AF447 - Dearly Beloved We Are Gathered...

Another airline "accident", Air France this time. Their Airbus A330-200 fell from the skies off the northeastern coast of Brazil with a loss of all 228 persons onboard. Lots of questions remain as the bodies are being pulled from the Atlantic and id'd thru DNA analysis. This occured on June 1st and the black boxes with their all important data are being sought from deep on the ocean floor. With luck they will be found, without luck we will have endless speculation about those last few minutes of the A330's career. Here's the WIKIPEDIA page on the "accident" (more about the quotes in a minute).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

I've been an aircraft fan for a long, long time after riding myself of my fer of flying obtained from US airlines during the 60's and 70's. I'm fascinated by them really and always have been. Accidents though are curious occurances as it seems things pile up one by one until it breaks the system of control and down she comes.
So "things" on THIS particular flight are quite a few. The frozen pitot tubes, the thunderstorm, the autopilot system itself, the radar coverage, the radio coverage, the pilots, Air France, Airbus Industries and probably a half dozen or so more.
It takes MORE than one thing to bring one down but it takes many things to put an airplane up there with warm, fragile human bodies on board and it always seems that something MUST happen to cause blood to flow before whatever criticality in the airplane system gets fixed. Why this last dubvious fact is a matter of money vs. threat and responsibility vs incompetence. At what levels? Oh, the builder certainly, the airline company, the maintenance organization, the pilots and maybe evn the flying public, dead men flying. Bean counters of all types and officialdom abound in the aircraft industry and efforts to keep down costs have shown time and time again to cost human lives, our lives, the flying publics and those on the ground or sea (in this case) that just might be under the damned thing when it comes a calling. Air France began a program to insure that 2 of the 3 pitot tubes were replaced with new, improved, guarenteed to never fail with me onboard ones on their fleet of A330's and A340s since they share the same pitot tubes. Nice...2 out of three...66%, not a bad fix but is it all the fix we want? Do you like your eggs cooked 66% right? Does your tire have 66% of it's air and that's ok with you? Is the ticket you paid for to GO aboard this aircraft cost but 66% of normal...a bargain huh? It might be. Of course there are reasons for this 2/3rd of a real fix,
it MIGHT not even be involved in what brought the plane down. Simple incompetence (Oh I know Pilots and their all powerful unions will scream at this statement) in light of terribly confusing checklists on speed arguments between the pilot and co-pilots systems. That alone, how much time does it take to correct a failure of incompetence? How rare is the failure? More incidents of this type have been forthcoming in the last few days, maybe more time should be spent in the flight simulator, but that would cost more money. Here's more about this problem:
A Similar situation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austral_L%C3%ADneas_A%C3%A9reas_Flight_2553
About those pitot tubes:
http://tinyurl.com/npxy4d
A weather analysis:
http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

"Air France ordered Pitot tubes replaced on the long-range Airbus planes on April 27 after pilots noted a loss of airspeed data in a few flights on Airbus A330 and A340 models, he said.

Those incidents were "not catastrophic" and planes with the old Pitots are considered airworthy, Gourgeon said."

Not a problem huh? Well these passengers and crew had BIG problems as they flew into that thunderstorm, how many bean counters in Air France corporate does it take to replace those pitot tubes...all of them? Yes, ALL of Them.

3G Stands For? Golly, Goofy, Garbage!

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Saturday night rolled around and we turned to FR1 to see Johnny Halliday's BIG SHOW at the Paris Stadium. Music, fireworks and 600,000 people all yelling and jumping up and down, in a riot of sing along rock and roll. Amazing! Amidst this show we were, of course, merrily sufing along taking in the Inet news, emails etc. as is our habit in the evenings when blip! The light went out on the not so trusty SFR 3G Dongle in Kelly's laptop. The measly little 2G signal we get is our "broadband" and at 236Kb/sec it is painfully slow. But this was more than slow...this was forever and it would not connect no matter what I did. I plugged it in the lil' ASUS netbook to no avail, removed and reinserted the sim card in the dongle, nothing. So we watched Johnny while I continued to diddle with this failure of a key device of our sanity. Asleep at midnight...I woke at 6am and went back to the Dang Dongle and tried everything I could think of including removing the software and reinstalling it from the SFR 3G Dongle itself. All to no avail. It was Sunday, Brocante Day and the day before the Donkey Fair in Lignieres. Then our friends S & D dropped by with a pile of books for Kelly to read and an invite to go with them to Rezay to the brocante being held there. So why not! No internet and an invite, terrific opportunity to buy stuff we neither want nor need. I had 2.50 Euros in my pocket. Cool. So off we went BUT...I DID bring the lil' ASUS with us with the Dongle of our demise inserted in one of the USB slots ready-to-go! About 5 miles out of town along the way I turned the ASUS on and l'viola! A lite on the dongle signalled a signal received and I was able to go to our email and cnn for a news read. So it wasn't the dongle afterall? Well...hold on for MORE! After the brocante where we bought nothing, nothing, nothing. Children's clothing and piles of rusted tools and junk galore with retail prices throughout, what's to buy? Back to S&D's for a leisurely lunch in the garden and a bit of wine to wash it all down with, a nice way to end the day's outdoor activities. Home about 4 and to the @$$%##@ 3G connection once again. Same results as before, nothing, no connection, closed port, etc. ad nauseum. Useless. Watch a bit of French Guess-The-News and play with my images in Picassa, to bed, to read.
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Up at 6am, tried 3G again, same results. None.
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Outside the Donkey Fair was well underway, donkeys arriving in trucks, in trailers, being ridden, drawing carts and people everywhere setting up their stalls and tents. Cheeses, sausages, leather goods for donkeyss, hats, T-shirts, cotton candy, everything one would expect on Donkey Day in Lignieres! As 8am rolled around many cars started showing up and the already crowded streets just got more crowded. We decided then that we weren't going to move Theresa and try the 3G until late in the afternoon when quite possibly the crowd would begin to thin and we would stand a chance at getting a connexion by driving south a bit. I grabbed the camera and we went to the Champ Du Foire to see the donkey's and the madding crowd.
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Later we wanderred to La Chatre and parked at the Super U grocery store and struck up a LIVE connection on the 3G, this is starting to look like a real honest-to-goodness cell tower deficiency for once instead of an intermittant dongle. Kelly did whatever magic she does online to sort out our finances and we read emails stacked up since Saturday evening when this whole dismal chapter began. We struck out for home leaving the dongle pluged in and online until after a few miles north towards Lignieres the connection grew tired and stopped entirely. The light stayed on until we clicked disconnect and then no connection. Once home I fooled with the #@$$$@ dongle again and again while Kelly finished her sewing room;s door paint job in 4 colors of yellow. Very pretty and very, very French indeed! About 8 after dinner I tried the connection again and on the 4th attempt got a connection light and we were online through the night! Tower back on? Who knows but it did work and we captured all 135 emails that had been left standing since Saturday. After I got up in the morning the connection grew increasingly slow and finally gave up the ghost about 8am. I tried reconnecting and it worked! It's been on since and I'm typing my blog as a good little blogger should do. So what is it? The tower, the dongle, the sunspot cycle (don't laugh!), weather? Who knows but I bet there's more to come on this boondoggle yet.
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Too this morning we ventured off to the Notaire's office to begin the process of selling Dix. We met the nice, english speaking notaire himself and introduced ourselves to him. He explained the process and we scheduled a meeting with him at Dix next Monday at 10am. They will set a price and we will sign a contract with him to do the marketting for us as well as begin to set up a web page about the house, maybe one of YOU will buy it from us and become our neighbors! How cool would that be?!