2009年6月1日凌晨，法航447航班在从巴西里约热内卢飞往法国巴黎途中失事。两年过去了，飞机到底出了什么事，为何调查结果迟迟不肯公布等等谜团仍然扑朔迷离。纽约时报记者威尔•S•希顿在进行了大型，详细的调查之后写下了这篇《揭秘：消失的法航447航班》。
Late on the morning of April 3, the expedition ship Alucia rocked violently on the South Atlantic Ocean in the middle of a squall. On the aft deck, the crew huddled together in rain slickers and gazed across the heaving seas to a yellow blur on the horizon. This was an unmanned reconnaissance submarine carrying 15,000 photographs that they were nearly desperate to see. But it had buoyed to the surface just as the squall sprang up, and with 30-knot winds and four-foot swells that splashed over the stern, it was too dangerous to retrieve the sub. So they watched and waited.
2011年4月3日清晨，“阿卢西亚号”勘探船在南大西洋的暴风中剧烈的颠簸。船尾甲板上，船员纷纷披着雨衣，目光穿过波涛汹涌的海面，盯着远处地平线上浮出水面的一个模糊的黄色物体的影子。这个模糊的黄色物体是一艘无人侦察潜艇，这艘潜艇上，有他们迫不及待想看到的15000张照片。但潜艇刚刚浮上水面，暴风就凶猛来袭，30节的风速和足有四英尺高的巨浪就扑到了船上。这时候去收回潜艇过于危险，船员们只好边看边等。
For eight days, the Alucia had been trolling the ocean near a spot known as the L.K.P., or the Last Known Position of Flight 447, the Air France jet that vanished in June 2009, about halfway between South America and Africa. In the nearly two years since, three other search teams went looking for the wreckage, but this was the Alucia’s first try. The ship carried three Remus 6000 submarines, some of the most advanced underwater search vehicles on earth, which swept the seafloor in 20-hour runs, then surfaced to deliver sonar imagery to the Alucia’s scientific team, who pored over the data in 12-hour shifts around the clock. So far, they had not found the plane, but the day before, one scientist pointed at something unusual on the monitor and said, “What about this?” And ever since, the air on the Alucia was charged.
整整八天，“阿卢西亚号”勘探船都在法航447航班的最后已知位置附近进行搜寻工作，法航447航班2009年6月在从南美飞往非洲的中途消失。在之后的近两年时间里，先后有其他的三只搜寻队伍想寻找航班的残骸。这是“阿卢西亚号”勘探船的第一次搜寻工作。勘探船上载有三艘里莫斯6000型潜艇，这种潜艇是世界上最先进的水下探测设备，它在海底进行了20小时的地毯式搜索后，重新浮上海面，给勘探船上12小时轮班、详细分析数据的搜寻队伍传回声纳图像。目前为止，虽然失事飞机的确切位置仍未确定，但在前一天，一位科学家指着显示屏上一些不寻常的东西问道：“这是什么？”，从那时起，船上的气氛变得紧张了起来。
Everyone knew the stakes. This wasn’t a scan of the Sargasso Sea or a study of salinity samples. The families of 228 passengers were restless for results. The search had already taken two years and cost more than $25 million. Another $12 million was committed to the Alucia this year, but French investigators had quietly decided that this year would be the last. If the Alucia did not find the plane, no one ever would.
每个船员都知道这次搜寻工作的重大意义，这绝不是像对马尾藻海域的扫描或是对海水样本盐度的研究一样简单。不幸罹难的228名乘客的家属焦急的等待着搜寻结果。对失事飞机的搜寻工作已经进行两年，耗资超过2500万美元。今年，“阿卢西亚号”获得了1200万美元的资金以进行搜寻工作，但法国的调查机构已经默认这将是最后一次对失事飞机残骸进行搜寻，因为如果连“阿卢西亚号”都找不到失事飞机的话，恐怕，结果真要石沉大海了。
As expedition leader, Michael Purcell was equal parts colleague and boss, with a raspy voice and a sonic laugh and a playful sarcasm, but he knew the Remus subs as well as anyone. Looking at the fuzzy mark on the monitor, he knew they had found something unnatural. It was too long and straight to be geologic. It was unlike anything else on the seafloor. On the other hand, if it wasn’t Flight 447, Purcell knew the disappointment would be palpable. As he prepared the photographic sub to return to the bottom for an 18-hour mission, Purcell whispered to another scientist, “I’m 95 percent sure that’s it, but man, if it’s not, it’s going to be a long two and a half months.” The sub went down at 9:45 p.m. At 2 a.m., Purcell was still awake in his cabin. He picked up his journal. “Tired but not sleepy,” he wrote. “May have found the plane today. Everyone is on edge.”
作为搜寻队伍的队长，迈克尔•普塞尔既是队员，又是整个队伍的主心骨，他声音粗犷，笑声爽朗，喜欢开玩笑，但他对里莫斯型潜艇的熟悉程度不亚于任何人。看着显示屏上模糊的标记，他意识到他们发现了一些并非是自然创造的东西。因为，用地质学的角度来看，这个东西过于长而直了，和海底的任何东西都不太一样。但这如果不是法航447航班的残骸，那这结果也太令人失望了。所以，他准备再次借助摄影潜艇，到海底进行18个小时的搜寻任务。普塞尔悄悄的告诉另外一位科学家，“我有95%的把握，但如果事与愿违，后边两个半月可就难熬了。”晚上9点45分，潜艇下潜，第二天凌晨2点，普塞尔仍然精神百倍的呆在他的船舱里，他打开了自己的日记本写道，“虽然疲倦但睡意全无，我们今天可能找到了飞机残骸，每个人都显得紧张不安。”
Four hours later, Purcell was up with the sun, and by late morning he was on deck with the crew, watching the Remus bob in the distance. A little after 1 p.m., they pulled the sub onboard and attached two thick cables to upload its data into the computers in the mission-control room. They drew the curtains around the room, so nonscientific crew members could not see in, and yanked the satellite uplink offline, so no one could leak the news. Then they crowded around the computer monitor as the first images of Flight 447 came onscreen: engines, landing gear and sections of fuselage, all unmistakably vivid on the ocean floor. But as they turned the satellite back on and began sending the first photos to air-crash investigators in France, the deeper implications of their discovery were just beginning to surface.
四个小时以后，普塞尔在清晨醒了过来，随后，他和船员们一起登上了甲板，看着远方的里莫斯潜艇在海面上漂浮。下午一点多，他们合力把潜艇拉上了船，然后用粗粗的光缆连上了潜艇和任务控制室，把所有的数据都传到了电脑上。他们拉下了屋里的窗帘，避免让不属于搜寻队伍的人看到屋子里的情况，他们还拔掉了卫星设备的天线，这样就没人能把消息泄露出去。然后，他们挤在电脑显示屏前，亲眼看到了法航447航班的图像一幅幅地出现：引擎，起落架，部分机身的残骸……它们都静静的躺在海底。之后，他们重新装上卫星天线，给法国负责调查此次事故的部门传去了第一批图片，但他们的发现的更深层意义才刚刚揭开。
The vanishing of Flight 447 was easy to bend into myth. No other passenger jet in modern history had disappeared so completely — without a Mayday call or a witness or even a trace on radar. The airplane itself, an Airbus A330, was considered to be among the safest. It was equipped with the automated fly-by-wire system, which is designed to reduce human error by letting computers control many aspects of the flight. And when, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean, Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky, it was tempting to deliver a tidy narrative about the hubris of building a self-flying airplane, Icarus falling from the sky. Or maybe Flight 447 was the Titanic, an uncrashable ship at the bottom of the sea.
法航447航班的失事被蒙上了一层神秘的面纱。因为，现代历史上还没有哪架客机像法航447航班一样消失如此彻底—-没有求救信号，没有目击者，甚至没有在雷达上留下任何痕迹。这架航班属于空客A330机型，它被认为是最安全的飞机之一。空客A330装备了全自动的飞行线控系统，这是为了通过电脑控制飞机的多项飞行操作，减少人为的失误。当年，法航447航班在凌晨消失于大西洋上空，这是对制造了这种自动控制飞行飞机的过分骄傲的回应，就像古希腊神话中的伊卡鲁斯从空中跌落。法航447航班也被比作“泰坦尼克”，那艘号称永不沉没却安睡在海底的巨型油轮。
But the mystery of Flight 447 demands real answers, and not only for families of the dead. Every airplane, like every car, is built from thousands of parts made by dozens of manufacturers, and many of those parts appear in multiple aircraft. Until we know which parts, if any, failed on Flight 447, it is impossible to know which other planes might be at risk. As Jean-Paul Troadec, the director the French Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis (B.E.A.), which is investigating the crash, told me: “If there is a technical problem on this aircraft, we have to know. But this is not just an Airbus question. This accident could apply to every aircraft.”
