Air France passenger jet vanishes from radar

[ItalianFashion]

Originally Posted by Roo

I think if this were a terrorist act, a group would have stepped forward to claim responsibility by now. That's the whole idea. Also one would assume those weather patterns in the Atlantic between Africa and So. America have been present for some time and that thousands of planes have flown thru them with no problems? Why a crash now? So many unanswered questions. One thing I will say, and I hope I don't offend any Airbus fans: Airbus planes make me nervous. They are loud, bumpy and clunky to fly on. The engines make noise and there are always loud thumps and bumps. It also seems like turbulence feels WAY worse on an AB vs. a Boeing aircraft. Of course I live in the land of Boeing-- but I've just noticed a big difference in the design of these planes and how comfortable they are to fly on in general. My husband, however, will not set foot on an Airbus. We have friends in Toulouse and when we were visiting we were told all sorts of scary stories about what goes on in the AB plant there, how workers are frequently intoxicated, etc. Dunno if it's true, but my hub says "if it's not Boeing, I ain't going!" And since he hates flying in general, it makes it tough to go on vacation!!

I had a manager at my last job in industrial engineering who used to work for a company that made parts for the planes and he also refused to ride on an airbus. He told me one day why but I cannot remember. It was something he did not trust with the design of a part. He had to travel tons and I had to book his flights in addition to my job so I had to choose flights to small cities occasionaly without him being on this type of plane a turboprop and also had to avoid regional jets as much as I could.

[macska]

Originally Posted by ItalianFashion

I had a manager at my last job in industrial engineering who used to work for a company that made parts for the planes and he also refused to ride on an airbus. He told me one day why but I cannot remember. It was something he did not trust with the design of a part. He had to travel tons and I had to book his flights in addition to my job so I had to choose flights to small cities occasionaly without him being on this type of plane a turboprop and also had to avoid regional jets as much as I could.

Lordy, talk about limiting the amount of flights you can choose - you're a saint for having the patience to do that. I'd have flipped trying to find flights with specific aircrafts.

[Veelyn]

http://charter.net/news/read.php?ps=...ARSDCCLM_UNEWS

Air France says no hope of survivors in Atlantic


FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (AP) — Air France has told families of passengers on Flight 447 that the jetliner broke apart and they must abandon hope that anyone survived, a grief counselor said Thursday as Brazilian ships neared debris bobbing in the Atlantic.
Air France's CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said at a private meeting with families that the plane disintegrated either in the air or when it slammed into the ocean and there were no survivors, according to Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel relatives.
The plane, carrying 228 people, disappeared after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris on Sunday night. It was Air France's deadliest plane crash and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001.
With the crucial black box voice and data recorders still missing, investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms.
They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation. He spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.
"What is clear is that there was no landing. There's no chance the escape slides came out," said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who heads a victims' association for UTA flight 772, shot down in 1989 by Libyan terrorists.
Ships headed to the site Thursday to recover wreckage, though "extreme cloudiness" prevented U.S. satellites scanning the area from providing useful leads, according to French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck.
Seas were calm, with periodic rain, as Brazilian military pilots guided Navy ships to debris areas across a search zone of 2,300 square miles (6,000 square kilometers), said Brazil Air Force Gen. Ramon Borges Cardoso.
"The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear," Prazuck said. "That's the priority now, the next step will be to look for the black boxes."



