Recording Device Missing in Greek Crash (AP - Athens, Greece)

[cthrumatrix]

Recording Device Missing in Greek Crash

By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer
23 minutes ago



ATHENS, Greece - Officials on Tuesday said they had found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from a Cypriot airliner crash that killed 121 people, hampering investigative efforts into the accident's cause.


Autopsies on the bodies of 20 people on board, including one flight attendant, show they were alive when the plane went down, an Athens coroner said Tuesday.

Nikos Kalogrias, one of a team of seven coroners, said the 20 victims' hearts and lungs were functioning when the plane crashed. "The attendant was alive and died of injuries" sustained in the crash, he said.

The device's internal components were ejected from the container when the plane crashed into a mountainous region north of Athens on Sunday, said Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Greek airline safety committee.

snip

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/greece_plane_crash;_ylt=AjoONtzznFKl4r6x.vp_U2ADW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Is this like all the London CCTV's being "out" when a tragedy occurs?

[rfranklin]

1. It's like those indestructible black boxes that vaporized on 9/11...

Now, if it had been a paper passport....

[KDLarsen]

7. Black Boxes are hardly indestructible..

.. they're built to resist fire & located in the part of the aircraft that is least likely to get smashed in a crash. The Black Boxes from 9/11 (the two that hit WTC anyway) probably vaporized inside the towers when they collapsed.

[Minstrel Boy]

21. "The Black Boxes from 9/11 probably vaporized"

Never happened before in the history of aviation.

And they were recovered. Only we're not supposed to know that.

[Journeyman]

22. So why not have two sets of black boxes. . .

one where the present set is, the other at the rear of the plane?

Should the plane make a rapid descent below a certain altitude, lose cabin pressure, blow all engines, or any such situation that makes a crash likely, the set of black boxes in the rear of the plane would be jettisoned and float under a parachute to safety on the ground. Homing devices would help find them.

Under this scenario, this second set of black boxes would have been found floating somewhere in the East River the afternoon of September 11.

[nookiemonster]

2. This is strange.

"The device's internal components were ejected from the container when the plane crashed into a mountainous region north of Athens on Sunday, said Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Greek airline safety committee."

I always thought that the black box (actually orange) was installed in the empennage of the aircraft to prevent being damaged by a nose-in crash.

I'm not sure about this, can anyone elaborate?

[cthrumatrix]

3. it's a mystery .... I would like to know info on the passenger list

[KDLarsen]

5. It's installed in the tail section..

.. but given that the tail, judging from the various shots, was completely separated from the rest of the aircraft, it wouldn't surprise me.

[nookiemonster]

10. Agreed.. So it is located in the empennage (tail).

Since that section of the aircraft was separated from the fuselage, perhaps that's a design element. A "shear" point that is designed to separate during a crash.

If that's true, it would appear that the tail sustained little damage as compared to the rest of the aircraft.

I've heard of black boxes that were retrieved from tail sections that didn't even resemble a tail section.

This is bizarre, to say the least.

[KDLarsen]

11. English isn't my natural language..

but I guessed that empennage meant tail :hi:

[nookiemonster]

12. No problem. I'm a former USAF crew chief.

It's just part of my vocabulary.

:pals:

[Boo Boo]

13. Well, I'm no expert on this, so grain of salt time here, but

I think 1) the article above is talking about a different, separate recorder that records cockpit conversations of the crew; and 2) I think you're right about the data recorder being installed in the tail section of the aircraft.

[nookiemonster]

14. Boo Boo, you are correct.

I didn't realize that it was the CVR that they were looking for.

Helps to read the whole article, eh'

:silly:

[librechik]

17. things like this make me suspect official complicity

How the hell would that guy know what actually happened to the box. The Presumably all he really knows is that the box is missing. If they found the insides spilled in the crash, he could say that, but then info might be recoverable. He didn't say that.

about the boxes, depends on the type. There are also cockpit voice recorders in larger planes.

[cthrumatrix]

4. police raided the Helios Air Offices --- and took many documents

In Cyprus, police raided the offices of Helios Airways in the coastal city of Larnaca, near the international airport.

A search warrant was issued "to secure ... documents and other evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts," Cyprus' deputy presidential spokesman Marios Karoyian said.


same link

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Still alive?

I'd heard that most of them were "frozen solid".

Still, this may argue for hypoxia rather than complete anoxia. Even partial loss of oxygen at reduced air pressure can cause narcosis and loss of consciousness.

Those flight recorders sure do seem to suck. What is it with them -- and why can't all the data go directly to satellite?

--p!

[cthrumatrix]

8. you can't have some people alive and others "frozen"...dosesn't jive

[havocmom]

19. Could have some dead from no O2 and hypothermia and some alive though

Depends on who got their masks on and who didn't. There were, what, something like 46, or 48 children? Can you imagine trying to get about a quarter of the passengers on O2 when they needed help? And kids will succumb to cold much faster than adults, body mass does make a difference in extreme cold. Cold air with little oxygen (think - top of Mt Everest conditions) for a bunch of small bodies dressed for summer in the Mediterranean climate does not bode well for the kids.

I could see how some would be alive at impact and others not. Not buying "frozen solid" but do know 20 - 40 below can do some damage to your lungs if you don't have proper masks on to warm the air a bit before it gets inside the body. That's why there are ski masks and scarves. The little people would have had a lot of trouble breathing.

[KDLarsen]

9. I heard that the "frozen solid" thin had been debunked..

the coroner had found signs that at least 20 of the passengers were still breathing when they died.

As for why it's not sent to a satellite, it's too much useless data to proces. You're only interested in the data from the flights where an incident occurs, not the data from the other numerours thousands of flights that goes on without a hitch. I would personally prefer to see that all airlines were forced to use the FDR that could record the most variables at the time. I remember hearing about a crash in the US a couple of years ago (mid 80's I think), where the investigators were left with very little data to work with (ie. pitch, yaw, roll etc - no info about the systems etc).

[nookiemonster]

15. Is it possible to uplink to a satellite

by using a unique aircraft identifier, like they do by squawking on transponders?

Wouldn't that filter out signals from other aircraft to prevent data overload?

[KDLarsen]

16. It's most certainly possible to uplink..

.. in fact, in some regions, they're currently using satellites to communicate between the aircraft & air traffic control (ie. trans-pacific & northern atlantic flights).

I see what you're suggesting, and the problem is that if the breakup happens near instantanious (like the China Airlines B747 a few years ago), it might not be possible to upload all the data. Of course, it could be done as a sort of backup, but I'm afraid that the airlines are going to bend over backwards trying to stay clear of the cost of replacing/updating FDR/CVR's.

[sleipnir]

18. If the CVR is missing, this will be a hard one to crack.

Wow...

We may never know exactly what happened. But, perhaps a few clues from the Data Recorder.

[pimpbot]

20. Even if they found it, it might not have a lot of info

The older cockpit voice recorders only record the last 30 minutes of talking. The F16s were following it for at least an hour. It might help figure out who was in the cockpit (that the f16s saw) other than the one pilot.

The data recorder would be much more valuable in this case.


The newer digital voice recorders store I believe 120 minutes.

[high density]

23. It probably doesn't matter since...

The voice recorder picks up any conversation inside the cockpit but saves only the last 30 minutes of sound. Because the airplane appeared to have been flying disabled for several hours, it was unclear how useful any recovered conversations would be for investigators.

Though I have to admit that there is a lot of odd stuff going on about this crash.