但法航447航班失事的缘由仍要有人给出一个答案，不仅是为了那些遇难者家属们。每架飞机，就像汽车那样，由成千上万个零件组成，而这成千上万个零件又由几十家零部件厂商所生产，这些零部件中的大部分会在多种飞机上使用。在我们知道法航447航班上到底是哪个零部件出现故障之前，是根本不可能知道其他的哪些飞机有着潜在的危险。正如负责调查此次空难的法国调查和分析局局长让•保罗•特洛阿德克所说，“如果这架飞机上有任何的技术故障的话，我们应当知晓。但这不仅仅是空中客车公司（以下简称为“空客公司”）的问题，这种事故有可能发生在任何一架飞机身上。”
Over the last two years, several theories have emerged to explain the crash, but there is still no clear consensus. Early reports suggested terrorism — two names on the passenger list seemed to match those of Islamic radicals — but this was quickly ruled out. Weeks after the crash, as thousands of pieces of the airframe were scooped from the ocean surface and collected in a French government warehouse in Toulouse, some aviation experts speculated that the plane may have come apart in the air; others, looking at the same evidence, insisted that it landed in one piece and then shattered. There are mysteries about the plane’s flight path as well. Just before Flight 447 went down, it charged into a massive cluster of roiling clouds, even as three other planes made wide turns to avoid the weather. Why Flight 447 flew into the clouds may help explain why it never flew out.
过去的两年间，关于这次空难的原因众说纷纭，但至今没有一个一致认可的结论。早期的报告提出了恐怖袭击一说—-因为乘客中有两人被认为是伊斯兰激进分子—-但这种可能性很快被排除了。空难发生后数周，分裂的数千块机身碎片被打捞并存放在了法国图卢兹的政府仓库，一些航空专家推测飞机可能在空中就发生了解体；其他一些专家在研究了这些碎片后却坚持认为飞机是整体坠毁再解体的。此外，飞机的航线也存在谜团。就在航班坠毁前不久，它飞进了一片巨大的云层中，而其他三架飞机为了避开可能出现的极端天气改变了航线。那么，航班飞入这片危险的云层中的原因有可能可以帮助解释它为什么再也没有飞出来。
In the hours before the flight took off from Rio de Janeiro, there were no signs of mechanical trouble. Pilots who flew the plane in from Paris just a few hours earlier had reported problems with a radio panel on the left side of the cockpit, but mechanics swapped that panel, and there was a duplicate on the other side. Flight 447 was, or seemed, perfectly safe to fly.
在里约热内卢起飞之前的几个小时之内，飞机没有任何机械故障的迹象。驾驶航班从巴黎飞来的飞行员只是在几小时之前报告了驾驶舱左侧无线电控制面板的小故障，但机械师很快就更换了控制面板。而且，在驾驶舱右侧还有一个备用的无线电控制面板。飞机似乎做好了一切飞行的准备，不会出任何问题。
A little after 6 p.m., the passengers filed onto the plane, the cabin door closed and Flight 447 pushed back from the gate. The flight has since been renumbered Flight 445 but otherwise remains the same. You barrel down the runway on an Airbus A330, then sweep up over the water, the lights of Rio shrinking to a yellow haze around the city’s black lagoon as you climb toward 35,000 feet, coursing north along the edge of the continent before turning east to Africa.
晚上6点多，乘客开始陆续登机，舱门关闭，飞机从登机门推到跑道上。这趟航班的航班号再事故后改成了445号，其他方面保持不变。飞机在跑道上加速，在到达水面前陡然上升，飞机上升到了35000英尺的高度，里约热内卢城内泻湖的周围的灯光渐渐变成了模糊的黄色，飞机沿着南美大陆的边缘向北飞行，然后转向东边，飞往非洲。
All flights over the ocean cross certain checkpoints, and the most critical one for Flight 447 was Tasil Point. Almost halfway between South America and Africa, it serves as a switching station for air traffic control. On one side of Tasil, pilots report to Brazil; on the other, they belong to Senegal. In theory, it’s a place where air traffic controllers on both sides are watching; but in practice, it’s often a dark spot on radar, too far away from either continent to see. It’s also a place where high-frequency radios often cannot be heard, and it falls on top of the meteorological equator, where the winds of the hemispheres collide. Some days they die, and the stillness can be transfixing — sailors call the region the doldrums. But other times, the winds whip together into a black anvil storm that blooms through the depths of the troposphere, with a luminous violet glow gathering around ship masts and airplane wings — sailors call this St. Elmo’s Fire.
所有飞机在穿过海洋时都要经过一些特定的检查点，而对于法航447航班来说，塔希尔检查点无疑是最重要的一个。它的位置几乎恰好处于南美洲和非洲的中间，起着空中交通管制的中转站的作用。在其一侧，飞行员向巴西方面报告航班情况；在其另外一侧，飞行员则改向塞内加尔方面报告。理论上来讲，处于塔希尔检查点的两方空中交通管制部门都有责任监督此区域飞机飞行的情况。但实际上，因为这个区域和美洲大陆和非洲大陆都相隔太远，所以它在雷达上是一个盲区。这个地区还经常接收不到高频率的无线电波，这个地区还处在气象赤道的顶部，恰好是南北半球的信风交汇之处。有时这个地区风平浪静–水手们管这叫做无风带。但其他时候，从对流层深处汇集的狂风形成了黑风暴雨，携着明亮的紫色光芒裹在船只的桅杆和飞机的机翼上–水手们把它叫做“圣艾摩尔之火”。
As Flight 447 began its journey toward Tasil Point, the skies seemed reassuringly clear. In the cockpit, the pilots chattered with Brazilian air traffic control, calling out altitude and radio frequencies. Sometime around midnight, the waxing moon, which had been gleaming through the port-side windows, dropped below the horizon, and Flight 447 was alone in the sky.
法航447航班飞向塔希尔检查点时，天空似乎非常晴朗。在驾驶舱内，飞行员在和巴西方面的空中交通管制部门交谈，报告航班高度和无线电频率。午夜时分，明亮的月光从机身左舷窗户照了进来，满月慢慢落到了地平线下，天空上只有航班在飞行。
At 1:35, the pilots called Brazil to read off their altitude and flight plan. Three seconds later, controllers called back to ask when they would reach Tasil Point. Seven seconds passed, and Brazil called again. Another six seconds, and again. Flight 447 was gone.
凌晨1点35，飞行员向巴西方面报告了飞行高度和航向。三秒钟后，控制人员作出了回应，他们询问航班是否到达了塔希尔检查点，七秒钟后重复了一遍，过了六秒钟又重复了一遍。但，法航447航班，如同幽灵一般，消失了。
To a pilot, the distant nowhere of Tasil Point is a treacherous cone of radio silence, but to an oceanographer like Purcell, there are few better places to be. The bottom of the ocean, after all, is not just a great expanse of sand; it is covered with hills and steppes and valleys, each with its own unfathomable intricacies, and among these the underwater mountains of the midocean ridge are among the most mysterious places on earth.
对于飞行员来说，在遥远的塔希尔检查点附近保持无线电静默是一种非常危险的行为；但对于像普塞尔这样的海洋学家来说，这种地方简直是求之不得。这个地区的海底并未全被沙子覆盖，而是分布着山丘，平原，峡谷等多种地形，每种地形都是深不可测的复杂，其中，水下山脉和中央海脊是地球上最为神秘的地方之一。
The mountains date to the beginning of the planet as we know it today. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, as the supercontinent Pangaea broke into the seven continents, the stretching landmass tore fissures in the crust of the world, gaping canyons that spread apart and filled with the modern oceans. But under the water, volcanoes continued to erupt, sending up magma and forming mountains of basalt. Today, that mountain range still zigzags down the Atlantic and across the South Pacific and through the lower Indian Ocean, wrapping the globe like a crudely stitched soccer ball. Together they make the largest mountain range on the planet, 50,000 miles long and almost entirely unexplored, as tall as the Andes but two miles deep.
这些山脉在我们如今知道的地球形成的时候就存在了。两亿五千万年前，当泛古陆分裂成七块大陆的时候，陆地板块的延伸撕裂了地球地壳的裂隙，形成了分开的峡谷，这些峡谷被海水所填满。但是在水下，火山依旧喷发，滚滚岩浆形成了玄武岩的山脉。时至今日，那些山脉在大西洋海底曲折蜿蜒，又穿过了南太平洋，延伸到了更低的印度洋，这些山脉将地球包裹了起来，就像缝了一个破破烂烂的足球。它们组成了这个星球上最长的山脉，足足有50000英里，几乎没有人探索过它们，它们的高度堪比安第斯山脉，耸立在水下两英里的地方。
Until the last few decades, the tools to explore these underwater mountains did not exist. Early submarines could go deep enough, but the terrain was impossibly forbidding. Even today, the machinery for a journey to the midocean ridge is prohibitively expensive for most teams. In the oceanography world, it is common to spend more than $1 million on an expedition, but a trip to the mountains at Tasil Point can easily cost 10 times as much and require submarines so advanced that only a handful of scientists know how to use them.
直到几十年前，还没有工具和技术能支持探索那些水下山脉。早期的潜艇虽然可以下潜到足够深的地方，但地形限制了潜艇的进一步探索。就算是今天，那些可以探索中央海脊的机器昂贵的费用让大多数科考队伍望而却步。但在海洋学家的圈子里，一次科考探险活动动辄花费超过百万美元是一件很正常的事情。但对塔希尔检查点附近海下山脉的探索的花费要多上十倍，还需要只有很少科学家懂得如何操作的先进的探测潜艇的帮助。
In the weeks after Flight 447 went down, as the French and Brazilian navies trolled the ocean near Tasil Point, they found more than 3,000 pieces of debris scattered across the surface, including fragments of the wings, most of the tail fin and the seats of cabin crew. They also found the bodies of 50 passengers, some still clothed and some still wearing jewelry. But as they transported the bodies to a morgue in Brazil and assembled the wreckage at a warehouse in Toulouse, the glimmering surface of the ocean remained as impenetrable as a shield of diamonds. When French investigators began calling oceanographers and deep-sea adventurers in a desperate effort to reach the bottom, the name of one organization kept coming up.
