For MG, Jr. reaction to BEA report of 2 July, see after

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/07/clouds-computers-and-composites-the-new-crisis-in-civil-aviation/

, comments #4, #5, #6. This present note will be added as comment #7; and also to the comments at

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/ground-the-airbus-by-william-john-cox/

, where W.J. Cox and others seem to have a lively discussion on AF447, composites in aviation, and FBW complexities.

Point #1: Incident of 23 June 2009.

As noted in my comment #4 at DV, a similar incident occurred on 23 June 2009. Another Airbus A320 flying between Hong Kong and Tokyo ran into supercooled droplets and lost speed indications and autopilot, and saw the same series of computer and instrument faults as AF447 — and the same sequence of error messages except for the final one. Interestingly, my “imaginative sequence” (in my AF447 article) begins with a fog of supercooled droplets plugging up the Pitot tubes with rime ice (I didn’t know about the 23 June incident until after 2 July).

This incident is now being investigated by the NTSB, and is included in the list of incidents described in the following article (which though detailed, I suspect has a Franco-hostile slant from an Anglo source):

The Airbus 330 – An accident Waiting To Happen
By David Rose (last updated on 19 July 2009)

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1200132/LIVE-SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-The-series-mysterious-Airbus-330-accidents-culminating-tragic-loss-Air-France-Flight-447.html

[hype for the above:]
“With its human-proof computer systems, it is the most technically advanced aircraft in the world. So why has the Airbus 330′s gleaming new fleet been so dogged by technical problems… and disturbing evidence of flawed cabling been so comprehensively ignored?”

I included the copilot’s original e-mail about the 23 June incident in my DV comment #4.

It seems that the FBW (fly by wire) computer system(s) — and most probably the programming more than the hardware — may become confused when multiple sensors have erratic behavior or fail to produce data; and such a multiple point failure can be initiated by “fog freeze.” I would hope Airbus is now doing new expanded systems tests, to explore the susceptibility of their FBW architecture to such multi-point failures (and Boeing too!).

Point #2: AF447 fuselage crushed from the bottom up.

The BEA concluded that AF447 fell intact and upright onto the ocean surface, and was crushed from below. This blow then subsequently broke apart the airplane.

I am not yet convinced of this — and I DO NOT make any conspiratorial statements accusing the BEA and French corporations of an intentional “coverup.” I confine my arguments to the physical evidence, as I can see it second-hand through news reports and photographs published on the internet.

I am sure the AF447 tragedy is a great shock to the French aerospace and air travel industries, and that it is psychologically difficult for them to frame hypotheses of what may have happened, by beginning with the assumptions that the FBW electronics went into a scrambled or chaotic mode under the circumstances of AF447′s flight (and the conditions of the atmosphere), the tail fell off at altitude and the plane subsequently became uncontrollable and broke up in flight.

Clearly, if these assumptions were shown to be likely, then given the sequence of earlier incidents with Airbus planes, a grounding of the fleet would be called for. Purely as a matter of dollars and cents (or francs and sous; or euros) the aviation industries (and governments) find it preferable to accept the costs of victim compensation (including pain and suffering, but avoiding punitive damages) to idling (multi-national) aviation industries.

I do not deny that there is potential for a conspiracy, but I think it unfair at this point to assume one is underway. I am inclined to believe that aviation people, and especially the French aviation community, are in a state of shock, and mourning, and the denial that accompanies that. This is no different than the state of British aviation in 1953-1954, when the de Havilland Comets were falling out of the sky, before they finally grounded the fleet and embarked on a long, difficult and extensive investigation and research project to find the cause. The situation is a test, a “crisis,” which challenges national pride, technical abilities, and economic ambitions. I am waiting to see how the challenge is addressed, and my basis for evaluating that will be my estimation of how the physical evidence is analyzed.

Did AF447 land upright and intact on the ocean surface? The suggestion is that the bottom portions of the airplane, from a wide variety of locations, seem to be crushed from below (photo documentation would help to substantiate this claim). However, I do not see bottom-crushing as being exclusively explained by intact “belly flopping.” Consider the following.

