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 ...
“I hate that Airbus “fly by wire” crap, where the computer automatically overrides anything a pilot tries to do.”
You mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EM0hDchVlY
Do pilots routinely report turbulance while in flight? The report says the plane is built to survive extreme turbulance. What do I know but in todays technology if it had crashed into the ocean location could be found correct?Something is fishy with this. How profoundly sad.
If it ain't Boeing I ain't going.
PARIS (Reuters) - An Air France plane with 228 people on board went missing on its way from Brazil to Paris on Monday, after hitting strong turbulence...
Air France said in a statement the plane sent an automatic message reporting an electrical short-circuit at 0214 GMT, roughly 15 minutes after flying into the turbulence.
“There was very, very strong turbulence. For now we can't understand what happened,” Borloo, the second most senior in the government, said on France Info radio.
“Apparently the possibility of a hijacking has been excluded,” Borloo said.
The jet's last known location was unclear.
A government source in Brazil said the plane disappeared from Brazilian radars at around 0130 GMT, about three to 3 1/2 hours into its flight. That would mean controllers lost track of the plane while it was closer to Brazil than to France.
RADAR HOLE
Pilots stay in contact with traffic control across the Atlantic by radioing in their position every 20 to 30 minutes. There is no radar cover because radar can only ‘see’ along a direct line of sight.
“Anything that's the other side of the horizon cannot be seen by radar, so once you've gone 200 or 300 miles off the coast, radar cannot see you any longer,” said David Learmount of Flight International.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5501PB20090601
Did it fly into a storm it shouldn’t have?
We’re sometimes victims of two kinds of mistakes in this life: other peoples’ and our own.
Flew into a storm and was hit by lightning.
Last contact with Air France jet off Brazil coast 8:18am EDT Brazil air force starts search for Air France jet 7:03am EDT Missing plane out of fuel by now: French minister 7:19am EDT Featured Broker sponsored link By Estelle Shirbon
PARIS (Reuters) - An Air France plane with 228 people on board went missing on its way from Brazil to Paris on Monday, after hitting strong turbulence, prompting military jets to take off from both sides of the Atlantic to search for it.
Air France said in a statement the plane sent an automatic message reporting an electrical short-circuit at 0214 GMT, roughly 15 minutes after flying into the turbulence.
Senior French minister Jean-Louis Borloo ruled out the possibility of a hijacking of the flight AF 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
"There was very, very strong turbulence. For now we can't understand what happened," Borloo, the second most senior in the government, said on France Info radio.
"Apparently the possibility of a hijacking has been excluded," Borloo said.
“Flew into a storm and was hit by lightning.”
Aren’t they supposed to go around or over those storms?
You would think they would fly around the storm. But looking at another weather radar loop, it looked like the storm of the coast of Brazil intensified very quickly last night around the time contact was lost.
“Do pilots routinely report turbulance while in flight?”
Yes, especially for the benefit of following flights.
If it ran out of gas it probably did not run out of radio before it went down. “Lost contact” sounds more like a sudden termination- fumes in the center tank, maybe. Doesn’t the Koran say something about such fumes?
For what it’s worth, I think the typical path of a GUA - MIA flight would put it well inland, at few thousand km west of the longitude where this incident may have taken place — not that turbulence of such magnitude cannot take place with equal likelihood over land or over sea.
The Richard Clarke special. I hate that one, too.
Just heard this on the radio, prayers going up for a miracle!!!
ML/NJ
Electrical. 98%.
ML/NJ
All the time.
ML/NJ
Ironic that a “high ranking al Qaeda” operative was arrested in Brazil just last week
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2258816/posts
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