在法航447航班坠机后的一周，法国和巴西海军就在塔希尔检查点进行了详细的搜寻，他们发现了散落在海面上超过3000块的机身残骸，其中有机翼的碎片，大部分的机尾残骸，还有一些乘务人员的座椅。除此之外，他们还找到了50具遇难者的遗体，一些遇难者的身上仍穿着衣服戴着珠宝。随后，遇难者的遗体被送往巴西的停尸房，飞机残骸则被送到了法国在图卢兹的政府仓库，而大海粼粼的水面却仍像钻石所做的盾牌一般牢不可破，无法继续向下搜寻。最后，法国调查人员开始寻求海洋学家的帮助，为深海探测进行着艰苦的努力时，一个组织的名字浮现了出来。
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a sprawling complex of shingled houses, brick laboratories and cavernous warehouses spread across two campuses in southern Cape Cod. In the 1970s, Woods Hole scientists discovered hydrothermal vents brimming with life at the bottom of the Pacific. In the 1980s, they discovered the Titanic under more than 12,000 feet of water. In the 1990s, their submarine laboratory pushed boundaries in underwater technology, building the first Remus in ’95, then adding cameras and new sensors and smarter computers, culminating in the Remus 6000. No other organization had more experience with the Remus than the scientists like Purcell who built it; and the director of special projects at Woods Hole, David Gallo, is an expert in the underwater mountains. In fact, he wrote his dissertation on the midocean ridge. When I asked Michel Guerard, a vice president at Airbus, how Woods Hole was selected to lead the search, he shrugged and said, “Because no one else in the world can do it.”
伍兹•霍尔海洋研究所位于美国马萨诸塞州科德角南部，其木质屋顶的研究室，砖结构的实验室和洞穴似的仓库分布在这个地区的两个大学校园中。上世纪70年代，他们发现了太平洋深海热液口的生命现象。80年代，他们在超过12000英尺深的水下发现了泰坦尼克号的残骸。90年代，他们的潜艇研究室在水下科技的研究方面又取得了更大的成就，他们在1995年建造了第一艘里莫斯潜艇，后来又在潜艇上添加了摄影机，新的感应器以及更先进的智能电脑，最终的里莫斯6000型潜艇可谓是达到了世界上最先进的水平。没有其他的海洋研究组织的科学家像潜艇的制造者普塞尔一样，对里莫斯潜艇了解的更多了。还有伍兹•霍尔海洋研究所的特别项目部主任，大卫•加洛，在研究水下山脉方面是专家。实际上，他的博士论文就是关于中央山脊的研究。所以，当我向空客公司副总裁迈克尔•格拉德提出关于为什么他们委托伍兹•霍尔海洋研究所进行搜寻活动时，他耸了耸肩说道：“因为，在这个世界上，除了他们，没有别人能接这个任务了。”
To find one of the most advanced airplanes in the sky, they would have to travel to one of the most primitive places on earth — and seek out one of the most archaic devices in modern aviation, a relic that has barely changed in the last half-century of flight: the black box.
为了搜寻这架世界上最先进的飞机的残骸，他们得去这个几乎是地球上最原始的地方进行探险，去寻找现代航空史上最古老的装置，一个在过去半个世纪几乎对航空飞行没有有任何改变的老古董：黑匣子。
“It’s ridiculous,” Peter Goelz says. “There is absolutely no reason not to have live-streaming data.” As managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board in the late 1990s, Goelz saw his share of accidents, but the disappearance of Flight 447 got under his skin. The fact that in an era of wireless technology, when passengers on some jets can surf the Internet, the most valuable information about a flight is still stored on the very airplane that has, by definition, crashed before the information is needed, did not sit well with Goelz.
“这事儿真挺荒唐的，”彼得•戈尔兹说道，“如果有实时的流媒体数据，那我们为什么不拿来用呢。”在20世纪90年代末期担任美国国家运输安全事务委员会执行主任的戈尔兹在其任内也经历过不少事故，但法航447航班的失事却让他痛彻心扉。在这个无线网络科技发达的时代，某些航班上的乘客都已经可以上网，而飞机飞行时最重要的信息仍存储在飞机上，而飞机却在这些信息被搜集之前就坠毁了，这和戈尔兹的想法大相径庭。
“I’ve had arguments with pilots over this,” he told me. “They don’t want anyone monitoring their performance. But every 7-Eleven clerk in America has a bank of cameras on him. Why can’t pilots?”
“我和很多飞行员也谈到过这个问题，”他告诉我，“他们不情愿有人监视他们的一举一动，但是，7-11便利店的店员头上有一堆的摄像头，他们受得了，飞行员们怎么就受不了了？”
The technology to stream data from planes does have some limitations. To stream all the data from every plane might well require more satellite bandwidth than the total amount in orbit. But some companies have found a solution: instead of streaming all data, they equip planes with a system that streams on demand. In case of trouble, a pilot pushes a button to begin sending down data, and in some conditions, like the failure of autopilot, the data streams automatically. Airlines could also simply stream the data from select flights, like those crossing rough terrain — the Himalayas, for example, or the midocean ridge. When I mentioned that idea to Alain Bassil, the chief operating officer of Air France, he nodded and said, “That would be a good solution.” Then he added, “Hopefully soon.”
从飞机上传送数据流的技术确实有一些限制。如果想传送每架航班的所有数据，就需要比现有轨道上总数更大的卫星带宽。一些航空公司想出了一种解决方案：不传送所有的实时数据，而是在飞机上装上一种系统，这种系统可根据需要传送数据。遇到问题时，飞行员按下按钮就可以开始发送数据，在某些情况下，比如自动驾驶系统出故障时，飞机会自动传输数据。航空公司也会挑选一些航班，让它们在穿过像喜马拉雅山脉或者中央海脊这种复杂地形时传输数据。我把这个想法告诉了阿兰•巴希尔，法航的首席运营官，他点点头说道：“这种方法是很可行的”，但他又加了一句，“希望尽快能投入使用。”
In late April, after analyzing pictures from the Alucia, French investigators returned to Tasil Point and deployed a recovery submarine to a spot that appeared to hold one of the black boxes. Sure enough, the box was there — but its data was gone. At some point, the cylinder that holds the data apparently broke off. On May 1, the cylinder was found on the ocean floor nearby; and on May 3 the other black box’s cylinder, which contains the cockpit voice recording, was also located and recovered. In the days ahead, both cylinders will be delivered to the basement of the B.E.A. in Paris, where investigators may still be able to decipher them, even after two years underwater.
今年的4月底，在仔细分析了从阿卢西亚号上传送回来的照片以后，法国的调查部门重新回到了塔希尔检查点，并将潜艇部署在了失事客机的一个黑匣子被打捞上来的地点。可以肯定的是，黑匣子是此地区水下某处被打捞的，但黑匣子的数据却被破坏了，保存数据的圆柱形物体断裂了。5月1日，黑匣子在海底附近被发现；5月3日，另一个装有黑匣子的圆筒被定位并打捞，这个黑匣子内有驾驶舱内声音的录音。几日后，两个黑匣子被送往巴黎的法国调查和分析局的地下室里进行研究，即使在水下沉睡了两年之久，黑匣子也许仍可以被调查人员所破译。
But even without the black-box data, several things are clear. From the meteorological charts near Tasil Point, the safety record of certain Airbus parts, the flight protocols of Air France and the air traffic control logs, it is possible to piece together some events from the fall of Flight 447 that answer some pivotal questions and raise others.
但即使没有黑匣子的信息，一些事实真相已经水落石出。根据塔希尔检查点的气象分析图、空客公司的相关安全记录、法国航空公司（以下简称“法航”）的飞行协议以及空中交通管制的日志记录，将这些零散的资料拼凑起来，解答法航447航班失事的一些关键问题并提出一些新的疑点是有可能的。
In the last four minutes before the crash, the airplane sent a series of 24 automatic fault messages to a maintenance center in France. Among these, the first to jump out at experts involved a part called the pitot probe. Pitots (pronounced PEE-toes) are small cylinders that sit outside the body of the plane to calculate airspeed. The cost of a pitot probe is not high — about $3,500 each for the model on Flight 447, which disappears in the $200 million cost of a plane — but their importance would be hard to overstate. Without them, a plane’s flight computer has no way to determine speed, and the automatic pilot shuts down. That means that if any of the pitot probes, sticking out into the wind, happen to get clogged with dirt or ice, the plane will suddenly revert to manual control, forcing pilots to take the stick of a half-million-pound aircraft in whatever conditions disrupted the pitot in the first place.
在坠机前的4分钟，飞机向法国的控制中心自动发送了24条故障信息。其中，首先被专家所注意到的是关于皮托管探针的信息。皮托管是一种装在客机机身外部的小型仪器，用来测定风速。皮托管的造价并不高，装在法航447航班上的皮托管大约3500美元一个，这跟价值两亿美元一架的飞机相比简直微不足道，但其重要性却一点儿也不容忽视。没有了皮托管，飞机的导航电脑就无法测定风速，自动驾驶系统就会被关闭。这就意味着，任意一个飞机上伸到空中的皮托管探针如果被灰尘或冰晶蒙住，飞机就有可能突然切换到手动控制的状态，这样，无论飞行员当初是因为什么原因将飞机变为了自动驾驶状态，这都会强迫飞行员接手控制这个重达50万磅（226吨）的庞然大物。
In theory, this shouldn’t cause a crash. The probes can be compared to a speedometer in a car: steady on the gas, and you’ll be fine. Pilots are trained to respond to pitot failure by maintaining pitch and thrust until the probes resume working. Most of the time, they do.