An airliner’s fuselage is typically a cylinder whose upper half is the passenger cabin and whose lower half is allocated to cargo and baggage holds, equipment spaces (air conditioning units, landing gear holds, pumps and electric power equipment), the central fuel tank (between the wing roots) and electronic, hydraulic and gas (oxygen) systems. The upper half of the fuselage has a lower mass density and more open space than the lower half of the fuselage. Sighting down a cross section of the fuselage, one can see that the center of mass for each cross section will be approximately amidships near the bottom. We could imagine all the mass distributed within the fuselage to be equivalent, during the dynamics of flight, to a heavy pole of concentrated mass running longitudinally along the fuselage along the axis of the cross sectional center of masses.

If we take an asymmetrically weighted cylinder, as just described, and toss it up, it is more likely to land onto its more heavily weighted hemisphere. This is, after all, the principle behind “loaded” dice. So, I am inclined to believe that an airliner fuselage, tumbling in an un-powered and uncontrolled fall from great height, is more likely to land on its bottom, whether it is intact or in pieces.

Therefore, I think it premature to conclude that bottom-crushing alone indicates an intact belly-flop, for AF447. Perhaps if there were much more debris recovered, and it also showed bottom-crushing, then one could be more certain; but there is so little recovered of this airplane.

Point #3; Tail broke off forward or backward?

The BEA states the tail of AF447 broke off with a forward jolt and leftward twist. The photos of the tail show a fairly clean break along its forward portion, near the root, and a jagged break at the bottom of the rudder, angled up toward the rear. A portion of the clevis (yoke-like structure through which a pin or bolt penetrates and thus holds in attachment another planar structure or lug) remained attached to the tail of AF447. This clevis is missing its rear half, so one could see a forward force yanking the tail off, and ripping the clevis off its bolt, leaving the back portion with the pin and fuselage. The damage to the bottom of the rudder would then be seen as happening later during the fall of the tail.

The ‘back force’ interpretation would be that the tail attachment points were first snapped by a sideways force (while trying to counter a side-swing?), and the tail then rotated backward, crushing the bottom outer corner of the rudder as it did so; when the rotation had moved the unbroken forward half of the clevis to the top of its holding pin, then it could lift off since the back half of the clevis, which would now have been under the horizontal pin, was not there to restrain the liftoff of the tail.

Perhaps when more analysis is done of the wreckage, and more photos and documentation is made available about that, I might see the persuasiveness of the BEA’s present statements.

Point #4: Pilot chatter from airliners.net.

From “Part 20″ at:
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4469631/

Reply 121 (Theredbaron From Mexico), 3 July 2009:

The report states that the AC [aircraft] fell flat and forward into the ocean, and the fin was found in the middle in the debris field, ok.

If they KNOW the plane was complete before impact and where it fell, they must have a pretty close area to search for the FDR and Voice recorder. Anything in the report to explain that? Heck they even have a very small area to look for.

I have been to 2 emergency landings and I cannot fathom why if they were falling from FL370 [37,000 feet] rapidly or slowly, flat spinning or not, recovering from a stall or whatever you want to put it, there were no bodies with the life vest on, there were minutes till this was over, I don’t think that NOBODY in that plane prepared for the worst.

[thank you Red Baron From Mexico]

Clearly, either the passengers had no time to prepare for a water landing (in-flight break up?) or the conditions during their descent (panic?, violent dizzying motion?) made it impossible for everybody to don life vests. Also recall, the crew seats were found stowed in their upright positions: the flight attendants were not seated, nor strapped in, nor wearing life vests. I have the impression of catastrophic suddenness: a great earthquake, Vesuvius’ pyroclastic flow, TWA800.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008039904_planeop09.html?syndication=rss

Manuel García, Jr.

http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/07/03/air-france-447-french-coverup/

The text of that letter is (2 July 2009):

I notice two things about the AF447 BEA investigation (http://www.bea-fr.org/anglaise/actualite/actu.htm) news stories today:
1) the plane held together till the bitter end, including the tail, and
2) Airbus planes are completely safe, keep flying folks:

[Quoting the Washington Post]
Despite the lingering mystery about what led to the plane’s sudden plunge, [Alain Bouillard, who is heading a probe by the French Investigation and Analysis Bureau] said he saw no reason at this point to ground the twin-engine Airbus A330 or for passengers not to board such aircraft with confidence. “As far as I am concerned, there is no problem flying these aircraft,” he told reporters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070201409.html?hpid=sec-world

