Edit

Anyway, a METAL skinned Boeing 737 has been mysteriously holed (see picture) which has meant checks on all 200 planes at one carrier.

This means that Boeings do fail, even the all metal, hydraulic actuation systems ones!

And don't forget, they DO crash occasionally….. Industrial xenophobia is the weirdest thing. lets keep it level and balanced.

So what do we have now?

The best guess the French investigators have is from by examining the bits of plane and the few tens of bodies. The conclusion, based mainly on the kind of damage to the fuselage parts, is that the plane more or less plummetted straight down from 35000 feet!

The speed sensors are mentioned but not blamed specifically.

This is a reasonable news report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8130989.s…

So what we have is a plane flying flat at 35000 feet, suddenly losing most contact with the outside world apart from a few automated and confusing sensor messages, then plummetting straight bdown – but not fast enough to break up due to excess airspeed or pancake rotations (called a flat spin). Old style high tailplane airliners (like the VC10, Tristar etc) were noted for getting into this sort of un-recoverable stall. There are several ways that an airplane can enter this stall condition…

My initial guess still holds. I still think it got whacked by a massive electric charge which knocked out nearly all the electrics. In all likelihood, the 'cursed' speed sensors (a red herring perhaps?), were the actually the most robust components and their circuitry continued to function, thus providing a discontinuous flow of bizarre readings that have provided many speculative news column inches and some head-aches for Thales, the maker. Remember – there was NO radio contact at all. Just the speed sensor messages.

Check the Blue Jets again in the videos. It gives a good feel for what I mean.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/5504739/Air-France-plane-broke-up-over-number-of-minutes.html

In this, they say that new ‘evidence’ proves the plane broke up over a long period.
The Evidence?
At the top of the article they say,

The Brazilian Air Force said bodies from flight AF 447 had been picked up from locations more than 50 miles apart – supporting the theory that the plane did not simply plummet into the ocean.

but lower down at the end they say,

Brazilian searchers in charge of recovering floating bodies and debris say strong ocean currents have led them to widen the surface search area into Senegalese waters

So what does it mean? Which is right?

As far as I can see, strong ocean currents (say 5mph) can easily, over the course of a week, dissipate floating material & bodies over a wide area.
5mph equates to 120 miles per day or ~1000 miles in a week or so. It only needs debris to be spread over a few hundred metres for wide dispersal to occur in the swirling currents, which don’t always go in nice straight lines!!

Furthermore, if the bodies are a mix of surface bodies and are also being continuously released from the sunken fuselage over a period of time as the varying bottom currents affect it, then a 50+ mile dispersal does not seem excessive and in no way proves the first statement in the Telegraph article which can now be consigned to the category of “speculation”, the same as every other report I’ve seen.

It’s certainly not evidence!

BTW, I have extensive knowledge of Oceanography – it was part of my degree!

There have been no discoveries so far of pitot tubes or black boxes containing data. Because of this, I consider talk about pitot tube problems just that – talk. They may as well talk about tyres as there’s just as much evidence for tyre damage causing the crash as pitot tubes. BTW, tyre damage caused the Concorde to crash.

So far, for a crash cause or related cause we have:

weather – the thunderstorms, but nothing particularly unusual about them as other airplanes fared okay.
electrical malfunctions – spurious error messages, cause unknown and/or unreleased.

…er. That’s all.

To these we can now add that the rudder wasn’t jammed.

A lot of documentary evidence is accumulating on the Brazilian Air Force website here: http://www.fab.mil.br/portal/capa/index.php?page=voo447

The Wikipedia website is as good as anywhere for peer-reviewed and moderated information. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF_447

So.
First the bodies will be examined, especially for external injuries that may help arrive at a cause. Burns, shrapnel particles etc. The lungs will have to be examined for any foreign particles that were inhaled ante-mortem. The bodies will need identifying and then what seats they were sat at.
Then all that info will be plugged into the big panjandram of ideas to help with a final conclusion.

I doubt that two bodies will be enough, though. Hopefully, a few more will break free of the submerged wreckage and tell their sorry tale.

As for the speed sensors. They can’t be the be all and end all of the argument. The airplanes are currently okay to fly worldwide (which they do every day) with the current crop. It sounds to me like more clutching at straws in an attempt to quickly apportion blame. This is wrong. Evidence should be quickly found so that it doesn’t degrade too fast. Then reasoned judgements need to be made.
Quick, knee-jerk blame and finger pointing won’t revive the dead. They’ll be just as dead in a week and just as dead the week afterwards.
The important thing is to derive a proper truth.

Q. So what can I tell from that?
A. I can tell TWO things.

ONE: That various electrical (the whole airplane is fly-by-wire and thus electrical) systems were not working or working incorrectly.
TWO: That the automated (electrical) system was working.

Q. So what does that mean?
A. Whatever problem it was didn’t have enough power to black out all electrics simultaneously but was severe enough to prevent crew radio alerts. Maybe the radio was broken, maybe the crew were incapacitated either completely or by fervent actions (i.e. too busy to speak).
Whether this eliminates Blue Jets or not, I don’t know. I’m just suggesting them as a reasonable source for a rare catastrophic event at the correct altitude.

Any more?

No, not really. It would be informative, especially to the designers of the alerting system, what those alerts were though…?
I think the key, unless we get further information as either useful wreckage or flight recorders, is in interpreting the causes and order of these 24 alerts.

I imagine that the best minds in Toulouse, Chester and Filton are working on this right now. After all, it’s the first fatal crash of an Airbus 330 in 16 years of flight. They’re not that bad in that light, and there’s a lot of negative comment, even from pilots who should know better, about the airplane marque. Other makes e.g. Boeing, have had many more crashes, so I suspect that there’s some business shark zenophobic skullduggery behind some of the comments.

So after 3 days, the cause of the crash remains the same with the same list of possibles. Blue Jets still seem more likely to me than the other reasons, because all the encountered factors such as storms applied equally to neaby airplanes and anyway, the airplanes and pilots are designed and trained for such exceedingly common happenings. A bomb remains a small option as there was a warning, the airplane was searched, but no-one has claimed responsibility as they’re usually quick to do.

My hunch is that it has to be something rare and powerful. A Blue Jet.

Unfortunately, comments aren’t numbered so I’ll copy.
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Ecotretas (09:15:05) :
AF 447 was very near to a TAP airplane at the time it went down. Pilot from TAP, which was slightly to the west, confirmed on Portuguese TV that it was a “normal trip for that zone, smooth”. In the meantime, brazillians have suggested a link with global warming. There is even a greenie that said he had predicted it more than 2 years ago!
Ecotretas

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IW (09:54:14) :

A pilot flying 150 miles behind saw two very bright flashes. The complete and sudden breakup at altitude (leaving a debris field 30+ miles long on the ocean surface) is not consistent with engine failure, or electrical failure, or lightning strike. Weather notwithstanding, an onboard explosion seems most likely to me.
In some ways, to think it was a terror attack is more comforting; I’d greatly prefer that explanation to suggesting that the aircraft was flawed, or that thunderstorms can bring down aircraft at altitude.

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So a nearby pilot said it was “smooth” even though there were copious thunderstorms from everyone’s knowledge.
And another nearby pilot said he saw “two very bright flashes”

Now ignore the bomb or explosion part of the comments and just sticking to visuals remember the words …
“smooth and clear”
“two very bright flashes”
…and examine the videos above again.

See what I mean?