从理论上来说，皮托管失灵并不会直接导致飞机失事。这种探针可以比作汽车上的速度表：只要汽油充足，肯定不会有事。飞行员在接受专业训练时也学过如何应对皮托管故障：只要保持飞行角度和推力知道探针恢复工作即可。在绝大部分情况下，他们是这么做的。
But during the period of manual control, the margin of error is thin. For a passenger jet like the A330, the ideal cruising speed is about 560 miles per hour. If you go much faster, the center of lift moves back on the wing, pushing the nose down and increasing velocity, until you soon approach the speed of sound. At that point, shockwaves develop on the wings, interrupting the flow of air and reducing lift. The nose of the plane then gets forced into a dive that the pilot may not be able to pull out of. Then again, if you go too slow, the airplane stalls and falls. A plane must maintain a minimum speed to generate lift, and the higher it travels, the faster it must go. At 35,000 feet, the gap between too fast and too slow narrows ever closer. Pilots call it coffin corner.
但在手动控制期间，几乎没有可以犯错的余地。一架空客A330客机理想的飞行速度是560英里/小时（约合900公里/小时）。如果飞机飞的太快的话，升力的重心就会从机翼转移到前半部机身上，飞机就会下降，速度会接近音速。随后，机翼会产生震动波，扰乱气流，减少飞机的升力。飞机会以一种近乎垂直的方式下降，飞行员可能就无法将飞机再拉起。而如果飞机飞的太慢的话，发动机就会熄火，飞机随之下坠。所以，飞机必须保持一个最低速度以产生升力，然后爬升，之后以更快的速度飞行。在35000英尺的高空，这种飞行速度过快和过慢之间的安全飞行速度范围，被飞行员们称作“棺材角”。
Looking over the recent history of pitot failure can be unnerving. Peter Goelz, the former N.T.S.B. director, recalled several episodes during his tenure, but one in particular stood out: the crash of Birgenair Flight 301 in February 1996. “We had a Boeing 757 that had been on the ground in the Dominican Republic for a month,” he said. The investigation concluded that “during that time, one of the pitot probes got an insect nest built in it. Well, the crew took off and flew the plane right into the ocean.” All 189 people onboard died.
回顾一些近代因为皮托管失灵而导致的事故很让人心惊。彼得•戈尔兹，前美国国家运输安全事务委员会常务主任，回忆起了他任期内的几次事故，有一次事故显得与众不同：1996年2月的Birgenair301航班的失事。“我们有一架波音757飞机停在多米尼加共和国长达一个月，”他说道。调查结果是：那一个月期间，有昆虫在某个皮托管内织网，但飞行员照常起飞，飞机最终坠毁在海里，机上189人全部遇难。
The pitot probes on Flight 447 were even more vulnerable than most in conditions like those at Tasil Point. They were produced by a French company, Thales, and the model was known as AA. In the years leading up to the crash of Flight 447, the Thales AA was problematic in places where the meteorological conditions do funny things with water. At high altitude and low temperatures, water sometimes doesn’t freeze. Instead, it hovers, but as soon as something solid — like a pitot tube — flies through it, the water flash-freezes to form ice. Until heaters can melt the ice, the pitot probes are out.
法航447航班在穿过塔希尔检查点时，机上的皮托管比其他部件更加脆弱。这些皮托管由法国的泰勒斯公司生产，型号为AA。在法航447航班失事前的几年里，泰勒斯AA皮托管一直存在其附着的水在一定气象条件下状态变化的问题。在极高的高度和低温的环境下，水不一定就结冰，而是暂时静止，一旦有像皮托管一样坚固的东西掠过，水就会附着在其表面，即刻结冰。如果有热源将冰融化，皮托管也随之熔解。
This could happen to any kind of pitot probe, but by the summer of 2009, the problem of icing on the Thales AA was known to be especially common. Why the probes were still in use is a contentious question, but here is what we know for sure: Between 2003 and 2008, there were at least 17 cases in which the Thales AA had problems on the Airbus A330 and its sister plane, the A340. In September 2007, Airbus issued a “service bulletin” suggesting that airlines replace the AA pitots with a newer model, the BA, which was said to work better in ice.
这种情况有可能发生在所有种类的皮托管上。但到了2009年的夏天，泰勒斯AA皮托管结冰的问题就已经是人尽皆知。为什么这类皮托管仍然在使用的问题颇有争议，有一些事实我们可以肯定：从2003年到2008年，空客A330和其同系列的空客A340客机发生过至少17起因为泰勒斯AA皮托管产生故障而导致的事故。2007年9月，空客公司宣布，一个“技术服务公告”建议将所有的AA皮托管更换成新型的BA型皮托管，BA型皮托管被认为能更好的应对结冰的问题。
In response, Air France’s official policy was to replace the AA pitots on its A330 planes “only when a failure occurred.” In August 2008, executives at Air France asked Airbus for proof that the BA pitots worked better in ice, and faced with the question, Airbus conceded that it did not have proof. So it removed the claim from the service bulletin. Another five months passed.
但法航的官方政策则是”只有在A330客机的皮托管确实出故障了以后“才更换AA型皮托管。2008年8月，法航的高管要求空客公司拿出BA型皮托管能更好的应对结冰问题的证据，空客公司后来承认其并无证据。所以，这个建议后来从技术服务公告上撤下，这时，五个月已经过去了。
During that time, another airline, Air Caraïbes, experienced two close calls with the Thales AA on its Airbus A330s. The company’s chief executive immediately ordered the part scrapped from the fleet and alerted European regulators, who then began asking questions. In their conversations with Airbus, regulators learned of the 17 cases of icing, and they also discovered, looking at those cases, that the failures seemed to be happening more often (9 of the 17 occured in 2008). None of the failures seemed to signal an immediate danger, so the Thales AA was not removed from service. Regulators simply asked Airbus to watch the problem and report back in a year.
在此期间，加勒比航空公司的两架飞机由于泰勒斯AA皮托管的问题险些失事。该公司的首席执行官立刻命令公司中所有飞机的此部件报废并更换，并对欧洲的监管机构提出了警示，欧洲的监管机构马上开始调查此事。在与空客公司进行会谈的期间，监管人员得知了17起由皮托管故障引发的事故，还发现类似故障出现的更加频繁（17起事故中，9起发生在2008年）。这些故障似乎并非是危险的直接信号，所以泰勒斯AA皮托管并没有从飞机上拆除。监管人员仅仅是要求空客公司注意此类问题，来年再进行报告。
It wasn’t until April 2009 that Airbus delivered test results to Air France showing that the BA really did work better in ice. By then, 19 months had passed since the service bulletin suggesting the same thing, but now Air France made the change. At the end of April, the airline ordered replacement BA probes for its A330s, and on May 26, the first batch of probes arrived. Five days later, when Flight 447 took off in Rio, the probes were still in an Air France warehouse, and none of them had been installed. All three pitots on Flight 447 were the Thales AA.
直到2009年4月，空客公司才向法航提交了测试报告，报告证明泰勒斯BA皮托管确实能更好的应对结冰问题。但这距技术服务公告中所提出的同样建议已过去了19个月，但法航再次改变了政策。4月底，法航要求为所有空客A330飞机换上泰勒斯BA皮托管；5月26日，第一批皮托管到货；但五天之后，法航447航班从里约热内卢起飞时，新的皮托管仍然在法航的仓库里躺着，更谈不上为飞机更换皮托管，机上的三个皮托管仍是泰勒斯AA皮托管。
The headquarters of Air France is a huge white box that squats near the runways at Charles de Gaulle Airport. One day this spring, I visited the building to meet with the company’s chief operating officer, Alain Bassil, in his office overlooking the tarmac. Bassil is a trim man in his mid-50s, with a tight smile and a mustache so neat that it seems penciled in.
法航总部位于戴高乐机场跑道附近的一座巨大的白色建筑物内。今年春季的某天，我参观了这座大楼，在能俯瞰停机坪的办公室内和法航的首席运营官阿兰•巴希尔进行了会谈。巴希尔身材匀称，50多岁，脸上挂着谨慎的微笑，留着一撇修剪的笔直的小胡子。
Since the disappearance of Flight 447, some of the passengers’ families have come to regard Bassil and the other executives at Air France and Airbus as a cast of corporate villains. In Brazil, for example, I met with Maarten Van Sluys, a soft-spoken man in his late 40s who lost his sister, Adriana, on the flight and now leads the official association of Brazilian families. “There is a cover-up,” Van Sluys told me. “There is no doubt about it.” His claim was that French investigators located the wreckage long ago, already knew the cause of the crash and were keeping it secret to protect Air France and Airbus. “They don’t want to disclose problems with the fly-by-wire system,” he said.
在法航447航班失事以后，很多遇难者家属都将巴希尔及法航及空客公司的高管看做沆瀣一气的恶棍。在巴西，我曾采访过一个叫马尔滕•范•斯路易斯的人，他说话轻声轻语，不到50岁，现在领导着巴西官方的家庭联合会，她的姐姐阿德丽娜在空难中不幸遇难。“毫无疑问，其中必有黑幕！”他告诉我。他声称法国调查机构早就定位了飞机失事残骸的位置，也明确了客机失事的原因，而迟迟不肯公布的秘密就是为了保护法航和空客两家大公司的声誉。“他们不想让飞行线控系统的问题暴露出来，”他说。
This may sound extreme — and there is no evidence of a cover-up — but among the families of Flight 447, there is a range of opinion on the French investigation, and many of them express a sense of frustration. In Paris, I spoke with Gwenola Roger, whose boyfriend, Nicolas Toulliou, proposed to her a week before the crash on a moonlit walk by the Louvre. Sitting quietly in a friend’s apartment, Roger cut a vaguely regal figure as she spoke of her love for Nicolas and of her loss — then she lowered her voice and said: “They still haven’t said what they know. One day we will learn the truth.”
