Search and recovery of aircraft parts in ice-sheet crevasse fields using airborne and in situ geophysical sensors

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Kenneth D. Mankoff, Dirk van As, Austin Lines, Thue Bording, Joshua Elliott, Rune Kraghede, Hubert Cantalloube, Hélène Oriot, Pascale Dubois-Fernandez, Olivier Ruault du Plessis, Anders Vest Christiansen, Esben Auken, Karina Hansen, William Colgan, Nanna B. Karlsson
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press 2020
• Subjects: Applied glaciology; crevasses; glacier hazards; glaciological instruments and methods; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999; Greenland; glacier; Ice Sheet; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2020.26; https://doaj.org/article/b21f5ae484e24ff1b0503e3a7a36f723

On 30 September 2017, an Air France Airbus A380-800 suffered a failure of its fourth engine while over Greenland. This failure resulted in the loss of the engine fan hub, fan blades and surrounding structure. An initial search recovered 30 pieces of light debris, but the primary part of interest, a ~220 kg titanium fan hub, was not recovered because it had a different fall trajectory than the light debris, impacted into the ice-sheet's snow surface, and was quickly covered by drifting snow. Here we describe the methods used for the detection of the fan hub and details of the field campaigns. The search area included two crevasse fields of at least 50 snow-covered crevasses 1 to ~30 m wide with similar snow bridge thicknesses. After 21 months and six campaigns, using airborne synthetic aperture radar, ground-penetrating radar, transient electromagnetics and an autonomous vehicle to survey the crevasse fields, the fan hub was found within ~1 m of a crevasse at a depth of ~3.3 to 4 m and was excavated with shovels, chain saws, an electric winch, sleds and a gasoline heater, by workers using fall-arrest systems.