Posted on 06/06/2009 9:56:25 AM PDT by traumer
Bodies from the Air France passenger plane that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil have been found by search teams.
The news comes it was revealed the airliner sent out 24 automatic error messages in its final moments as its systems broke down one by one.
The head of the French agency probing the tragedy said signals from the jet before it disappeared showed its autopilot was not on.
Paul-Louis Arslanian said it was not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings.
He said investigators were searching a zone of several hundred square miles in the Atlantic Ocean for the debris.
Plane manufacturer Airbus said an investigation found Air France Flight 447 had inconsistent readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm.
The plane, with 228 people on board, disappeared early on Monday as it made its way from Rio de Janiero, heading to Paris.
The wreckage of the jet has not been found, despite days of intensive searching by air and sea.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
How many such threats do they receive in a year...worldwide???
NO, the truth will “NEVER” be revealed.
I remember when an Allegheny Airlines DC-9 collided with a small plane in Shelby County, Indiana. I was about 6 years old....and we were driving down I74 a few hours afterward and there were bodies in trees, luggage, debris everywhere....I will never forget it....
I too have seen firsthand the devastation caused by a massive airplane crash. It took quite some time before I could stop thinking about what I'd seen. You never really appreciate how vulnerable you are as a human being until you see the kinds of things that can happen to flesh and bone.
Thanks for that GS. I am absolutely positive I’m not remembering it incorrectly as it is as a fact embedded in my brain, therefore I had to have read it, and believed what I read at the time. I’ll go with your latter assessment that perhaps it was misreporting as that DOES happen most often during initial reportings on such disasters as the topic.
It was the following report after the initial breaking news posted here at FR as I recall, therefore it was early on in the process of finding out what was going on. Lots of speculation, but “H” that’s still happening.
Besides range, the other issue with the idea of a MANPAD taking down TWA 800 is that the aircraft blew up quickly. It would take a large air defense missile like a Patriot, SM-2 or similar foreign weapons to immediately destroy a large aircraft like a 747.
A smaller missile would have done lesser damage that would have taken it down through loss of engine power, hydraulic control or electrical damage.
I think if muzzie terrorists were responsible they’d be crowing about it by now. Otherwise, what would be the point?
One minor correction (though I think it very unlikely that a MANPADS brought it down): MANPADS can lock up and hit aircraft fuselages and have been able to for a while. If the only aspect the missile could see was the fuselage, well, it’s going to go for that. The percentages for a hit go down, but it does work.
They do tend to go for engines, though.
The 26-year-old is fourth in line (or third, according to other sources) for the (hypothetical) Brazilian throne. Which is flanked by unicorn-riding gryphons. He is descended from Peter II, the last Emperor of Brazil who was overthrown in 1889. His father, Peter (eh… duh), declared himself King of Brazil in a more successful version of our naming ourselves Queen of Queens, loudly, on the corner of Roosevelt.
http://guanabee.com/2009/06/pedro-luis-de-orleans-braganca
Hey, you never know... ;-)
Having fun?
Which crash was it?
I share your trepidation. Was not at the site itself, but I was about five miles from O'Hare when AA 191 went down Memorial Day Friday 1979. It was the horrible, hideous, pitch black smoke engulfing the sky that made it suddenly very real.
I know all the statistics about how commercial flying is the absolute safest method of transport between points A and B. I have reasoned through the data regarding persons vs. miles traveled vs. incident free days-weeks-months-years. I know it. I know all about it.
Bottom line, that is just NOT how I want to leave this earth. Whether it'd be five seconds, forty seconds, or five minutes, I can't imagine what would go though a person's mind.
I know where I'm going afterward too, but the potential of "that descent" is one of the most sobering risks of the human or mechanical fallability of our high-tech culture.
It was Flight 77 a few days after 9-11. My job just happened to put me in the way of the body processing and I was asked to volunteer. Everyone was feeling especially angry and patriotic at the time, and I didn’t turn down a request that otherwise I might have declined. I found myself right in the middle of more pieces of human mortality than I could ever have wanted to see. I hadn’t flown excessively before that time, but that was the start of my being nervous when flying.
I share your feelings about “that descent,” not in a reasoning way, but in some strange, primal sense. It’s fascinating being up there and looking down, but at the same time, I often let my imagination go wild and wonder how I would feel if suddenly I were hurled outside the airplane, falling through that vast expanse of sky. Just that thought, let alone the prospect of hitting the ground, is enough to give me the creeps!
Yes, and you've provided the condensed version!
Glad to help - we live in a Cliff Notes world. And after all, who needs discussions of air traffic safety, when you can get right to screaming people flying through the air and having their brains exploded through the back windshields of parked cars? Now that's what I call an air travel story for people nervous about flying!
Interestingly he attended the same school as BHO, Punahou, but he was class of '27.
As recently as 2007, the Advertiser published a profile West that focused on his memories of the; attack. For many years. West was something of a celebrity around the city as he met with tourists Weekly who wanted' to meet and talk to a Pearl: Harbor survivor.
It also states:
West is survived by. three children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
You'd think he might have mentioned the rather unsual (in '61) of a black baby, and remember the article says he knew BHO Sr was black, to a white mother named Stanley, to at one of those kids or grandkids, especially after BHO began to get some national attention, which was well before Dr. West passed away.
That's Dr. West in the Green floral shirt, the same shirt he was wearing when he greeted President Bush. (or one just like it anyway). He looks about the same in both photos. The one with Bush is contained in the file at the Pearl Harbor Survivors link above.
Or the skin ripping off a good chunk of the airframe due to aerodynic stresses after being weakened by the missiles warhead. Or the warhead could have ignited some fuel as well.
Airplanes are pretty stressed machines. When they are disrupted, all sorts of strange things can, and do, happen.
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