这听上去可能有些过分，也没有任何证据表明有所谓黑幕存在，但遇难者家属中的确议论纷纷，很多人都表现出了相当失望的情绪。在巴黎，我采访了一个叫做格温罗娅•罗格的女士，他的男友，尼古拉•图里洛，遇难前一周在月光照耀下的卢浮宫前向她求婚。在一个朋友的公寓里，格温罗娅诉说着她对男友的爱和男友不幸离世的痛苦，她的声音变得低沉：“总有一天，我们会知道真相，那些他们知道但他们不肯说的东西。”
Over the last two years, the B.E.A. has in fact issued two bound reports, which include more than 200 pages of extensive data on the crash. From the first page, each report makes clear that “the investigation is not conducted in such a way as to apportion blame.” This is the formal mandate of the agency, which is expected to rise above the contentious aftermath of tragedy and deliver just the facts. All of which sounds very reasonable, until you are a grief-stricken family member, two years after the crash, holding the only official accident reports, which seem to announce on Page 1 that any wrongdoing will be ignored. “If you don’t want to find out who was at fault,” Van Sluys asked, “why do the investigation?”
在过去的两年间，法国调查和分析局曾接连发布了两份报告，报告超过两百页，内容涵盖了很多关于此次事故的数据。报告的第一页就明确了“这个调查并非是为了追究责任”。这次报告的发布得到了调查机构的批准，也预计在还原悲剧背后真相的同时会产生很有争议的后果。这些听起来合情合理，但如果你是一位遇难者的家属，沉浸在悲痛中的你在两年之后得到了这份官方的调查报告，这份报告从第一页起就把所有的错误和责任给忽略了。“如果不是为了追究那些该为这些错误负责的人，”范•斯路易斯问道，“那要调查有什么用？”
In private, some B.E.A. investigators agree that they have found things that disturb them. After the plane’s final communication, for example, it took nearly 11 hours for a search team to be sent to Tasil Point. For the first hour, air traffic controllers generated a “virtual flight” on their computers, as is common practice, passing the plane along its intended route. For the next two hours, controllers checked periodically to see if anyone had seen the plane, and when a controller in Brazil asked a controller in Senegal if the plane had reached Cape Verde, the controller in Senegal said that Cape Verde hadn’t talked to them but not to worry; so the controller in Brazil didn’t. By the time Air France alerted a satellite search-and-rescue, 4 hours and 20 minutes had passed, and then it was another two hours before anyone notified the B.E.A. A search team lifted off in Dakar 10 hours after the last radio contact and for the next 45 minutes flew toward Cape Verde, where they assumed the plane had gone down.
法国调查和分析局的一些调查人员在私下承认，他们曾被一些事情所烦扰。比如说，在飞机最后一次与控制中心联系以后，救援队伍花了足足11个小时才抵达塔希尔检查点进行搜救工作。在飞机失去联系以后的第一个小时，空中交通管制人员在电脑上像惯例一样按照飞机既定路线进行了“模拟飞行”；之后的两个小时，控制人员定时检查看是否有人联系到了航班，当巴西方面向塞内加尔方面询问飞机是否抵达佛得角，得到的回复是佛得角方面并未同塞内加尔方面联系，但应该一切都好，不用担心，所以巴西方面也就没有引起足够的重视；当法航发出卫星搜救警示的时候，已经过去了4小时20分钟；又过了两个小时才通知法国调查和分析局；距飞机最后一次无线电联系后10个小时，一支搜救队伍才从达喀尔出发，45分钟后抵达佛得角，那里是假定的飞机失事地点。
When I asked the director of the B.E.A., Jean-Paul Troadec, if this was a suitable response time, he practically jumped from his seat and cried: “No! It’s not! The alert should have been much more quick!” Yet the reports from Troadec’s office draw no such conclusion. When I asked another B.E.A. investigator, Olivier Ferrante, whether it is difficult to write the reports without pointing out mistakes, he acknowledged that it is a matter of craft. “This requires discipline in report writing,” he said. “For example, we don’t use the word ‘fault.’ We prefer to use the word ‘error,’ which has more proactive connotations.”
当我询问法国调查和分析局局长，让•保罗•特洛阿德克，关于这种救援反应的时间是否合乎情理的时候，他咆哮着从椅子上跳了起来：“不可能！绝对不是！发出警报本应该快的多！”但后来其办公室出局的调查报告却没有这个结论。我询问另外一位法国调查与分析局的调查人员，奥利维•费兰特，出具一份不指明错误和责任的调查报告的难度是否很大。他承认调查报告是可操作的。”报告的写作是需要规范的“他说，“比如，我们不使用‘过错’而倾向于用‘过失’，这个词相对来说，正面意义多一点儿。”
Air-crash investigators at the N.T.S.B. say the American approach is very different. Jim Hall, a former N.T.S.B. chairman, told me that American investigators in the same position would have no trouble acknowledging if a search team took too long or if a plane was flying with faulty parts. “That would not be a problem at the N.T.S.B.,” he said. “If the board found that a part needed to be recalled, they would make that recommendation.” Hall explained that the difference in France is largely systemic: every crash is supposed to involve two parallel investigations, one by the B.E.A. to compile technical data and the other by a judge to consider liability. But when the judicial inquiry takes 22 months to begin, as it did for Flight 447, the half-scope of the B.E.A.’s work stands alone and incomplete. Hall told me that the French approach is “a mistake.” Goelz was less diplomatic. “There’s always been a sniff of politics at the B.E.A.,” he said, recalling the crash of Air France 4590, which erupted in flames just after takeoff at Charles de Gaulle in 2000. After a four-year probe, B.E.A. investigators decided that the crash was not caused by anything on the French plane but by a thin strip of metal that fell on the tarmac from a Continental flight minutes earlier. In Goelz’s opinion, “there was never any question that somebody else was going to be pointed out as the blame; and Continental became it.”
但美国国家运输安全委员会的事故调查人员却说美国方面的调查结果大相径庭。美国国家运输安全委员会前主任吉姆•哈尔，告诉我美国方面的调查人员在同样的情况下就会毫无疑问的指出搜救队伍花了太久才赶到现场或者飞机在某些部件故障的情况下飞行。“这在美国国家运输安全委员会内不算什么问题，”他说道，“如果委员会发现了飞机的某些部件需要召回，他们就会发出相应的通知。”哈尔解释说，美国和法国调查部门最大的不同在于体制：每起事故都应该由两个独立的调查机构进行调查，法国调查与分析局负责整理技术数据，其他某个调查机构负责评判并考虑责任问题。但法航447航班空难的司法调查拖了22个月才开始，法国调查与分析局所负责的一半工作仍是孤立无援，拖拖拉拉。哈尔说法国方面的做法是“一个错误”。而戈尔兹说的就更直截了当：“法国调查和分析局内部总带着政治的味道。”，回想起2000年，法航4590航班刚刚从戴高乐机场起飞就失火，最后坠毁。经过4年的调查以后，法国调查与分析局给出的调查结果是客机的坠毁并非跟客机本身有任何的关系，而是因为几分钟前从一架美国大陆航空公司的航班上掉落在停机坪上的一个金属条切割了飞机的轮胎，从而导致了空难的发生。在戈尔兹看来，“在这件事情上，其实应该有其他人为此事负责，而美国大陆航空公司却成了替罪羊。”
The French state is not just investigating Air France and Airbus but is also a prime investor in them. In fact, the French government, which nationalized Air France in 1945, currently owns nearly 16 percent of Air France-KLM, a stake worth about $830 million, and controls 3 of the 15 seats on the company’s board. The government also owns about 15 percent of the parent company for Airbus, which is worth another $3.8 billion. Of course, other countries also have a financial stake in their national airlines, and there is no evidence that the B.E.A. investigation has been compromised. But for a government to investigate a company it owns is the very definition of conflicted interest. It also turns out that the underwater search this spring was entirely financed by Air France and Airbus — and as one Air France executive told me, directly “by cash.” (Air France made a point of saying that it did not control the investigation and gave no directive to the search team, and this is confirmed by people at Woods Hole.) One day during the search, I asked Troadec what would happen if the Woods Hole team asked for additional funds for something the companies were unwilling to provide. Troadec sighed. “Any problem like that,” he assured me, “should be resolved in good faith.” When I asked Goelz if the N.T.S.B. would allow the target of an investigation to control the purse strings in the same way, he laughed. “No, no, no,” he said. “We would charge parties for underwater retrieval, but we would control the money.”
