Air France Jet Carrying 228 Missing Over Atlantic Ocean

An Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris lost contact with air traffic controllers after flying into a strong thunderstorm over the Atlantic Ocean and signaling it had an electric problem.

Chief Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said "it is possible" the plane was hit by lightning.

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, was carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew members, company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand said.

The flight left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time. About four hours later, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said.

The plane disappeared about 190 miles northeast of the coastal Brazilian city of Natal, near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, a Brazilian air force spokesman said. The air force began a search Monday morning near Fernando de Noronha, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with air force policy.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,523701,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8076848.stm

http://edition.cnn.com/

:-(

 

R.I.P. They'll have run out of fuel a long, long time ago.

 

I heard about this today. How very unfortunate, and I'll pray for all the families who lost loved ones in the flight.

Such a horrible way to go. Crashing in a plane is one of my worst fears.


If it got hit by lightning, would the shock have killed everyone at least so they didn't have to experience the crash, or would it have just killed the engines?

EDIT: Hmm.. I found this from a pilot. Doesn't sound like a lightning strike would be that big of a deal. Maybe it was wind more than anything else?

"The effect of a lightning strike is usually harmless, although sometimes some mysterious things can occur. The average commercial jet is actually struck by lightning about twice a year. Some may never be struck, others may be struck more. It depends on where the aircraft's flights usually take it.

FAA regulations require commercial aircraft to remain at least 20 nautical miles from thunderstorms and other severe weather masses. However, sometimes this is unavoidable during low level operation. Many folks can tell a tale or two about a horrifying takeoff in a storm. Storms and lightning may be a scary thought for an airborne passenger. On the flight deck, they aren't as scary as you think.

I've been an airline pilot since I turned 23. I've held positions for cargo airlines as a first officer on 747s. 757/767's, DC-9's, DC-10's and now, a captain of the CRJ-200. I've seen more lightning strikes and thunderstorms than most storm chasers. One of my first experiences was on the DC-9 during finals into my home base airport. We were hurrying to get the cockpit ready for landing, flying at 3000 feet, with a storm fast approaching. After a large flash and a fairly loud bang, we realized we had been struck. No warning lights came on and nothing happened. A similar experience happened on the 747 while flying at 36,000 feet. I had just come from the cabin with my lunch - just in time to see the flash. Maintainance personnel later found a black smudge on the aircraft.

So as you see, it's quite common and 99.999999% of the time is completely harmless. Lighting was suspected of causing an Eygtair crash, but evidence is somewhat inconclusive. In short, it's nothing to worry about."

 

Yeah, I always thought that lightening strikes were fairly common and pretty harmless. Flight recorder sitting at the bottom of the ocean must hold the clues required to establish the cause, but it'll be a long way down and as yet I haven't heard anyone suggest they'd located the aircraft or debris.

 

How accurate is radar to one's location? I'm curious if that gives them a pretty good idea of where to look.

Even if they landed the plane like they did in the Hudson, they would have all died by now of hypothermia.

 

It will give them a huge area to cover however, which is the problem. General location at sea means... hundreds of square miles to cover. I used to live in Shetland Islands and often boats or people would go missing in storms or tragic accidents. Even with a fair idea of where something occurred it took a long time to find debris, survivors or the like. It depends on a whole host of variables such as the conditions at sea, tidal chase, currents, whether the plane broke up, whether they travelled below radar for very long (probably not). Anyhoo, it's probably sunk! Debris is what they are now looking for, the stuff that drifts on the surface is equally deceptive, but they can probably calculate where it came from thanks to currents. It's just spotting something from in the air that is the issue.

 

heard this today and it is such a horrible thing to happen.

I read about them not being able to even get any radar and that it may have have been that in order to keep enough cabin pressure or whatever for the passengers to stay alive they would have had to fly at lower altitudes and therefore they can't be seen via radar, it was something along those lines anyway.

i'd hope that everything is ok but i really can't see it which is a shame for the passengers and crew as well as their family and friends.

 

It's quite said. Cnn has posted the nationalities of the passangers:

The airline company identified the nationalities of the victims as two Americans, an Argentinean, an Austrian, a Belgian, 58 Brazilians, five British, a Canadian, nine Chinese, a Croatian, a Dane, a Dutch, an Estonian, a Filipino, 61 French, a Gambian, 26 Germans, four Hungarians, three Irish, one Icelandic, nine Italians, five Lebanese, two Moroccans, three Norwegians, two Polish, one Romanian, one Russian, three Slovakian, two Spanish, one Swedish, six Swiss and one Turk.

So it's a international disaster.

The Brazilian Navy has sent ships (3 more in the next hours) and the Brazilian Air Force is using everything they can to try to locate it. Helicopters, transport planes, fighter jets... There's a base of operations already at Fernando de Noronha.

