There has been plenty of press about the 24 messages from the Air France flight that crashed. Addison Schonland of Innovation Analysis Group has two podcasts (17 minutes and 30 minutes) that has an expert decipher the messages. The podcasts may be found here. The PDF that is being deciphered is here.
Can I just make a comment about the so call expert on that podcast. He doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about. There are so many mistake on what he is trying to explain. I am a A330/340 pilot, and half of his commentary is wrong and it is mis-leading and inaccurate. Here is a summary of correction interpretation of the ACARS data.
#1) F/CTL ALTN LAW mean alternate law is now active (ie: they lost normal law, it does not mean they lost alternate law as suggested in the post cast).
#2) FLAG ON CAPT PFD or FO PFD, this does not mean the PFD itself failing. This means part of the display is not displaying the normal information because other sub-system that is providing those information have fails, it is telling you that the PFD have put up RED flag on the display to show the pilot what data they have lost. It does not mean the PFD is rebooting or that the PFD has fail and now restarting.
#3) F/CTL RUD TRV LIM FAULT, it means the Rudder Travel Limiter located at the rudder paddle have fail. It does not mean the Rudder has travel pass its limit as suggested by the expert.
#4) ISIS is not a display, it is not the computer that generate the information to the display… ISIS stand for Integrated Standby Instrument System, it is pretty much your standby Attitude and Altitude indicator all in one. This is the tiny screen near the captain nav display that is use as a backup instrument.
#5) NAV ADR DISAGREE… the expert is saying the system doesn’t know what to do that’s why it is telling you a warning of disagree. This is also wrong. NAV ADR DISAGREE means that the air date reference for the navigation system are displaying two different set of data. This usually means the Air Data Reference on the sensors on the two system are providing conflicting data. It is the pilot job then to select the system that is providing the wrong data off on the overhead panel. Usually it is pretty clear, especially if you are in cruise, for example during cruise: ADR1 is showing you are at FL350, ADR2 is showing you are at 5000 ft.
Overall it is just disappointing that this kind of misleading information is being publish.