法国政府虽然负责调查法航和空客公司，但同时也是这两家公司的主要投资者。实际上，在1945年，法航归政府所有，如今，法国政府拥有着法航-荷航集团16%的股份，股权价值约为8.3亿美元，在集团董事会的15个席位中占有3席。法国政府还用用空客公司母公司15%的股份，价值38亿美元。当然，每个国家政府都会在自己的国有航空公司占有一定股份，现在也没有任何证据表明法国调查与分析局在调查空难时做任何手脚。但一个政府调查自己下属的公司确实关系到某种利益冲突。结果就是，今年春天进行的水下搜寻工作是完全由法航和空客公司资助的，某位法航高管告诉我，直接“现金支援”（法航想通过这种方式表明他们并没有控制调查机构，也没有直接向搜寻队伍提出要求，这点得到了伍兹•霍尔海洋研究所的证实）。在搜寻工作进行当中的某天，我问特洛阿德克，如果有公司向伍兹•霍尔海洋研究所的搜寻队伍追加一大笔资金，然后想其索要某些公司不想公之于众的东西，他们怎么办？特洛阿德克叹了口气，说，“类似的问题”，他用一种保证的口气说道，“都要以一种真诚的精神来解决。”然而，我在问戈尔兹，美国国家运输安全委员会允许这种同样的利益关系控制调查机构的时候，他笑着说，“不，不会，双方都会对水下搜寻工作负责，但只有我们控制资金。”
In the absence of a more critical public examination, Air France has conducted its own safety review and implemented its own improvements, though it has not explained what it has found or what it is changing or why. This is not to say that the airline hasn’t looked inward. In December 2009, five months after the crash, Air France commissioned an internal review of nearly all aspects of its operations. But when I asked Bassil and two other executives — Etienne Lichtenberger, the director of flight safety, and Bertrand Lebel, an executive vice president—– to explain what lessons Air France drew from the accident, they declined to say.
在缺少更加重要的公开检测的情况下，尽管法航没有解释发现了什么问题，也没有解释改进的方面和原因，但法航确实已经开始实施安全自检并逐步改进。这也表明，法航并不是没有内省自己的问题。2009年12月，事故发生五个月后，法航启动了内部调查，调查几乎涉及其运营部门的所有方面。除了巴希尔以外，我还采访了法航其他两位高管：法航飞行安全中心主任埃特尼•里希滕伯格和伯特兰•勒贝尔，法航执行副总裁。当我问及法航从这次事故中得到的教训是什么时，他们都拒绝回答该问题。
“The problem,” Bassil said, “is that we still don’t know what happened.”
“问题在于，”巴希尔说，“我们仍然不清楚到底发生了什么。”
“We do know certain facts,” I offered.
“一些既定事实是很清楚的。”我说。
“There are very few facts,” Lebel said.
“那些事实非常少，”勒贝尔说。
“There are two interim reports full of facts,” I said.
“有200页的中期调查报告，全是事实。”我又说道。
“We are not able to draw any conclusions,” Lebel said.
“但我们仍无法做出任何结论。”勒贝尔说。
“You haven’t drawn any conclusions?” I asked.
“难道你们没有得出任何结论？”我问。
“We are drawing conclusions,” he said, “and they will be explained.”
“我们已经有了一些结论，但仍需进一步解释。”勒贝尔回答。
Bassil leaned forward. “We are not in a position to say anything else.”
巴希尔身体向前倾，说道：“在我们这个位置上，不是什么话都能说的。”
“Can you explain why you’re not in a position to say?”
“能解释一下为什么你们不能说么，是有所顾忌么？”
“Because we do not have anything else to say,” he said.
“因为我们根本没什么可说！”他回答说。
As I asked repeated questions about the pitot probes, the service bulletins and the search delays, they responded either in prepackaged talking points or by saying they had no comment.
我重复了很多遍关于皮托管的问题，关于技术服务公告的问题，关于搜救队伍拖延的问题，而他们回答的时候要么闪烁其辞，要么就干脆回答“无可奉告”。
On March 18, four days before the Alucia set sail, a French magistrate finally began the requisite judicial probe of the crash, and as that investigation makes its way toward court, it is joined by nearly a dozen civil lawsuits filed by family members. Perhaps as the legal discovery process moves forward, and if the black box data can be deciphered by analysts, new light will shine on the regulatory and corporate decisions that preceded to the crash. In the meantime, one of the only places in either B.E.A. report that offers any hint of criticism is directed toward the Brazilian morgue where the bodies of 50 passengers were taken to be identified. “At this stage of the investigation,” the report notes, “the B.E.A. has not had access to the autopsy data.”
今年3月18日，“阿卢西亚号”起航前四天，一位法国法官终于开始进行针对空难的司法调查，提交给法院的调查报告中，还包括十几件由遇难者家属提起的民事诉讼请求。在法律调查推进的过程中，如果黑匣子中的数据被分析家破译，也许让监管机构和责任公司作出关于事故结论的要求就会重现曙光。同时，一份法国调查和分析局的报告中的几处暗示，将批评的矛头指向了那家辨认50名遇难者身份的巴西停尸房。报告中指出：“在调查阶段，法国调查和分析局没有取得任何尸检数据。”
On a Sunday morning in mid-March, I met with Dr. Francisco Sarmento, the doctor who presided over the Flight 447 autopsies. This turned out to be a strange time to visit. Two days before I met with Sarmento, the morgue where the autopsies took place was shut down by inspectors, citing “blood on the walls,” “corpses stored on top of each other on shelves and on the floor,” “a strong stench of putrefaction” and a parade of other horrors, like a corpse “being dragged across the floor by two employees.” (The morgue has since reopened.)
今年三月中旬的一个周日，我会见了弗朗西斯科•萨尔门托医生，他负责法航447航班遇难者的尸检工作。但这次会面的时间非常的尴尬。就在两天以前，进行尸检的那家巴西停尸房就被责令停业，用检查人员的话来说就是“墙上血迹斑斑”，“尸体乱七八糟的堆在地板和架子上”，“腐臭的味道令人作呕”……还有其他一系列恐怖恶心的场景，“像是有两个工作人员将尸体拖过地板”。（停尸房后来又重新开门了。）
Sarmento’s office in Recife turned out to be only somewhat more presentable. The floors were made of thin plastic that sagged under my feet as I walked, and the exterior windows were so heavily barred that it was difficult to see outside, but the tropical heat blasted in where panes were either broken or missing, giving the effect of a giant air-conditioner in reverse. It was easy to imagine that such a place, an underfinanced facility in a poor part of the world, might have trouble maintaining standards.
萨尔门托在累西腓的办公室也没好到哪儿去。地板使用薄塑料，我走在上面感觉脚都陷了下去，外层窗户的遮挡严实到很难看到窗外，但炙热的风从那些破裂或者干脆就没有的窗格里吹了进来，就像一台硕大的空调调到了热风档。这个地方由于资金不足，很容易就能看出来他们没法将其维持在标准水平。
Sarmento is a big man, 6-foot-2 and slightly hunched, with a sad, doughy face all gathered up in worry. The crisis at the morgue had kept him from sleep, and he smiled wearily as he offered his hand. We took our seats by a table in his office, and he began to explain the crisis from two years earlier, with the fall of Flight 447.
萨尔门托身强体壮，有6尺2寸高（1米86），有点驼背，脸上总是挂着一种焦急悲伤的表情。停尸房被停业的事情已经让他没有时间休息，他略带疲倦的笑笑，跟我握了握手。我们在他办公室的一张桌子旁边坐了下来，他谈起了两年前法航447航班失事所造成的危机。
“When we first found out, we were afraid,” he said. “We didn’t have space for 228 bodies. There were 33 nationalities on board, so we had to cooperate with other countries. We needed fingerprints, dental records, pictures of tattoos. We contacted Interpol right away, and they sent two people to work here and make the connection with other countries.”
“等我们明白过来以后，我们也很恐慌，”他说，“我们哪里有那么大地方去存放228具尸体，机上的乘客来自33个国家，所以我们必须寻求其他国家的帮助。我们需要指纹，牙齿记录，纹身的照片，事发后，我们也立即联系了国际刑警组织，他们派了两个人过来进行协助工作并同其他国家联系。”
Now Sarmento held up a finger with a look of irritation. “After one week,” he said, “the French government called and asked to send a representative to observe the autopsies.” Much of the forensic work took place at another site, but final examinations of the bodies were done in Recife. “When they got here,” Sarmento continued, “it was 20 specialists who wanted to do the autopsies by themselves. Only them. We couldn’t allow that. So I allowed one person from Interpol to be in the autopsy room and one person from the French government. Of course, this became a diplomatic issue.”
萨尔门托神情变得愤怒，他竖起了一根指头，说道，“在事故发生后一周，法国政府才来电询问，然后派了一个代表观看尸检过程。”大部分的法医工作是在另一个地方进行的，但对尸体最终的检测则要在累西腓进行。“法国派了20名专家来，他们要求由他们做尸检，而且是只能他们做。我们当然不同意，最后我同意由一位来自国际刑警组织的人员和一位法国政府代表留在尸检室内观察尸检过程。最后，这居然演变成了一个外交事件。”
He reached for a large projector on the table and flipped it on with a hum. The far wall lighted up, and we began viewing images from the autopsies. “We took pictures of everything,” Sarmento said, scrolling through pictures of watches, necklaces, earrings and rings, still clinging to blue-green wrists and necks. “We were able to make all of the identifications.” As the images flashed by, he added: “All the autopsies were observed by the French and by Interpol. Not one country, not one family, complained about the identifications.”
