01-04-04     .....         

            At the end of the day, Andre TURENNE came in to mention to John GARSTANG that he had missed a really good Wednesday meeting.  John had commented that he had heard that the meeting had lasted more than two hours, which apparently was longer than usual.  Larry FOGG had already left for the day.  Andre indicated that it had been announced at the meeting that they had located an area of aluminium in one of the beads.  He did not know the bead number, the process, or any other details. 

            It would seem that this finding is as a result of the FIB/TEM process.  An amount of aluminium, as yet an unidentified alloy it would seem, would indicate contact with a structure piece, or contact with swarf between two wires.  However, it does not necessarily indicate an initiating wire.  Without knowledge of the bead number, or the AES figures, it is impossible to assign this as the initiating event.

            During the discussion, Andre also advised that they have done a thorough maintenance records check of everything that ever received work on HB-IWF, and nothing at all provides an indication of any problems with any particular item, or any group of events that may have ultimately come together to create a fatal problem.  This includes any reoccurring event, either from HB-IWF or any other aircraft in the fleet, something that may have been occurring on one or more other aircraft and then all of a sudden started on HB-IWF.  So it would seem that they have ruled out any such mechanical or electrical cause, or at least have no grounds to suspect anything along those lines.

            This would indicate a one time event by whatever cause.