Posted on 06/01/2009 3:50:07 AM PDT by rdl6989
(CNN) -- A French passenger aircraft carrying 228 people has disappeared off the coast of Brazil, airline officials say. A file photo shows an Air France jet on take off. Some 228 passengers are aboard the missing aircraft.
A file photo shows an Air France jet on take off. Some 228 passengers are aboard the missing aircraft.
Air France told CNN the jet was traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris when contact was lost.
The airline said flight AF447 was carrying 216 passengers in addition to a crew of 12. The plane is listed as an Airbus A330.
State radio reported a crisis center was being set up at Charles de Gaulle where the plane had been due to land at 11.15 a.m. local time.
Reports said an air force search and rescue operation was underway around the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, 365 kilometers (226 miles) off the mainland.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Oh, how lovely! Are you french? or an american who is exceptionally
good at french?
“Run out of gas?”
It had just taken off
“Weather?”
There are reports of possible turbulance
Extreme turbulence is common in this area. Usually enough to make novice flyers panic, but never severe enough to cause aircraft problems.
However, as one pilot put it, probabilities account for every possible scenario.
I just read that a TAM flight from Miami to Sao Paolo a week ago went through pretty severe turbulence and a number of passengers were seriously injured.
If you're reading Airliners.net as well, you will see several reports of severe turbulence is known in this area, but one poster checked flight conditions and said they were not remarkable.
This is either a mechanical failure or terrorism. I doubt the latter from some reports so far.
How awful!!!
And too often these crashes happend in threes. Two to go.
Sorry, I thought it was an inbound flight.
BULLETIN — AIR FRANCE SAYS PLANE SENT MESSAGE THAT IT HAD ELECTRICAL SHORT-CIRCUIT AFTER STRONG TURBULENCE.
“American Airlines Flight 587”
And one of those passengers that perished had escaped and survived the World Trade Center inferno two months prior.
Talk about fate.
My guess is more mechanical failure, especially if the turbulence was strong enough to literally snap off a flight control surface, especially the vertical tail (given the history of a couple of vertical tail separations on widebody Airbus planes).
I hate vertical tail seperations...and turbulence...
That’s not good.
Airbuses are “fly by wire”.
Oh dear!
This sort of news can really rattle you, can’t it. My daughter flew Air France to London via Paris on Thursday. She does not care for flying and always seems to have an eventful trip.
CNN International
Paris Airport still showing flight as ‘delayed’.
However, government officials are indicating that they expect the worst and are setting up accordingly. A family notification center is being set up, etc.
Satellite loop of the area:
http://www.weather.com/maps/maptype/satelliteworld/brazilsatellite_large_animated.html
More importantly, they’re not as redundant and fault tolerant as a Boeing FBW system.
I hate that Airbus “fly by wire” crap, where the computer automatically overrides anything a pilot tries to do. In adverse conditions, it limits the amount of adjustment that a human being with “touch and feel” can achieve. and then when you have something like a “complete electrical failure” (i.e. the thing that’s driving the “fly by wire” computer in the first place), well...you’re a goner.
That’s why I fly Boeing exclusively. Between parts always seeming to fall off Airbuses in just a bit of adverse conditions, landing gears twisting and locking sideways, and the general socialist tendencies of the company, I’ll stick to all-American safety, tyvm.
I also hate “frayed arcing wires in the center fuel tank”
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