Cardoso said collection of debris could begin Thursday. No bodies or body parts had been seen.
The floating debris spotted so far includes several large pieces that Cardoso said probably come from inside the plane because they were brown and yellow.
"This doesn't correspond with the outside of the plane" because it was white, he said.
A Navy spokesman denied French media reports Wednesday morning that ships had already started recovering debris. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy.
Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with 140 miles (230 kilometers) separating pieces of wreckage. The overall zone is roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, where the ocean floor drops as low as 22,950 feet (7,000 meters) below sea level.
The floating debris includes a 23-foot (seven-meter) chunk of plane, but pilots have spotted no sign of survivors, according to Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral.
Brazilian military planes located new debris from Air France Flight 447 Wednesday, after seeing an airline seat and oil slick a day earlier.
French planes were also seeking debris, so far without success, Prazuck said, and a U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane also joined Brazil's Air Force in the search.
Heavy weather delayed until next week the arrival of deep-water submersibles considered key to finding the black box cockpit voice and flight data recorders key to the investigation.
The Pourquoi Pas, a French sea research vessel carrying manned and unmanned submarines, is heading from the Azores and will be in the search zone by June 12, Prazuck said. The equipment includes the Nautile, a mini-sub used to explore the undersea wreckage of the Titanic, according to French marine institute Ifremer.
The lead French investigator has questioned whether the recorders would ever be found in such a deep and rugged part of the ocean.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has joined the accident investigation at the invitation of French authorities. The U.S. team includes representatives from General Electric Aviation of Cincinnati, Ohio, which made the plane's engines, and Honeywell International Inc. of Morristown, N.J., which made major components of the plane's electronic systems.

More than 500 people packed the historic Candelaria church in the center of Rio de Janeiro on Thursday for a Mass for the victims of crash. Some relatives quietly sobbed and others wore sunglasses to hide reddened eyes.
Carlos Eduardo Esteves, a 22-year-old law school student, came to mourn Air France crew member Lucas Gagliano, a Brazilian who was on his way back home to France after attending his father's funeral.
His eyes tearing up, Esteves said they had been friends for years.
"This is a form of saying goodbye to him. I feel so much loss, the nation has lost so much."
The plane's last automated messages detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to the aviation industry official.
The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time Sunday saying he was flying through an area of black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning.
Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.
Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.
The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure — catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.
Patrick Smith, a U.S. airline pilot and aviation analyst, said the sequence of messages strongly indicated a loss of electrical power, possibly as the result of an extremely strong lightning bolt.
"What jumps out at me is the reported failure of both the primary and standby instruments," Smith said. "From that point the plane basically becomes unflyable."
"If they lost control and started spiraling down into a storm cell, the plane would begin disintegrating, the engines and wings would start coming off, the cabin would begin falling apart," he said.
The pilot of a Spanish airliner flying near where the Airbus is believed to have gone down reported seeing a bright flash of white light that plunged to the ocean, said Angel del Rio, spokesman for the Spanish airline Air Comet.
"Suddenly, off in the distance, we observed a strong and bright flash of white light that took a downward and vertical trajectory and vanished in six seconds," the pilot wrote in his report, del Rio told the AP.
The Spanish plane was flying from Lima, Peru to Madrid. The pilot said he heard no emergency calls from the plane.
The accident investigation is being done by France, while Brazil is leading the recovery effort.
France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved, and Jobim, the Brazilian defense minister, said "that possibility hasn't even been considered."

[Veelyn]

Originally Posted by Veelyn

No bodies or body parts had been seen.

This is crazy! I would think something would have to show up sooner or later. Hopefully they can find all the bodies to give the families a little bit more closure.

Originally Posted by Veelyn

Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with 140 miles (230 kilometers) separating pieces of wreckage. The overall zone is roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, where the ocean floor drops as low as 22,950 feet (7,000 meters) below sea level.

WOW. Thats a huge area.

Originally Posted by Veelyn

Carlos Eduardo Esteves, a 22-year-old law school student, came to mourn Air France crew member Lucas Gagliano, a Brazilian who was on his way back home to France after attending his father's funeral.

Wow.. So incredibly sad. SMH.

[C.luxe]

Originally Posted by tresjoliex

So sad. Can't stop thinking about what was going on inside that plane. How scary, knowing you are going to die. If they hit crazy turbulence, they probably got really scared, and since there was no mayday call, it probably just happend so fast. Wow, cherish life.

Yes... tell those you love that you love them, everyday.

[C.luxe]

You know what? So many times my hair stood on ends while reading this...

It is haunting. And very sad... it's shocking.

