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Friday 3 August 2007

Cockpit recording from TAM Airbus crashed in Sao Paulo Congonhas

The media have been buzzish over the last days, as a transcript from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) from the TAM airbus 320 that did crash in Sao-Paulo Congonhas has been made public. Apparently it has been read to a congressional commision in Brasil, which from my point of view does not mean public...

Personally, I deeply regret it, for various reasons. At first, the source of this document is unclear. Is it officially released from the investigation team ? I don't think so, such teams tend to work very privately until the report is finalised.

Is it from "a source close to the investigators", as journalists often say when they get stolen information ? The source is not know yet, but the transcript is already published on several websites, with various comments, interpretations, and even some conclusions !

This is exactly the other bad thing I see in having such things published at this stage. This recording is only one piece of the huge set of information that will contribute to the investigations. One can not draw conclusions only on that.

Secondly, even experts will probably argue for months on the exact meaning and content of the recordings. Getting a proper understanding and conclusions on base of a simple transcript is certainly well beyond the capabilities of amateur bloggers (me included) and journalists.

So please, once again, leave the investigation team doing their job in peace. We will discuss later on, when the official report will become public. Anything in between is only speculations.