The biggest problem really is that the plane disappeared after it left Brazilian radar space.

Full news here: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/01/air.france.brazil/index.html

 

Really quite crazy, having just flown home a few days ago.

 

Sad how even things as simple as making it home can feel like a luxury when compared to the fates of the less fortunate.

 

I hear that they are now revising their denial that terrorists may have blown the airliner up. The way the debris was scattered over such a large geographical area suggested that the plane came apart at altitude. Who knows, but looks less like a weather related incident.

Having previously ruled it out, it's now ruled back in as a possibility.

"All possibilities must be examined. We cannot, by definition, exclude a terrorist attack, because terrorism is the main threat for all Western democracies," Herve Morin, the French Defence Minister, said. "But today we have no evidence whatsoever of the cause of the accident."

Comes from Times On Line article, plus reports I have been watching in the background this evening. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6415595.ece

 

At this stage it makes sense not to rule out any possibility, but if the earlier reports of the aircraft sending 20-odd automated messages of various electrical system failures over a 3 minute period turn out to be correct, then that would make a sudden in-air break-up less likely.

One thing I've been wondering about - most reports have indicated that the flight may have continued on for some time after radar contact was lost on the Brazilian side - how much ground radar contact do commercial flights normally have, once they are over large ocean areas?

Either way, my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this.

 

It's actually looking increasingly like a massive explosion, certainly it now looks like they believe break up occurred:

"...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 an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash......" (Associated Press).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090604/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_plane

The Sun newspaper also had a quote from a time served pilot with 10 years experience of the plane in question, again wishing to remain anon, who believed that it was nigh on impossible to imagine that the electrical system failed other than under catastrophic conditions such as the plane coming apart in mid air.

Despite Air France having received bomb threats days before the incident, nobody has claimed responsibility, but I found this part interesting in the Sun article: "...Last night it emerged air safety chiefs ordered changes to Airbus 330-200 jets four years ago amid fears lightning could ignite fuel tanks. Air France is seeing if they had been made to the doomed jet..."

 

Yeh, Today they pretty much confirmed that.

Airbus is telling to other pilots what to do when the aircraft starts to give out erroneous readings.

I wasn't going to say this but I can now.... this is why you should avoid Airbus.

 

Until the A330 disappeared over the ocean, the Airbus had an excellent passenger safety record.

There was actually an article about this the other day, but I cannot find it now, however the gist of it was that since the plane went into production in '93 (If memory serves me well), no passengers have been killed on board A330 although 2 pilots were killed during test flights. This was put down to pilot error.

However, there had been a couple of incidents involving the autopilot disengaging all of a sudden.

One story about this missing plane that really upset me (probably because I am a parent) was that of a family of 4 who had decided to split up and take 2 different flights from Rio back to Paris due to the plane being full. The father and daughter made it to Paris on an earlier flight, but the mother and son were lost on board the missing plane. The missing child was not much older than my youngest and the thought of what those poor people have endured is losing loved ones is beyond my comprehension.

I really hope that they can locate the black box recorders, but they are said to be in an area that has a maximum depth of 11,000ft. It's also in a very volatile area with daily weather issues that may hamper any salvage attempts. The guy responsible for locating and getting down to the Titanic expressed his opinion that it may be impossible and that the conditions were second only to those found at the poles.

This is another reason to wonder whether this may have been a deliberate attempt to down the aircraft, as where better to eliminate evidence and cause the greatest difficulties than deep into the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

From now on in, I guess it's going to continue to be speculated over until the place is actually located, if indeed that ever happens.

 

But how many people hate the french? Might not be terrorism at all....

 

I really don't believe it being an act of terrorism. Brazil is a friendly country and i don't see any hate towards France (not that i remember).

Plus, most flights arriving/leaving Rio or São Paulo to/from Europe are always full of people with different nationalities. Like i previously posted the Flight 447:

The airline company identified the nationalities of the victims as two Americans, an Argentinean, an Austrian, a Belgian, 58 Brazilians, five British, a Canadian, nine Chinese, a Croatian, a Dane, a Dutch, an Estonian, a Filipino, 61 French, a Gambian, 26 Germans, four Hungarians, three Irish, one Icelandic, nine Italians, five Lebanese, two Moroccans, three Norwegians, two Polish, one Romanian, one Russian, three Slovakian, two Spanish, one Swedish, six Swiss and one Turk.

 

Now they are saying they dint find any of the wreck...

 

maybe they are "Lost" somewhere in the space continuum.
afterall they never found the airplane.

on a more serious note, situation is eerie, let's hope everything turns out ok(if that's even possible after few days).

I cannot imagine what relatives of missing people are going through right now...:crying: