burned through the cockpit side, luckily while boarding at the gate.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I have no doubt about that. Aluminum melts at 1221 F degrees. The 'average' oxygen accelerated fire burns at about 5 - 6,000 F degrees (depending on fuel). An oxy/acetylene cutting torch burns at about 9,000 F.