[Peetwo]

Latest on MS-804: “It says we have more questions than we have answers.”

While the search for the wreckage of MS804 continues, the speculation mounts on those ACARS recorded messages minutes before the aircraft plunged uncontrollably into the Mediterranean Sea.

This time via Bloomberg -

Egypt Sends Submarine to Join Search Efforts of Doomed Flight
Andrea Rothman  AEROisme
Alan Levin  AlanLevin1
Tarek El-Tablawy

May 22, 2016 — 3:03 AM AEST Updated on May 22, 2016 — 11:45 PM AEST

• Radio messages about cabin smoke before crash add to mystery
  
• Plane was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board
  

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said Egypt will dispatch a submarine to help search for debris and data records from a doomed EgyptAir flight and warned against jumping to conclusions about why the aircraft crashed.

“All scenarios are open,” El-Sisi said in a televised speech on Sunday. “It’s important that we don’t assume that a certain scenario happened.”

The president’s public comments were his first since Flight 804 carrying 66 people went down Thursday en route to Cairo from Paris with no obvious explanation. A day earlier, France’s accident investigator, BEA, said the plane generated automatic radio messages about smoke in the front portion of the cabin minutes before controllers lost contact with it over the Mediterranean Sea.

The electronic signals offer a puzzling twist to what may have happened to the flight, which crashed about 290 kilometers (180 miles) off the Egyptian coast. The aircraft had smoke in the front part of the cabin, BEA said Saturday. Two error messages, the first at 2:26 a.m. local time, suggested a fire on board, while later alerts indicated some type of failure in the plane’s electrical equipment.

El-Sisi said a submarine belonging to the Oil Ministry would help in the search, which now focuses on retrieving the aircraft’s voice and data recorders, known as black boxes despite their bright orange color.

The push for caution is critical for Egypt, whose tourism industry suffered a major blow after a Russian passenger jet crashed into the Sinai peninsula in October. Islamic State took credit for that crash, even as Egyptian investigators have resisted ascribing it to terrorism pending the completion of the probe. There have been no claims of responsibility from any militant group in the case of Flight 804.

The few clues that have surfaced so far from the wreckage offer no clear direction. The initial investigation report will be released in a month, Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported, citing probe head Ayman El-Mokadem.

While similar signals have preceded air accidents in the past, the warnings aren’t associated with a sudden disappearance from radar as occurred with the Airbus A320 over the Mediterranean. A Malaysian Airlines flight shot down over Ukrainian airspace in July 2014 broke apart so quickly that on-board systems didn’t have time to send distress messages.

“It’s too long for an explosion and too short for a traditional fire,” said John Cox, a former A320 pilot who is president of the Washington-based consultancy Safety Operating Systems. “It says we have more questions than we have answers.”



Spanning three minutes, the warnings were followed by alerts that fumes were detected by smoke detectors, one in a lavatory and the other in the compartment below the cockpit where the plane’s computers and avionics systems are stored, according to the Aviation Herald.

In the case of a mid-flight fire, the pilots would have been expected to radio a distress call and begin attempts to divert, Cox said. No such radio calls came from the EgyptAir plane.

The transmissions, which are automatically sent to ground stations so airlines can monitor whether a plane needs maintenance, will probably provide valuable clues once they’re matched up against the plane’s crash-proof flight recorders. 

El-Mokadem said the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders had not been found, refuting a CBS News report on Saturday that they had been located. It took salvage crews years to locate and recover the devices from the Air France AF447 flight that went down in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009. Malaysian Airlines MH370 still hasn’t been found more than two years after it disappeared.

Debris Images

Egypt’s army has released both images and video footage of Flight 804 debris that show an intact yellow life jacket lying beside wrecked seat cushioning, tattered clothes and EgyptAir-branded metal plane parts, quashing hopes of finding any survivors.

The condition of those remains and the way debris was found scattered may offer some clues about how the plane went down, with a wide field of small pieces pointing to a mid-air breakup. Large chunks of wreckage might suggest the aircraft hit the water largely intact.

The flight lost contact in the middle of the night in the wider area of the Strabo trench in the so-called Hellenic Arc in the seas south of Greece, where waters are as much as 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) deep. The wreckage was discovered about 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of the Egyptian city of Alexandria, authorities said.

MTF...P2
Ps Bye the Bye and on the subject of 'on-board' fires it is good to see the Qantas PR machine works seamlessly, some 4 days before the MS804 tragedy occurred the ATSB was in receipt of a 'serious incident' report:

Aviation safety investigations & reports

Investigation title
Smoke event involving Airbus A380, VH-OQD, en route 3,000 km WSW of Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, United States, on 16 May 2016
 
Investigation number: AO-2016-051
Investigation status: Active
 

• Summary
  

Summary
The ATSB is investigating a smoke event involving a Qantas Airbus A380, VH-OQD, en route to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, United States, on 16 May 2016.

During cruise, smoke was detected in the cabin. It was subsequently determined that a mobile phone battery was the source of the smoke.

As part of the investigation, the ATSB will gather information from the aircraft operator.
A report will be released within several months.
 
General details

Date: 16 May 2016
 
Investigation status: Active
 
Time: 15:35 UTC
 
Investigation type: Occurrence Investigation
 
Location   (show map): 3,000 km WSW of Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, USA
 
Occurrence type: Smoke
 
State: International
 
Occurrence category: Serious Incident
 
Report status: Pending
 
Highest injury level: None
 
Expected completion: Sep 2016 
 
Aircraft details

Aircraft detailsAircraft manufacturer: Airbus
 
Aircraft model: A380-842
 
Aircraft registration: VH-OQD
 
Serial number: 0026
 
Operator: Qantas
 
Type of operation: Air Transport High Capacity
 
Sector: Jet
 
Damage to aircraft: Nil
 
Departure point: Sydney, NSW
Destination: Dallas, USA
 
 
 


Last update 19 May 2016

   
Oh it was just another 'smoke' event courtesy of a mobile phone - "..nothing to see here move along.." - hmm...so why a 'serious incident'??
ICAO definition of a 'serious incident':

Serious incident. An incident involving circumstances indicating that an accident nearly occurred.

Note 1.— The difference between an accident and a serious incident lies only in the result.

Note 2.— Examples of serious incidents can be found in Attachment C of Annex 13 and in the Accident/Incident Reporting

Manual (Doc 9156).

Oh but that's right the ATSB has a notified difference on the definition of a serious incident - see MH370: ATSB & the search for IP going global :

Forwarding

4.1 The State of Occurrence shall forward a notification of an accident or serious incident with a minimum of delay and by the most suitable and quickest means available to:

....e) the International Civil Aviation Organization, when the aircraft involved is of a maximum mass of over 2 250kg.

& also..Pg 5. Ch 5 - 5.1.1 to 5.4

"..Australia may not institute an investigation into all foreign or Australian-registered aircraft involved in serious incidents. Decisions on whether a particular serious incident will be investigated will depend on resources and the likely benefit to future safety..."

There are many examples of where the ATSB has defined on their database a 'serious incident', that has subsequently escaped being forwarded to the ICAO international accident & serious incident database (e.g. LOSA or BOS incidents).

There has also been several cases where a 'serious incident', as defined by the ATSB, has subsequently had no investigation initiated, even under the ICAO definition the ATSB would have been obliged to do so...     

Too confused to comment -