[Jahpson]

Originally Posted by C.luxe

Yes... tell those you love that you love them, everyday.

Amen.

how eerie to think that those folks were probably cheerful and happy before boarding that plane...

[kicksarefortwids]

the plane disintegrated?? how does that happen? i can only hope that the end was swift for the passengers -- i tear up thinking what they experienced those last minutes. truly awful.

[Alyana]

Originally Posted by Roo

^^ I can't help but keep thinking about how many planes have likely gone thru that area thousands of times in storms. Does anyone know if that is a common flight path? What made this time different? Its such a mystery!?

well this is the thing, and it adds just more mystery: apparently 2 Lufthansa planes flying the same exact route, one before and one after, and arrived to Paris safely.

[macska]

Originally Posted by Alyana

well this is the thing, and it adds just more mystery: apparently 2 Lufthansa planes flying the same exact route, one before and one after, and arrived to Paris safely.

They may have been at a different altitude, which storms tend to not span all of them, so if the Lufthansa planes were at a different altitude that would explain why if on the same flight path they would not have encountered it.

[TXGirlie]

^^ True the altitude makes a HUGE difference, especially where turbulence is concerned. Airlines routinely change altitudes looking for the best "ride".

[Veelyn]

http://charter.net/news/read.php?ps=...ARSDCCLM_UNEWS

Brazil recovers first Air France Flight 447 debris


FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (AP) — A Brazilian helicopter crew recovered the first wreckage from Air France Flight 447 on Thursday, pulling a cargo pallet from the sea. No sign of human remains have been spotted, and Air France has told families that the jetliner broke apart, killing all 228 people on board.
Two buoys — standard emergency equipment on planes — also were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean about 340 miles (550 kilometers) northeast of Brazil's northern Fernando de Noronha islands by the helicopter crew, which was working off a Brazilian navy ship.
Air France's CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told family members at a private meeting that the Airbus A330 disintegrated, either in the air or when it slammed into the ocean and there were no survivors, according to Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, a grief counselor who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel relatives.
Soldiers at Fernando de Noronha's airport, where any recovered human remains would be taken, unloaded body bags and a refrigerator truck on Thursday from a military plane.
Flight 447 disappeared en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday night, the deadliest crash in Air France history and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001.
With the crucial "black box" voice and data recorders still missing, investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened as the jet flew through towering thunderstorms.
The messages detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.
"What is clear is that there was no landing. There's no chance the escape slides came out," said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who heads a victims' association for UTA Flight 772, which Libyan terrorists downed with a suitcase bomb in 1989.



France's accident investigation agency said only two findings have been established so far: One is that the series of automatic messages sent from Flight 447 gave conflicting signals about the plane's speed; the other is that the flight path went through dangerously stormy weather.
The agency warned against any "hasty interpretation or speculation" after the French newspaper Le Monde reported, without naming sources, that the Air France plane was flying at the wrong speed.
France has invited the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to help in the accident investigation. The U.S. team also includes General Electric Aviation of Cincinnati, Ohio, which made the plane's engines, and Honeywell International Inc. of Morristown, N.J., which made the black boxes and parts of the communication and navigation systems.
Seas were calm Thursday with periodic rain as ships converged on three debris sites to recover wreckage, but French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said extreme cloudiness" prevented U.S. satellites from helping.
"The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear," Prazuck said. "That's the priority now, the next step will be to look for the black boxes."
French planes and a U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane joined Brazil's Air Force, whose pilots guided Navy ships to debris areas across a search zone of 2,300 square miles (6,000 square kilometers), said Brazil Air Force Gen. Ramon Borges Cardoso.
Other debris spotted so far includes a 23-foot (seven-meter) chunk of plane, an airline seat, an oil slick and several large brown and yellow pieces that Cardoso said probably came from inside the plane.
Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris had spread more than 140 miles (230 kilometers) apart in currents roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, where the ocean floor drops as low as 22,950 feet (7,000 meters) below sea level.
The Pourquoi Pas, a French sea research vessel carrying manned and unmanned submarines, is heading from the Azores and will be in the search zone by June 12, Prazuck said. The equipment includes the Nautile, a mini-sub used to explore the undersea wreckage of the Titanic, according to French marine institute Ifremer.



