Flight International – 11 June 2019

68 | Flight International | 11-17 June 2019 flightglobal.com

PARIS

Special report

A

irbus’s first A350-1000 test aircraft
has been recruited to support de-
velopment of an innovative flight
recorder that can be jettisoned au-
tomatically in the event of an accident. The
aircraft, MSN59, has been modified to accom-
modate a mechanical prototype and, as a re-
sult of the initial installation, is the preferen-
tial candidate to serve as the platform for
future functional testing.
These tests would amount to the most radi-
cal advancement in civil flight-recorder evo-
lution since the emergence of solid-state tech-
nology more than two decades ago, and
provide a potential solution to one of the most
frustrating aspects of accident investigation.
When Air France flight AF447 disappeared
over the South Atlantic in June 2009, the loss
of the Airbus A330 resulted in an extraordi-
nary 700-day undersea hunt for its two flight
recorders. After losing contact in the Atlantic
flight information region while en route to
Paris, the aircraft had descended from cruise
altitude and struck the ocean surface, sinking
to a depth of almost 4,000m.

FOCUSED SEARCH
Analysis of timing and the flightpath enabled
the search to focus on a circle – albeit one that
was 80nm (148km) in diameter, a total area
half the size of Belgium. Several attempts to
locate AF447’s wreckage prior to April 2011
had proven unsuccessful – and this meant
that, for nearly two years, the most evocative
image of the hunt was that of the A330’s verti-
cal fin being hauled onto a recovery vessel.
French investigation authority BEA says
its inquiry underlined that the information
retrieved from the flight recorders was instru-
mental in determining the circumstances of
the accident. “As in other investigations, it
also brings to light the difficulties that can be
encountered in localising, recovering and
reading out the recorders after an accident in
the sea,” it adds.

DAVID KAMINSKI-MORROW LONDON

Attempts to locate lost Air France A330 took two years after vertical fin was recovered

Eraldo Peres/AP/Shutterstock

Lost to neither the

devil nor the deep

Two deep water aircraft losses – AF447 in the South Atlantic and MH370 in the Indian

Ocean – spurred development of data recorders that won’t go down with the wreckage