So, the plane hits in one piece at one spot, and the tail is found six days later about 50 km south of most the rest of the debris field, which stretches about 150 km north, with the bodies pretty much along a line, and bits of wreckage flung out 50 km each way laterally from that track. China Airlines Flight 611, a 747, broke up at 35,000 in 2002 — a badly repaired rear pressure bulkhead gave way, explosive decompression — a breakup first into four pieces (estimated from radar) and ultimate scatter over 130 km; and AF447 pinpoints in one spot and has equivalent scatter? Maybe the ocean currents did spread out the AF447 debris that far; but some data on the currents and perhaps some computer models of the dispersal would sure make that argument more convincing to those of us not experts at marine drifts.

Regardless of any technical analysis (and the BEA people are closer to the data and specimens than I can ever be, and they have access to specialists, which I am not) it seems pretty obvious that if more Airbus planes had fallen out of the sky because their composite tails fell and/or broke off, then the world would be screaming to ground the entire fleet immediately. And Boeing’s increasingly delayed Dreamliner would start looking like a Plumbob Zeppelin. So, AF447 has to hold together because it is holding ‘everything’ together. There was already a crisis in civil aviation before AF447 died, because of high fuel prices and the economic crash — ticket sales were down, airplane orders (at the Paris Air Show) were absent, and the buyer’s market has people demanding and getting bargain tickets. What government agency is going to sink it’s civil air transport sector over one or two little crashes?

There is big fear out there about the management of the public mind, and the fearful withdrawal of its pocketbook. Back in 1958 Queen Elizabeth II even went abroad on the new de Havilland Comet to instill confidence back into the British aero industry. But, that was after the Comets had been grounded for over three years while the problem was solved. The prospect of over twelve quarters of no cash flow is not a viable option today. Who says there is no human sacrifice in our society? Instead of war captives spread out on stone altars to have their hearts ripped out on state holidays, we send bundles of people off on low-odds sudden termination lotteries in jumbo plastic airplanes, or death-wad and toxin-laced junk food mass feedings and drug trials. Our capitalist society is like a casino where you’re forced to play a slot machine, and if the long odds come up against you then it blows up in your face. The concept is deemed OK (by those raking in the chips) because the odds of bad stuff are “low.” Russian Roulette with 8 million empty chambers in the barrel is OK, so just pay up and keep pulling the trigger.

I hope they find the recorders, because I have a belief they will clear the pilots (the presumption of good piloting is a purely emotional attitude on my part), and because I think it would be enormously helpful to aeronautical engineers to finally decipher the instrument failures and sequence of forces that occurred on AF447. The price for this lesson was unwillingly paid by 228 people. I fear that not finding the recorders will become politically convenient, and suspect that the blame game has now completely taken over: anyone with a perceived liability regarding AF447 is in Red Alert CYA mode, and many with a loss or perceived potential for gain are weaving court filings (some no doubt quite justified). The French and the Brazilians already had a finger-pointing tiff early in the search, about what was or wasn’t real AF447 wreckage, and what might or might not have happened as regards in-flight breakup. The BEA report of 2 July points to air traffic sluggishness in Brazil and more so in Senegal as delaying the start of search-and-rescue. In seems unlikely that starting the search planes six hours earlier would have made any difference; the wreckage of AF447 would have sunk in minutes, and since there seems to have been no fire, there would be no ocean-surface fuel-burning to see. Despite the news reports (officially leaks) of autopsy findings in Brazil, and the participation of French medical forensic observers, the BEA complains it has not received the official autopsy results from Brazil. Probably true, but why?, is it all PR jockeying for world news media, CYA, and finger-pointing?

The BEA’s conclusion about an intact impact may be correct, but I will find it more convincing when they present step-by-step reasoning that ties all known facts (or proves individual facts spurious) into a sequence that produces their conclusion. That, and making their data public so independent analysts can replicate their findings, would be a first payment of honorable compensation to the dead. The principal of the rest of that debt would be to re-engineer the air transport fleet to prevent the technical failures that occurred on AF447. To do that we have to know what they were.

Manuel Garcia, Jr.

