Robots Find Wreckage of AF447

Last week we reported on an army of robots searching for Air France 447 over a nearly 4,000 sq mile patch of the Atlantic ocean. Today mriya3 noted that "BEA, the French air accident investigation office, reports that the wreckage of Air France flight 447 has been found. The plane, an Airbus A330, crashed June 1, 2009 while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Investigators hope to find the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. A press conference will be held today."

Re:will there be data?

[Anonymous Coward]

What remains to be seen is, even if they find the recorders, will they have readable data?

It's not easy to protect equipment against two years under 4000 meters of water.

Which begs the question...why didn't they ask for their help 2 years ago? They originally spent weeks searching while these guys found it in a weeks time.

It doesn't beg the question. It RAISES the question.

Re:Only a week

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence needed. According to every conceivable statistic about aircraft safety, Airbus and Boeing are fairly in the same figures. Of course, to speak about "the buzz in the industry" without any proof nor reference is very easy. And probably will be moderated as "informative".

Re:Only a week

[antifoidulus]

Yeah, choosing which type of plane you fly on because you are worried about safety is folly, you should be much more worried about the airline operating the vehicle. Very, VERY few airlines go down because of engineering or manufacturing defects, most go down because of operational problems at the airline, poor or improper maintenance(either due to negligence on the part of the workers or greed on the part of management) or improper hiring, training, or management of pilots(again usually done to cut costs, though to a certain extent that shows how braindead management can be in certain areas, they are willing to take a cut-rate pilot to handle their multi-million dollar planes....)

Re:Only a week

[cmdahler]

No they don't. They make junk. Compared to Boeing, their fly-by-wire (night) is completely flaky and has killed many people, and let's forget their flimsy carbon-fiber (plastic).. and the 380, right out of the box, after all that testing, and the engine still can't contain itself.... Read the damn accident reports yourself. I'm not doing your homework. Airbus should be grounded.

Because Boeing doesn't use carbon fiber on their airframes, right? (Hint, that Southwest Airlines 737 that just had its top peeled off didn't develop those cracks in carbon fiber.) Because Boeing doesn't use fly-by-wire systems, right? (Hint: only difference between Boeing and Airbus since the 1990s has been that Boeing kept a yoke in the cockpit and Airbus went with a sidestick, but it's all connected to wires these days, and can you provide even one example of an accident of either Boeing or Airbus that was directly tied to the fly-by-wire system failing on the airplane? Right, I thought not.) Because Boeing aircraft are never powered by Rolls Royce engines, right? (Hint: the A380 incident didn't have anything at all to do with Airbus, it was a problem with the engine that was manufactured by Rolls Royce.) There are so many fools who think they know what they're talking about. When I read this comment I pictured Cliff Claven from Cheers.