Looking back, a few of the key people responsible for investigating the June 1, 2009, crash of Air France Flight 447 see the event itself and the resulting professional demands as extraordinary on many levels. For 23 months, uncertainty pervaded their expectation of finding, much less extracting critical data from the sunken wreckage of the Airbus A330-200 in the South Atlantic (ASW, 8/12), they say.
“An exceptional mystery … surrounded the exact circumstances of the accident, as the aircraft had disappeared without any message from the crew and beyond radar coverage,” said Jean-Paul Troadec, director, Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA), the civil aviation accident investigation authority of France. “These circumstances were only clarified thanks to the readout of the recorders in May 2011. … This accident had its origins in the obstruction of the pitot probes by ice crystals and, a…