James Ridgeway posted my e-mail to him commenting on the BEA report issued on 2 July. You can read it here (I included the web link to the BEA report):

Comments on “Air France 447 Report”
http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/07

Since my article was finished, I’ve found interesting comments by pilots on situations similar to those in the beginning of my imaginative sequence. See this thread:

Pitot Icing, Spillover, Flutter, FBW and Sailplanes,
http://www.jetcrashforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7

The first letter (7 June 2009), by LeoM was most enlightening. See the video he references (also noted here) exhibiting “flutter,” and imagine this occurring on an over-speeding wide-body jet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQI3AWpTWhM

The last (15th) message on this page (26 June 2009) is quoted further below, and was also posted as Reply 72 on 2 July, by Airzim, at:

AF A332 Crash (F-GZCP) Part 20
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4469631/#menu51

The message is from Fxramper, who also describes his “A333 Faulty Air Speed Indicator” instrumentation problem, briefly, here (26 June 2009):

NW #008, A333 Faulty Air Speed Indicator
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4463202

Fxramper’s message (quoted by LeoM and Airzim) follows after a short list of symbols, provided for your convenience.

SYMBOLS:
nm = nautical miles = 1.151 statute miles = 1.852 km
HKG = Hong Kong (airport)
NRT = Narita, Japan (airport)
TAT = total air temperature (temperature of moving air when brought to a stop)
kts = knots = nautical miles per hour = 1.151 mph = 1.852 kilometers/hour
FL390 = flight level 39,000 feet
FL410 = flight level 41,000 feet

MESSAGE [posted 26 June 2009]:

Well, I’m sure you have all heard of the Air France accident. I fly the same plane, the A330.

Yesterday while coming up from Hong Kong to Tokyo, a 1700nm 4hr. flight, we experienced the same problems Air France had while flying thru bad weather. I have a link to the failures that occurred on AF 447. My list is almost the same.

http://www.eurocockpit.com/images/acars447.php

The problem I suspect is the pitot tubes ice over and you loose your airspeed indication along with the auto pilot, auto throttles and rudder limit protection. The rudder limit protection keeps you from over stressing the rudder at high speed.

Synopsis; Tuesday [June] 23, 2009 10am enroute HKG to NRT. Entering Nara Japan airspace.

FL390 mostly clear with occasional isolated areas of rain, clouds tops about FL410. Outside air temperature was -50C TAT -21C (your not supposed to get liquid water at these temps). We did.

As we were following other aircraft along our route. We approached a large area of rain below us. Tilting the weather radar down we could see the heavy rain below, displayed in red. At our altitude the radar indicated green or light precipitation, most likely ice crystals we thought.

Entering the cloud tops we experienced just light to moderate turbulence. (The winds were around 30kts at altitude.) After about 15 sec. we encountered moderate rain. We thought it odd to have rain streaming up the windshield at this altitude and the sound of the plane getting pelted like an aluminum garage door. It got very warm and humid in the cockpit all of a sudden. Five seconds later the Captain’s, First Officer’s, and standby airspeed indicators rolled back to 60kts. The auto pilot and auto throttles disengaged. The Master Warning and Master Caution flashed, and the sounds of chirps and clicks letting us know these things were happening. Jerry Staab, the Capt. hand flew the plane on the shortest vector out of the rain. The airspeed indicators briefly came back but failed again. The failure lasted for THREE minutes. We flew the recommended 83% N1 power setting. When the airspeed indicators came back. we were within 5 knots of our desired speed. Everything returned to normal except for the computer logic controlling the plane. (We were in alternate law for the rest of the flight.)

We had good conditions for the failure; daylight, we were rested, relatively small area, and light turbulence. I think it could have been much worse. Jerry did a great job flying and staying cool. We did our procedures, called dispatch and maintenance on the SAT COM and landed in Narita. That’s it.

[END of MESSAGE]

CLOUDS:
As regards the scenario I published, the key part is the beginning, not the end. The core to the mystery of AF447 is how the airplane entered into circumstances of impaired instrumentation and control. In my view it is fog freeze. Also, I think there had to be multiple sensor failures, plugged Pitot probes alone is not enough (I spent many hours in a wind tunnel lab taking Pitot probe data; read my thesis for the results).