他伸手打开了桌子上的投影仪，对面的墙上呈现出了当日尸检的照片。“我们为所有事情都拍了照，”萨尔门托说道，他翻动着幻灯片，那些遇难者已经变得青紫的遗体上还挂着手表，项链，耳环，戒指……“我们是有能力做任何鉴定的。”图片在不断的换，他又说道：“尸检是在法国政府和国际刑警组织监督下完成的。但不止一个国家，也不止一个遇难者家庭，对尸检结果和鉴定表示不满。”
After a while, Sarmento flipped off the projector and pushed away from the table in his chair. “Ninety percent of the passengers had fractures in the arms and legs,” he said. “Many of them also had trauma in the chest, in the abdomen, in the cranium. We didn’t find anybody burned.” He leaned forward in his seat and wrapped his arms around his knees. “They were like this,” he said, holding the crash position and looking into my eyes. Then he sat up quickly and held his hand flat above the table. “When they hit,” he said, slamming it down, “fractures. I believe the pilot tried to land in the water. This is consistent with the fractures. But when the bodies arrived, the lungs were already in a state of decomposition. We didn’t have conditions to see if anyone drowned.”
过了一会儿，萨尔门托关掉了投影仪，把它从桌子上拿下来放到了椅子上。“90%的遇难者在胳膊和腿上有骨折的现象，他们中的大部分人在胸、腹、头骨上有创伤。我们没有发现遇难者有被烧伤的迹象。”萨尔门托在座椅上身体前倾，胳膊抱住了膝盖，“他们当时就是这样的姿势，”他说，保持着这个姿势，眼睛盯着我。然后他很快的坐了起来，把手放在桌子上方，“当飞机坠毁的时候，”他用手模仿飞机坠毁的样子，“这种姿势就造成骨折。我认为飞行员当时试图在水面上完成紧急迫降。这与后来遇难者遗体骨折的现象是相吻合的。但当遇难者的遗体送到我们这儿的时候，他们的肺部都已经有了不同程度的腐烂，我们无法检测出是否有人是因为溺水而死。”
This hung in the air for a moment as I considered what he was suggesting.
这些事实让我不由得停下来思考着他的说法。
“So it’s possible that some of them were still alive?” I asked.
“所以说，坠机后，有人仍然幸存？”我问道。
Sarmento nodded. “Most died on impact,” he said. “Some could have survived.”
萨尔门托点点头。“绝大部分人在飞机撞击水面的时候就遇难了，但可能有人还活了下来。”他说道。
A few days later, in Paris, I stopped by the office of Alain Bouillard, the lead crash investigator for the B.E.A. After studying thousands of pieces of wreckage, Bouillard came to the same conclusion as Sarmento about the plane’s landing. Many of the items recovered, like meal carts, were found with their contents compressed from the bottom, and pieces of the plane’s underbelly were flattened as if struck from below. “There is a high probability that the aircraft landed in one piece,” Bouillard told me. “We are reasonably certain.”
过了几天，我去了巴黎，我拜访了阿兰•波利亚德，他是法国调查与分析局此次事故调查的负责人。在研究了数千块飞机的残骸后，波利亚德同意萨尔门托关于飞机着陆的结论。很多物品被打捞了上来，比如送餐车，发现的时候，车体和食物都被压缩到了一块儿。机身下部的碎片被磨得平平的，如同被碾过一般。“飞机很有可能是整体坠毁的，我们有理由确认这一点。”波利亚德告诉我说。
“The medical examiner in Brazil didn’t see any signs of explosion,” I noted.
“巴西的验尸官说没有任何证据表明飞机曾发生爆炸，”我说。
“No,” Bouillard said. “We are sure that there is no depressurization in flight, because all the masks were still in the box.”
“对，”波利亚德答道，“我们还确认飞机舱内没有失压现象，因为所有的氧气面罩都没有被动过。”
“The medical examiner also said it’s possible that there could have been survivors,” I said. “Do you think so?”
“验尸官还说，飞机坠毁后，仍存在幸存者，你怎么认为？”我问道。
Bouillard was silent. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s impossible to say.”
波利亚德沉默了一回说道：“我不知道，这真的不好说。”
Of course, some passengers may have survived the impact and then died quickly, but there is also a possibility that some lived longer. The surface water near Tasil Point can be as warm as 80 degrees in June, and according to hypothermic tables, a person can survive in those conditions for up to 12 hours before falling unconscious. The search plane finally arrived at Tasil Point 13 hours after the crash.
也许，确实有乘客在坠机后仍然生还但不久后便死去，但某些乘客也有可能存活得更久。塔希尔检查点附近海面的海水温度在六月份大约是80华氏度（不到27摄氏度），在这种温度下，人在陷入昏迷状态之前，在水里最多可以坚持12个小时。但搜救队伍的飞机却在事发后13个小时才抵达塔希尔检查点。
But what happened in those final hours may not be a mystery forever. On the Alucia this spring, as Woods Hole scientists scanned the first photos of Flight 447, they saw more than just landing gear, engines and wings. They also saw the bodies of at least 50 passengers sprawled across an abyssal plain at the base of the mountains. As they continued searching the area, they found a section of damaged fuselage not far away, large enough to contain more passengers. Members of the crew told me that a grim silence descended on the ship, and as word of the bodies reached around the world, an uneasy question began to rise. In the nearly frozen water, two miles down, the bodies would be extraordinarily fragile, but they might also be preserved more fully than those found floating on the surface two years earlier. Protected from light and nearly devoid of microorganisms, they might offer new answers not only about what happened to Flight 447 but also to the men and women aboard. The question was whether anyone really wanted to know.
但法航447航班失事前的最后几个小时内到底发生了什么，真相总有一天会水落石出。这个春天，“阿卢西亚号”上的科学家们研究着法航447航班的第一批水下照片，照片上不仅仅有起落架、引擎、机翼等等残骸，还有超过50具遇难者遗体散落在深海山脉附近的平原上。潜艇在离这个区域的不远处发现了部分受损的机身，机身内可能还有更多遇难者的遗体。搜寻队伍的队员告诉我，当时，船上一片沉默。后来，遇难者遗体被分送到各国后，一个严峻的问题显露了出来。那些易碎的尸体在两英里的海面下，在如此冷的海水里，保存的完整程度竟然好于两年前那些发现浮在水面上的尸体。除了不受光照和几乎没有微生物侵袭的原因之外，这也为解释飞机和机上人员到底发生了什么事情提供了新的答案。问题的关键就是，是不是每个人都想知道真相。
One morning in Paris, I stopped by the apartment of Pérola Milman, a quantum physicist who lost her husband, Ivan, in the crash. Milman is a lean, athletic woman, originally from Brazil, with warm caramel skin and an aquiline nose. We sat facing each other in the living room while her children played nearby. Before the crash, Pérola and Ivan dreamed of moving into the city. After the crash, she finally made the move without him.
在巴黎的一个早上，我去了佩罗拉•米尔曼的公寓，她是一位量子物理学家，她的丈夫伊万不幸在空难中丧生。米尔曼出生于巴西，身材瘦削，有着暖黄色的皮肤和翘起的鼻子。我们在客厅面对面的坐下，她的孩子在旁边玩耍。在客机失事之前，佩罗拉和伊万本打算搬到巴黎市内。伊万不幸遇难后，佩罗拉一个人搬到了市内。
“I couldn’t stay at our house anymore,” she said “ I couldn’t do it. I had to move on. So I just left. I left all my furniture there. All my clothes. Everything. I had to do it.” She turned her head to watch the kids, then she said: “Children are amazing, you know? A psychologist told us after the accident that children do not have a sense of death until they are 6 or 7. And I radically contest this. When it happened, Jose was 4 years old. And of course, it’s a conversation I will never forget. I told him, ‘Listen, there was an accident with Daddy’s plane, and he’s not coming home.’ And he started crying as I never saw him cry before. He was saying, ‘But there are so many things I wanted to make for him.’ ”
“我不能再整天呆在家里了，”她说，“我不能这样了，生活得继续，所以我离开了原来的房子，我把家具，衣服，一切的一切都留在了那里，我必须这么做。”她转过头，看着她的孩子们，说道：“知道么？孩子们都很惊讶。一个心理学家告诉我们，孩子只有到了六七岁才对死亡有所概念。我也确实这么做了。事故发生的时候，何塞才四岁。那是我一生都不会忘记的一次谈话，我说’听着，爸爸坐的飞机出了事，他再也不会回家了。’他一这话立马就哭了起来，他从来没哭过。他当时说：’我还想给爸爸做很多很多好玩儿的东西呢……’”
Milman’s eyes were wet, but she went on. “I am a scientist. I know something concrete happened to the airplane. But I cannot prevent wanting the mystery. I don’t want them to bring up the bodies. I don’t want all that coming to the surface. I have this need to turn the page. It’s very strange to think that this place exists somewhere and my husband is there, in the same clothes he was wearing the last time I saw him, and his ring . . . and his necklace. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she smiled.
米尔曼的眼睛湿润了，但她接着说了下去。“我是个科学家，我知道那架飞机肯定发生了某种意外。但我不想知道结果了，我不想让他们再去打捞尸体，我不想让他们打捞任何东西。我花了好久才渡过了这段艰难的时期，一想到我的丈夫可能躺在某个地方，穿着我最后一次见到他时所穿着的衣服，戴着戒指，项链……这种感觉很怪。”
The next day, I visited the apartment of John Clemes, whose brother, Brad, had flown to Rio on the airplane that would become Flight 447, which he reboarded when he discovered that he could not enter without a visa. After the accident, Clemes and Milman became friends, but the question of whether to bring up the dead hovered between them. As deeply as Milman felt the need to leave her husband below, Clemes felt an obligation to bring his brother home. “It’s horrible thinking they’re lost,” he told me. “There’s no body, no saying goodbye, it’s just . . . gone. For the first couple weeks, I just assumed they were going to find the plane. It wasn’t imaginable that they weren’t.”