But the lead French investigator has questioned whether the recorders will ever be found in such deep and rugged underwater terrain.
The mourning continues — more than 500 people packed the historic Candelaria church in the center of Rio de Janeiro Thursday for a Mass for the victims of crash. Some relatives quietly sobbed and others wore sunglasses to hide reddened eyes.
Carlos Eduardo Esteves, a 22-year-old law school student, came to remember Air France crew member Lucas Gagliano, a Brazilian who was on his way back home to France after attending his father's funeral.
His eyes tearing up, Esteves said they had been friends for years.
"This is a form of saying goodbye to him. I feel so much loss, the nation has lost so much."
The last message from the pilot was a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time Sunday saying he was flying through an area of black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning. The automated messages that followed suggest the plane broke apart in the sky, according to the aviation industry official.
At 11:10 p.m., a cascade of problems began: the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems. Then, systems for monitoring air speed, altitude and direction failed. Then controls over the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well. At 11:14 p.m., a final automatic message signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure as the plane was breaking apart.
Patrick Smith, a U.S. airline pilot and aviation analyst, said the failures could have begun with a loss of electrical power, possibly as the result of an extremely strong lightning bolt.
"What jumps out at me is the reported failure of both the primary and standby instruments," Smith said. "From that point the plane basically becomes unflyable."
"If they lost control and started spiraling down into a storm cell, the plane would begin disintegrating, the engines and wings would start coming off, the cabin would begin falling apart," he said.
The pilot of a Spanish airliner flying nearby at the time reported seeing a bright flash of white light plunging to the ocean, said Angel del Rio, spokesman for the Spanish airline Air Comet.
"Suddenly, off in the distance, we observed a strong and bright flash of white light that took a downward and vertical trajectory and vanished in six seconds," the pilot wrote in his report, del Rio told the AP.
The pilot of the Spanish plane, en route from Lima, Peru to Madrid, said he heard no emergency calls.
France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved, and Jobim, the Brazilian defense minister, said "that possibility hasn't even been considered."

[redney]

I have been reading the comments posted by pilots, mechanics and scientists regarding the analysis on this site http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/ (previously posted by another PFer on this thread) and it has been very helpful to try to understand what may have happened, especially regarding the "break up in flight" theory.

Another theory as noted in this article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6430398.ece indicates a potential engine stall due to decreased speed to manage through the turbulence.

I really hope they can find the black boxes and bring some sort of closure to the families and lessons learned/what needs to change for the airline industry.

I also learned from this wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus that Airbus is a subsidiary of a European aerospace company named EADS. I did not see a connection to the French government.

Boeing and Airbus both buy engines from various companies and I noticed GE has sold engines to both. Don't know if this matters for the AF flight but I thought it was interesting to note in the context of the comparison between the two manufacturers.

[.:Sprigged:.]

This tragedy is scaring me more and more.

Quote:

Brazilian air force says debris was not from Air France crash STORY HIGHLIGHTS Wreckage, debris found earlier is not from missing plane, air force says Conflicting reports over why Air France jet crashed with 228 aboard Oil slick appears to rule out midair fire or explosion, Brazil minister says But two Spanish pilots say they saw "intense flash" in area where jet crashed updated 11 minutes ago RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CNN) -- The Brazilian air force said that debris picked up Thursday near where officials believe Air France Flight 447 crashed Monday into the Atlantic Ocean was not from the plane. "It has been verified that the material did not belong to the plane," Brigadier Ramon Borges Cardoso told reporters in Recife about the material recovered Thursday. "It is a pallet of wood that is utilized for transport. It is used in planes, but on this flight to Paris, there was no wooden pallet." He added that oil slicks seen on the ocean were not from the plane, either, and that the quantity of oil exceeded the amount the plane would have carried. "No material from the airplane was picked up," he said. The announcement left open the question of whether other debris that had not yet been plucked from the ocean might be from the plane. On Wednesday, searchers recovered two debris fields and had identified the wreckage, including an airplane seat and an orange float as coming from Flight 447. Officials now say that none of the debris recovered is from the missing plane. Helicopters had been lifting pieces from the water and dropping them on three naval vessels. Brazilian Air Force planes spotted an oil slick and four debris fields Wednesday but rain and rough seas had kept searchers from plucking any of the debris from the water. Officials said searchers had found objects in a circular 5-kilometer (3-mile) area, including one object with a diameter of 7 meters (23 feet) and 10 other objects, some of which were metallic, Brazilian Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral said. The debris was found about 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers off the northeast coast of Brazil. Eleven aircraft and five ships are engaged in the search, including airplanes from France and the United States. Earlier Thursday, a public interfaith service was held for the 228 victims at a 200-year-old Catholic Church in downtown Rio. Joining family members were members of the Brazilian armed forces, who are leading the recovery effort. "Whoever has faith, whoever believes in God, believes in the eternity of the soul," said Mauro Chavez, whose friend lost a daughter on the flight. "This means everything." A Spanish pilot said he saw an "intense flash" in the area where Flight 447 came down off the coast of Brazil, while a Brazilian minister appeared to rule out a midair explosion. Meanwhile, a report in France suggested the pilots were perhaps flying at the "wrong speed" for the violent thunderstorm they flew into early on Monday before the Airbus A330's systems failed. Le Monde newspaper reported that Airbus was sending a warning to operators of A330 jets with new advice on flying in storms. As several ships trawled the debris site in the Atlantic, Brazil's defense minister said a 20-kilometer (12-mile) oil slick near where the plane, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, went down indicated it probably did not break up until it hit the water. If true, that would rule out an in-flight explosion as the cause of the crash of Air France Flight 447, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told reporters. However, both pilots of an Air Comet flight from Lima, Peru, to Lisbon, Portugal, sent a written report on the bright flash they said they saw to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority, the airline told CNN. "Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds," the captain wrote. Air Comet declined to identify the pilot's name but said he waited until landing to inform Air Comet management about what he saw. Air Comet then informed Spanish civil aviation authorities. The Air Comet co-pilot and a passenger aboard the same flight also saw the light. But Robert Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said the question of determining where a plane broke up "is a very difficult one to deal with." He told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" that "there are lots of things that cause a plane to go out of control." He added that extremely strong winds are not unusual near Brazil. Pilots who fly over that part of the world keep track of radar and "are very, very wary about the weather as they go back and forth down in that area." Jobim said currents had strewn the debris widely and that the search area had been expanded to 300 square miles. Watch report on the struggle to find pieces of the plane » The Airbus A330 went down about three hours after beginning what was to have been an 11-hour flight. No survivors have been found. Map of Flight AF 447's flight path » The NTSB said Wednesday it has accepted an invitation from the French aviation accident investigation authority, the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, to aid in the investigation. The aircraft's computer system did send about four minutes of automated messages indicating a loss of cabin pressure and an electrical failure, officials have said. Some investigators have noted that the plane flew through a severe lightning storm. Foul play has not been ruled out. Air France had received a bomb threat May 27 for a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Paris, sources in the Argentine military and police told CNN on Wednesday. Watch as experts question whether recovery is possible » According to the officials, who had been briefed on the incident and declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigation, the Air France office in Buenos Aires received the threat from a man speaking Spanish. Authorities checked the Boeing 777 and found nothing. Security was tightened during check-in for Flight 415, which left on time and without incident, the officials said. Most of the people on Flight 447 came from Brazil, France and Germany. The remaining victims were from 29 other countries, including three passengers from the United States.

[PrinceAbdullah]

Originally Posted by .:Sprigged:.

This tragedy is scaring me more and more.

not from the airplane..

woah thats freaky!!!