COMPUTERS:
I see the FBW computer programming being flummoxed by multiple sensor mis-readings (basically, a failure of programming to anticipate multiple incorrect channels, a point discussed by LeoM). Once we imagine the airplane flying without speed and attitude indicators, we could equally well envision an over-speeding flutter and structural failure scenario, as a stalling scenario. The BEA conclusion of a belly-flop by an intact airplane suggests a stall at altitude, and unsuccessful stall recovery attempt. What got the airplane into the stall?

Maybe Airbus is getting a bum rap on its composite tails, and maybe composite and structural strength did not fail until final impact on AF447 (I’m not convinced, but let’s consider the argument). Perhaps the real questions AF447 raises about Airbus airplanes are:

Why does the speed and attitude sensor array experience multiple failures in fogs of supercooled droplets, which we can anticipate in the anvils of cumulonimbus clouds?

Do the fly-by-wire computer systems of Airbus airplanes respond to and recover from concurrent sensor faults in a prompt manner, to a clearly understood and reliable operational mode?

If not, time for a re-design.

COMPOSITES & STRUCTURES:
William Cox pointed me to Hans van der Zanden, who writes critically about composites in airplane construction; see;

http://www.lonelyscientist.com/

I received a number of interesting letters from people who know about aviation technology, so I’ll share two excerpts that seemed well focused.

The AA587 crash in 2001 in NYC was attributed to the co-pilot moving the rudder too aggressively (past 5 degrees), with the result that it experienced too much load and broke off. I think it’s been pretty well established that many planes, but certainly composite-tailed ones, could use sturdier vertical and horizontal tail fins.

Mark Adams sent me interesting comments on tail fins, quoted here:

[On AF447] Since they found the vertical fin and rudder 30 miles away from the main debris field, I think it points more to the tail coming off first like the AA flight 587 Airbus 300 that crashed in New York in Nov. 2001. That was caused by the vertical fin’s spar attachment failures.

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20011112-0

There was an interesting comment by a retired Boeing composite engineer about the difference in design between the Airbus vertical and horizontal fin attachments. He stated that the Airbus attaches their fins like the aluminum fins on earlier Boeing passenger jets (707, 727, 737, 747, 767 and 777) in that they attach at the fuselage outer skin. This engineer stated that the spars of the 787 vertical and horizontal fins go into the interior of the fuselage and attach there. This is a much stronger design. It would be like comparing the tail fins on German built Zeppelins to the German-designed but US-built [by Goodyear] USS Macon and the Akron. Goodyear decided to attach the fins at the fuselage rather than to each other inside and to the fuselage. That led to the loss of the airships. [The Macon and Akron were two dirigibles that crashed -- in Ohio (?) and off the Carolinas (?) coast -- during storms in the 1930s, yet German-built Zeppelins used to cross the Atlantic on regularly scheduled flights.] [Thanks, Mark.]

Gordon Arnaut, pilot, and technology journalist, writes about aviation composites:

As mentioned by William John Cox in his superb piece, there is much to suspect about the composite structures. Too many have failed. There was also the Air Transat flight which lost its rudder after departing Cuba, but managed to turn around and get on the ground without incident.

Then there is the Airbus that crashed in the Mediterranean last year, I believe, (XL Air or something like that) with just the flight crew and other technical staff on board. Here too the tail was found floating intact.

I also found some comments from guys who have disassembled Airbuses and they say that the fittings, hinges and attach points on those composite pieces are made of composites too. The problem with that is that composite parts, although very strong in tension and quite stiff also, have an Achilles heel — their attach points.

If you take a composite part and drill a hole through it and attach it to another piece of the structure with a bolt or a rivet, that joint is going to fail well before the fastener reaches its strength limit. Why? Because the plastic acts like a quasi-fluid over time and the material under the bolt head will either crush or creep.

Composites are a plastic, which by definition is a material that is malleable. They do not take point load concentrations normal to the surface very well. They also do not handle bearing loads well. So it came as a surprise to me to hear how the composite control surfaces like ailerons and rudders on the Airbuses have composite hinges and fittings. I have not seen this before — typically fittings are constructed by embedding metal bearing surfaces into the composites in order to distribute compression loads over a bigger area.

This brings me back to the AA flight 587 which lost its fin, supposedly due to aggressive pilot rudder input. Well a couple of thoughts here. First, Cox sheds some interesting light on this. He quotes several pilots who say the very fast alternating rudder inputs, as recorded on the flight data recorder, would be humanly impossible. They also say this pilot was not known for aggressive control inputs — as some are.