第二天，我去约翰•克莱梅斯的公寓采访他，他的哥哥布拉德原本乘坐航班飞往里约热内卢，但却因为没有护照无法入境而重新登上了这架回程时改为447号的航班。航班出事后，克莱梅斯和米尔曼成了朋友，但他们在是否应该打捞遇难者遗体的问题上有分歧。米尔曼坚持认为他丈夫的遗体应长眠海底，克莱梅斯却认为带他哥哥的遗体回家是一种责任。“一想起他们不能回家，我就觉得很难受”他说，“没人，也没说再见，就这么……走了。在事故发生的几个星期里，我时常假设他们回去搜寻飞机，一直都是这样。”
Before the announcement from the Alucia last month, these differences could be set aside, distant and immaterial, but the discovery made them manifest. After less than 24 hours, the French minister of ecology and transportation, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, pronounced on television, “These bodies will be raised and will be identified.” But whether that promise is possible to keep remains unknown. Now that the B.E.A. has recovered the black box cylinders, its crew will try to bring up at least one body, using the same claw-and-basket system. Forensic experts say this is dangerous and tricky. After two years, the bodies may be recoverable, but they will have a soft, fragile consistency that is likely to disintegrate in the robotic claw. Some experts say that the bodies should have been photographed exhaustively by 3D cameras before the recovery of the black boxes began. Already, the process of scouring the wreckage may have kicked up turmoil on the bottom.
在“阿卢西亚号”上月宣布其搜寻结果之前，这些争议本可以放在一边，暂时不去讨论，但搜寻结果却让争议显得更加明显。不到一天之后，法国生态与运输部部长，纳塔利•科斯索斯科•莫里泽在电视上宣布，“这些遇难者的遗体将被打捞并进行身份确认。”但此承诺是否兑现还不得而知。法国调查与分析局已经获得装有黑匣子的圆筒，搜寻队伍也将运用同样的打捞系统打捞至少一具遇难者的遗体。法医警告说这样做太过危险。距空难已有两年，尸体可能具备打捞的条件，但这些尸体很可能变得很软且易碎，很有可能在机器爪的作用力下解体。一些专家建议在修复黑盒子之前，应用3D照相机对尸体进行详尽的拍照。对飞机残骸的打捞也许已经搅得海底不得安宁。
Even if the bodies can be recovered, the question of whether they should be recovered remains difficult to answer. In the end, the decision is binary: either all the bodies will be recovered or they will all be left below. But this is a choice that could not have existed even a decade ago; it is one that could emerge only in the strange confluences of Flight 447. Because the plane was used so widely that its disappearance had to be explained. Because the only way to explain was by recovering the black box — an archaic device on its way to obsolescence but not there yet. Because the tools and technology to locate those boxes in the depths of the midocean ridge were available for the first time. And so, in order to solve the mechanical mystery, the closure for families would have to wait. They would have to wonder once again if their mothers and brothers and sisters were coming home. They would have to struggle with the possibility, each family alone, torn now among themselves, and sometimes even torn within.
就算遇难者的遗体被打捞上来，是否对这些尸体进行修复还很难说。最终决定只有两种：把尸体全部打捞上来或者让它们继续沉睡在海底。但在十年前，这个选择题根本就不会存在，问题只会是关于法航447航班的奇怪问题的集合。因为全世界广泛的使用这个型号的飞机，所以其失事需要一个解释。因为飞机的失事只能由刚打捞的黑匣子解释–这种古老的设备早晚会过时。因为深度可以到达中央山脊附近的技术和工具首次被使用。所以，为了对其机械上的问题进行揭秘，那些遇难者的家属们只能等待。他们就会又一次的把心悬起来：他们的父亲母亲，兄弟姐妹会不会“回家”。他们会为一切的可能性进行抗争，每个家庭都经历了如此大的不幸，但他们既和外部抗争，有时又在内部互相争吵。
Stepping off an airplane in Brazil one afternoon, I noticed an e-mail marked urgent from Mary Miley, whose sister, Anne DeBaillon Harris, was on the plane with her husband, Mike, headed for two weeks in Paris. Anne and Mike were the only Americans onboard, and I had spoken with Miley perhaps a dozen times, sometimes for more than two hours. Something about Anne kept pulling me back. I would like to say that it was her eyes or her smile or some detail from the photos I saw of her, but Miley’s stories of her sister were not so nostalgic. She described Anne’s fight with cancer in her 20s, the ministroke on her left side, the migraines and bouts of fibromyalgia that would seize her for days on end. But I also heard from Anne’s friends, about how in Rio many of these problems seemed to fade, at least enough to give Anne, a girl from Lafayette, La., the taste of a life unlike anything she’d known, bustling through metropolitan markets, haggling with street vendors and learning to samba. I found myself exploring her neighborhood in Rio and driving into the hills west of town to stand at the edge of a terrace bar where she liked to sit with friends in the evening, gazing over the beach as waves crashed on the rocks below. And always, I would check back with Miley to share what I had seen and heard — and to ask more questions about Anne.
在一个下午抵达巴西以后，我收到了一封来自玛丽•麦莉的加急电子邮件，她的姐姐安妮•迪贝伦•哈里斯，在那架航班上，和她的丈夫迈克，要去巴黎呆两周。安妮和迈克是机上仅有的两个美国人。我和麦莉的谈话多大十几次，有时候一次就超过两个小时。安妮给我留下印象最深的就是她迷人的眼睛和微笑，我从看到她的照片起就注意到了这一点。麦莉没有用一种怀旧的口吻去讲的她姐姐的故事，她只是讲安妮在20多岁的时候抗击癌症和左侧身体的小型中风，强忍那种侵袭她数天的偏头疼和纤维性肌炎。我又从安妮的朋友处得知，在里约热内卢的时候，她的这些病好了许多，至少让来自拉斐特的她有机会去体验一种她从没有体验过的生活：逛大城市熙熙攘攘的市场，和街头小贩讨价还价，学习跳桑巴。我探寻她在里约热内卢的邻居，开车去城西的小山上，站在一个露天酒吧的台子上，安妮喜欢和朋友们在晚上一起坐在这里，看着远处的波浪冲刷着海滩上的石头。我也常常和麦莉分享我的所见所闻，然后再向她询问更多关于安妮的事情。
Now Miley had a question of her own. After the crash, Mike’s oil company closed their apartment and accounts and sent home all of their belongings — with one exception. Anne’s jewelry, she recently learned, was still at the oil company in Rio. She wondered if I would bring it home.
现在，麦莉有了另一个问题。在空难后，迈克原先工作的石油公司就收回了他们的公寓和账户，把他们的财物全部寄给了麦莉，除了安妮的珠宝首饰，麦莉也是最近才知道那些珠宝首饰仍然存放在里约热内卢的石油公司里。她想让我帮她把那些珠宝首饰带回来。
On my last morning in Brazil, I picked up three boxes of Anne’s jewelry from the oil company, then a few days later, I landed in Louisiana to deliver them to Miley. She met me at the door with a hug, and we sat down together at a table as she laid out Anne’s items between us — a turquoise ring, a wire bracelet, a necklace of tiny crimson beads — saying things like, “Oh, Anne, I don’t know about this one.” But when she opened the last box, she froze. The color drained from her face, and she reached inside the box with both hands, pulling out a string of pearls. She clutched them to her chest and squeezed her eyes. After a long silence, she looked up. “These are Mama’s pearls,” she said.
我在巴西的最后一天的早上，我从石油公司取出了三盒属于安妮的珠宝首饰。几天后，我飞到了路易斯安那州，把这些珠宝首饰还给麦莉。麦莉在家门口给了我一个大大的拥抱，我们在桌前坐下，把盒子里的珠宝全倒了出来：有绿松石戒指，手链，挂着深红色小珠子的项链，麦莉边看边说，“哦，安妮，我真不知道该说什么。”但当她打开最后一个盒子的时候，她愣住了，脸色一下子变白了，她两只手都伸进了盒子里，捧出一串珍珠。她把这串珍珠捂在胸口，仔细的看着。过了好一会儿，她才抬起头说：“这串珍珠，是妈妈的。”
The day before, I called Miley to tell her about the discovery of Flight 447, and I knew she was still grappling with her feelings. For weeks, she had ricocheted between emotions. One day, she would say dismissively: “I don’t care if they find it. It’s not going to bring Anne back.” But the next, she would pepper me with questions about how the submarines really worked and if they really had a chance.
昨天，我致电麦莉，告诉她关于法航447航班的调查结果。我知道这仍然牵动着她的神经。几个星期，她都在感情的纠结中徘徊。前一天，她如释重负的说：“我不在乎他们找不找到那些东西了，这又没法让安妮回来。”过了一天，她又缠着我问诸如潜艇是怎么工作的，他们有没有机会找到飞机的残骸这一类的问题。
Now she sat quietly with the pearls. She rolled them between her fingers. “This may be the last thing I ever have of her,” she said. Her eyes were red and worn. “I do hope they can bring her home. When there was no reason to hope, I didn’t hope. But now that there’s hope, I hope.”
现在，她手里捧着那串珍珠，用手指轻抚着它们，静静的坐在那里。“这是我拥有的最后一件她的东西了，”她说，她变得泪眼朦胧，“我真希望她能回家，当希望渺茫的时候，我也不敢有任何奢望；但现在，又有了希望，我想她。”
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