New info says it broke apart in flight at tens of thousands of feet.
This could turn into a crime investigation.
This could turn into a crime investigation.
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Air France plane lost over Atlantic
- Thread starter arkitect
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More than likely multiple electrical failures forced the plane into a manoeuvre it simply wasn't capable of, leading to structural failure. It would tie in with both the received messages and the spread of wreckage.
We could be speculating about this for a long, long time - perhaps forever. A 330 is a big plane, but an intense thunderstorm can tear even an airliner into pieces in pretty short order. A complete electrical failure is unlikely, even if the plane were struck by lightning. Perhaps a partial electrical failure inhibited their ability to use the weather radar effectively, and they wandered into a pretty bad cell? Who the heck knows....
Whatever the reason, it's horrible, made worse by the possibility that family and friends of the people aboard might not get the luxury of closure.
Whatever the reason, it's horrible, made worse by the possibility that family and friends of the people aboard might not get the luxury of closure.
So now there are confirmed reports of a bomb threat being made on an in-bound flight to Paris on the same airline. Suspicious for sure. Also, in the link below there is a statement from a Brazilian pilot who saw orange spots on the ocean near where this plane went down. If there is a storm, I would presume heavy cloud coverage which would make this difficult to see?
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/Travel/story?id=7742900&page=1
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/Travel/story?id=7742900&page=1
Interesting. I would think such a thing would be difficult to see as well, but who knows? Seems like any possibility is still on the table.
EDIT: Just discovered this link. If they really flew through that, I wouldn't expect a good outcome.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/americas_enl_1244067525/img/1.jpg
The article the above link came from is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8082241.stm
I've read reports of a lack of cabin pressure:
I wonder what could cause that?
Terrible tragedy made worse that a cause may never be found,considering the ocean depths..
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/03/france.plane.memorial/index.html
I wonder what could cause that?
Terrible tragedy made worse that a cause may never be found,considering the ocean depths..
Yes that info's up on the BBC now. The point I'm making is that I would understand if the French Govt rushed out a statement saying they 'did not think it was terrorism' or that it 'was unlikely to be terrorism'. That's an educated guess, and a wise thing to say.
Instead, their statement said it was 'clearly not a terrorist event.' What exactly was 'clear' to them, when nothing was officially known?
I'd like to hope that it really is a storm-related break-up, and the French govt just made an idiotic statement.
It is really very sad news. I have read in the newspaper that there was some lightning on the aircraft from the sky. May be due to this the tragedy have took place, all the passengers on board have lost their life. Brazilian Airforce has found some debris of the aircraft in the Atlantic sea.
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it will be interesting to see what happens with the recovery.
We're in a state of technology where it's rare to have an accident or situation where they can't piece together what happened.
It's far different than the older years when planes disappearing was likened to the Bermuda Triangle, but Mother Nature and Mama Earth still rule us all.
I was reading about those big clouds holding plenty of updrafts, some up to 160 mph, which can rip a plane apart. This would explain the sudden loss of cabin pressure, the automatic messages being sent from the plane and the lack of a mayday call from the pilots. I was wondering if the plane did break up that high, I guess the systems could send those messages b/c it would take a few minutes to hit the water?
So sad.
We're in a state of technology where it's rare to have an accident or situation where they can't piece together what happened.
It's far different than the older years when planes disappearing was likened to the Bermuda Triangle, but Mother Nature and Mama Earth still rule us all.
I was reading about those big clouds holding plenty of updrafts, some up to 160 mph, which can rip a plane apart. This would explain the sudden loss of cabin pressure, the automatic messages being sent from the plane and the lack of a mayday call from the pilots. I was wondering if the plane did break up that high, I guess the systems could send those messages b/c it would take a few minutes to hit the water?
So sad.
This is a cloud top temperature image of the storm that Air France flight 447 flew through at the time that radio contact was lost. For those familiar with these type of images, I think it's easy to see why the plane had no chance. The white line shows the course of the flight and the times of last radar contact and the time that automated messages were transmitted indicating structural failure.
The pilot's only option would have been to turn back to Brazil as this TTL level MCS is over 1000 miles wide, making it too wide for the jet to circumnavigate within it's fuel reserves. And from the brightness tempeartures (which are off the scale at less than 208 K), these clouds were well over 15 km high (3 km higher than the ceiling of this plane). I wouldn't have liked to have been on this flight...
Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL)
Mesoscale Convective System (storm)
The white line is the planned route. I don't have data for the actual route taken (i.e. they would NOT have headed directly into that!)
The pilot's only option would have been to turn back to Brazil as this TTL level MCS is over 1000 miles wide, making it too wide for the jet to circumnavigate within it's fuel reserves. And from the brightness tempeartures (which are off the scale at less than 208 K), these clouds were well over 15 km high (3 km higher than the ceiling of this plane). I wouldn't have liked to have been on this flight...
Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL)
Mesoscale Convective System (storm)
The white line is the planned route. I don't have data for the actual route taken (i.e. they would NOT have headed directly into that!)
Thanks for that graphic. The location of the crash I've seen from the news sites didn't seem close enough to the storm map I had seen, but if yours is correct, ... yipes.
If you look at this image you can see the aircraft left the radar surveillance zone well before the storms.
And the radio contact was lost with the plane southeast of the storms… which seems to indicate they were trying to fly around.
What a miserable end.
Mine's the planned route @ the time shown on the image. Given I don't know the exact course (no-one does as they lost contact) nor the exact time of 'impact', it's a good effort to show what happened.
As I said, mine shows the planned track.
errm. Yes. I was not disputing what you said.
Yep. We agree, it's cool. Re-reading mine and it can sound a bit harsher than it actually was!
Either way, I hope they find something. I think we all do. We hate things to be left open.
Indeed. The silver lining to all air tragedies is that we usually find out what caused them and the same accident won't happen again as things get fixed.
Mostly, yes, although with the deHavilland Comet it took at least 3 disasters (I think) before they were finally withdrawn from service…
Such beautiful and elegant (but dangerous) aircraft those were.
However since this isn't the mid fifties, so I hope we do find out what caused this Air France crash.
No matter how often I fly I never feel easy when we get into turbulence… especially in the dark over mid ocean.
A lot of planes now have WiFi on board and some airlines (Air France was one of them) were testing in flight cell phone use. We have the capability to download porn at 35,000 feet and moving 500 miles per hour, but we don't have the capability for the plane to send its coordinates back to somewhere on the ground?
And I know some people who have brought portable vehicle navigation units on board and have been able to get a GPS signal during flight and plot their location, along with speed and altitude. If some cheap $200 Garmin or Tom Tom can get GPS satlock, then surely some fancy, advanced avionics equipment can get GPS satlock.
Fair enough on the Comet.
This never bothers me per se, but I have to admit I am a slight bit uneasy about getting on an Air France 330-200 to Seattle next month. I realize it's mostly irrational, but having had one just fall out of the sky with little knowledge why is unsettling.
Wasn't one of the issues that the plane's systems started to malfunction before it crashed? i.e. it continued to travel after its last successful set of coordinates were able to be successfully transmitted?
Yes, but it could've at least given them a better idea of where it went down so maybe they could've found wreckage immediately and possibly survivors.
The media in France are looking at a possible electricity shock in the plane. According to some witnesses that were on another plan, they saw a white light going down...
That's a horrible story, and after watching the movie Passengers, I can't help but think that AF will do everything they can to lower insurance claims (hence the storm/thunder story)....
That's a horrible story, and after watching the movie Passengers, I can't help but think that AF will do everything they can to lower insurance claims (hence the storm/thunder story)....
Personal GPSs are receive only, and which makes it a lot easier to get a lock than it is for transmitters. Transmitters need to hit a very small object very far away while moving very fast.
Yes, the plane should have this capability in order to transmit their coordinates during an emergency, but if there was a storm, the signal could have been blocked, or the system could have failed before it transmitted. There are a lot of unknowns.