Posted on 06/03/2009 10:30:55 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The vast area over which debris has been found suggested there was an explosion while the aircraft was in flight.
Unnamed experts quoted by the Le Monde newspaper said the "wide dispersion of wreckage discovered suggests that the Airbus (A330-200) exploded at high altitude".
Terrorism has not been ruled out but they said the most likely scenario was that the break-up was caused by massive depressurisation inside the plane.
If such depressurisation had occurred at high altitude, passengers would have almost certainly fallen instantly unconscious and may have been unaware of the their fate.
Professor Philippe Juvin, head of casualty at Beaujon hospital west of Paris, said: "It would have been as quick as the moment when one falls asleep."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The automatic alerts make sense. It’s the absence of manual alerts that seem to indicate something quick and catastrophic taking place.
Now you're spreading rumors. The threat was not against "this very flight." The threat was several days earlier, against a specific flight originating in Buenos Aires.
The data available do not suggest a bomb so much as they suggest a weather-related breakup of some sort.
“Has anyone heard if any passengers contacted loved ones?”
It was way out over/in the ocean. There wouldn’t have been any cell phone signals out there. No towers.
An analysis and thread responses by those with expertise in the field courtesy of Texas Booster on a previous thread:
http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/
Well worth the read.
Well, if we take from the article that sudden - dare I say explosive - decompression causes immediate unconsciousness, would not that happen to the cockpit crew as well? Do they normally have one person on oxygen? Consider the plane is on autopilot, decompression occurs rendering all aboard unconscious or worse, plane flies on as the damage continues to worsen due to aerodynamic forces, sending out the automated messages as it happens, until the plane finally breaks apart at altitude.
Has there ever been a case where an aircraft has blown up in a thunderstorm?
Didn’t think so.
“Practically brand-new airplanes don’t “blow-up” at altitude without some kind of intervening action or cause”
Agreed. But if there were external forces eg bomb there is usually a boastful pronouncement of responsibility. Terrorism doesn’t work in a silent world.
Poor choice of words on my part. I should have said bomb flight against the same airline flying this exact same route.
....sure disaster???
Thought planes were designed to withstand thunderstorms.
Nope. Moose4 discussed that here:
It’s a range issue. Aircraft use AM VHF radio communications on the band between 118 and 136 MHz to talk to air traffic control. Those are basically “line of sight”. Now with the plane being up at 35,000 feet, it’s got a heck of a line of sight and that extends the range considerably. You can use a hand-held airband scanner and hear aircraft 75-100 miles away from you clear as day when you can’t hear the tower at an airport just down the road.But this thing was 400+ miles north of the nearest point of land, and that’s just going to be out-of-range for two-way voice comms on VHF. So for over-ocean flights, they use HF frequencies down in the 5-7 MHz range, shortwave. They can travel thousands of miles, but they’re just like an AM radio around a thunderstorm, and they’re subject to ionospheric interference as well. Typically, as I understand it, the aircraft only calls air traffic control when they cross certain points of their flightplan, and they give their location, speed, altitude, and estimated time of arrival to the next reporting point. Other than that, they’re pretty much on their own; there’s no radar coverage, so ATC can’t see them.
The automated messages that got sent back to Air France maintenance were, I’d imagine, sent via satellite. But satellite transmissions aren’t used to talk to air traffic control. That’s all simple radio communications where the technology really hasn’t changed a whole lot in 50+ years.
Lack of manual communications may not be that unusual.
It wasn't the "exact same route," either. The threat was against a plane flying out of Buenos Aires. Flight 447 originated in Rio de Janeiro.
As for it being "the exact same airline," well, ok ... but I imagine lots of airlines get lots of bomb threats. This could be a very plausible coincidence.
There is no evidence that it "blew up." Indeed, the evidence reported so far seems to indicate a progressive failure extending over several minutes.
I am with you on this one, and I heard on Fox, (but was not quite awake when listening) that the debris field was around 50 miles wide.
Would have to check reliable sources to be sure of that, however...
“”Have any terrorist groups claimed credit? Terrorism doesn’t work if no one knows it was terrorism.””
Exactly. Hence, the reports of weather.
They probably have sat-phones everywhere... the last time I used one it took 3 or 4 minutes to get the call through. Nothing like instaneous, though they may be faster now.
DUH
Aliens did it.
"They" are trying to trick us into believing this was not a terrorist attack (just like TWA 800) to further their goals.
“Thought planes were designed to withstand thunderstorms.”
Absolutely not, even Navy fighters are to skirt them by 10 miles.
A large one will tear rhe wings off of any plane made.
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