So I have to question this NTSB conclusion. Also I downloaded the NTSB report on that crash and looked at the drawing of the tail structure. The report states that the composite lugs on the fin, which are simply tabs with a hole in them, through which the bolt attaches, failed, but the mating lugs on the fuselage, which were made of aluminum, were intact. The titanium bolts were also intact.

Also I noted that the composite fin is simply bolted to the top of the fuselage at a single plane, rather than having the fin spars extend down into the fuselage and attaching at several points. Apparently this is how Boeing is making its new 787 (although the aluminum-tail Boeings also attach at a single plane like the Airbus; but then aluminum does not have the attachment shortcomings of composites).

Now here is my main beef about the move to composites. The new composite airframes are not actually lighter by any significant amount than aluminum airframes. The fuel savings, if any, would be miniscule. So why go to composites? The answer is money.

The new composite planes are much more expensive than aluminum planes. This allows the airframe manufacturers to make more money. It also allows them to offload a lot of the R&D expenditures to their suppliers, the Japanese and Italians in the case of Boeing. Boeing is actually only assembling the pieces. They are manufacturing practically nothing.

This is the very epitome of the outsourcing model which is how companies at the top of the food chain make the most money. Think of this as corporate colonialism.

I know a lot of pilots and engineers in the industry who think that this move to composites is totally unnecessary and is being handled in a headlong manner. It took decades for aluminum airframes to become a mature technology and there were a lot of crashes and lives lost along the way. The same thing is going to happen with composites.

[Thanks, Gordon]

Finally, a word to those who keep score. The purpose of a good hypothesis is to spur thinking that leads to more insight. When the hypothesis is correct, we pat ourselves on the back, and feel like Joe DiMaggio crossing home plate in triumph. Each hypothesis is like the swing of the bat in baseball, another chance to move the game in your favor — the game in this case being the solution of an aviation mystery. So it is more important to have many ideas from which to winnow out the good ones. After all, Joe DiMaggio hit 0.325, but we remember him as an extraordinarily successful player, not a 67.5% loser. I remain quite pleased with my analysis of AF447, because I learned a great deal in order to produce it (like the rudiments of reading weather maps, and about numerous concepts used in piloting), and because I think it can help focus critical thinking about that flight. I’ll use the same degree of critical thinking to evaluate any other hypothesis, like that published by the BEA on July 2nd.

On a personal level, I find it a great thrill to work out technical problems, and to see how well I do — my batting average — when compared to reality. It is also satisfying to be able to explain things to others in plain language, because it means you achieved a sufficient understanding of your own, from which to draw clear descriptions.

In terms of the “political” implications of this story (of AF447 and the BEA report), I think it all boils down to Gordon Arnaut’s summation:

“The real causes of these kinds of disasters are capitalism 101. Make money the overarching objective of every business activity and this is what happens.”

I smell cover-up.

Let me just add an anecdote from personal experience: In the seventies, my brother used to drive a small Fiat of the 12-series. In those days, Italian cars were renowned for rusting away fast in the wet and salty Dutch sea-climate. So brother had a lot to fix, especially body work – which he did with composites.
When finally he had to bring this car to the scrapyard, large parts of its body were composites, not metal any longer. We took a sledgehammer and put both materials to the test. The metal dented and tore; the composites withstood our attacks with only some superfiial cracking in the paint job and the outer layers. We learned that lesson well! And so did European airplane and car manufacturers.

Then, may I be so bold as to ask Mr. Garcia to improve his language and spelling? The flight was AF 447, not AF447; if ever you went on an airliner, you’d know that. Heated expansion and cooled contraction is gobbledygook: sounds impressive but is nonsense. So please, inform yourself well and write correctly.

Which leads to a second question: What makes Mr. Garcia so knowleadgeable about this whole matter when the French are still conducting their inquest ?

Cordially yours,
Truman

Finally, a further air crash has occurred since Mr Garcia’s first article. 125 people killed off the Comores. Yet, nobody is in the slightest bit worked up about them and certainly not Manuel Garcia (Junior!). 225 nice, white, French people are a “crisis in civil aviation”. 125 black (and Muslim!) people die and nobody gives a damn!