AF 447 ACARS: A Mistake with a Life of its Own


Here is yet another indication of how things can get a life of their own:-

Soon after the France 2 program showing the ACARS transcript messages on 4 June, someone on the pilot’s forum PPRuNe typed them up, and posted them to imageshack. Now they apparently made it onto eurocockpit.com . The New York Times’s Matt Wald, a reliable commentator, commented the ACARS messages yesterday, June 13 and there is a graphic on the NYT WWW site explaining the messages.

Wald said “its authenticity has been confirmed by industry officials”.

Except there is a typographical error, since corrected by the original transcriber. The ISIS message was a 3422 message, according to the original transcript (DG and Ind), but it was shown as a 3412 (OAT and Ind./Sensor) code message on the original image, and it is so shown now on the NYT WWW site.

This can be clearly seen in the screen grabs from the TV program from Danny Fyne, the PPRuNe originator:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/376433-af447-2.html#post4975127
and in the higher-resolution screen grabs from contributor Machaca
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/376433-af447-2.html#post4975217

The list was typed up from the screen grabs by contributor selfin:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/376433-af447-3.html#post4975386
The original version contained the erratic 3412 transcription for 3422, and has since been edited and corrected by selfin, as noted on the post itself. Here is the message, from contributor Captain-Crunch, in which the typo was first noted (with the *original* images to show it):
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/376433-af447-4.html#post4975726

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