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Investigator of Air France Crash Says Some Emergency Slides Malfunctioned

Posted on: Saturday, 6 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

TORONTO (CP) - The miraculous survival of everyone in this week's fiery Air France crash landing came into crisp focus Saturday as the lead investigator said only four of the plane's eight exits were used and one door was difficult to open.

Real Levasseur, the lead investigator for the Transportation Safety Board, also said two of the four slides that the 309 passengers and crew used to disembark didn't work properly. They are supposed to unfold automatically when the emergency doors are opened.

"(Our team) is looking at why these slides and these doors didn't work as advertised at the time," Levasseur told a news conference.

"We're very much interested...in finding out why they didn't work before we get rid of the wreck."

Later, safety board spokesman John Cottreau couldn't say whether the other four doors malfunctioned or whether the crew decided not to open them for some reason.

Two experts from the manufacturer of the slide and one from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board were on site looking at why the slides didn't work as advertised, Levasseur said.

As well, one runway expert from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is working with the Canadian team, looking at tire marks on the runway at Pearson International Airport to determine if the Airbus A-340 hydroplaned in the severe rain storm Tuesday.

But at this point in the investigation, the plane doesn't appear to have hydroplaned, Levasseur said.

"If there was hydroplaning, it didn't last very long."

He reasoned that there wasn't enough damage done to the plane's tires to indicate the four-engine jet skidded along because of the water. Hydroplaning, he said, usually causes the water underneath a plane to boil, melting parts of the tire.

Levasseur also said he didn't think a sudden storm-produced microburst - a very small cell of intense downward wind - caused the plane to crash.

"If an aircraft was close to the ground and passed a microburst it could crash," he said. "But I was told that there was no microburst that day."

Only two members of the crew, the captain of the plane and a flight attendant, remain in Toronto.

The captain is still recovering in hospital but should be well enough soon for safety board officials to interview him, Levasseur said.

The process of gathering factual information at the crash site is wrapping up, and he added that information from the flight data recorder is being downloaded and investigated by officials. The plane could be removed from the site as early as Monday if the investigation progresses smoothly.

During the news conference, Levasseur also thanked passengers and witnesses for passing along information of what they saw during the crash.

He appealed for passengers who took pictures of the plane while the aircraft was starting to burn to turn over those photos to the board for its investigation.

Source: Canadian Press

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