News from EUROCONTROL’s aviation safety knowledge base SKYbrary
The loss of AF447 over the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009 is proving to be every bit the nightmare of accident investigators and safety experts alike. The French accident investigation bureau BEA has now published their second Interim Report which includes new findings and makes a number of safety recommendations but the cause of the accident remains undetermined.
Further investigation will be needed to figure out what exactly has happened on that fateful night. Accidents with their cause undetermined hang like a Damocles’ sword over the industry… We can try to initiate mitigating actions in a general sense but only focused action has a guarantee of hitting its target. It is exactly this target that is missing in cases with the cause undetermined and hence there is not much to focus on.
Luckily, not many accidents remain unsolved even if in some cases a repeat of the problem cannot be avoided before the cause is found. A famous case concerned the Boeing 737, two of which were lost to the same cause before the third one managed to land safely and the culprit (a part worth a few bucks but prone to freezing) was found.
Let’s hope AF447 will reveal its secrets soon…
You can read the AF447 Second Interim Report here.