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 ...
Back in January 1982, I was flying out of Washington National in a little turbo-prop, on a day trip to New England for a college admission interview. The little plane seemed to be slip-sliding down the runway, and once it was airborne it was being buffeted around a lot by the wind. I arrived at my interview safely, but still nervous and nauseous. Return trip was uneventful. Next day, Air Florida Flight 90 took off from National, hit a bridge after being barely airborne for 30 seconds, and plunged into the Potomac, killing nearly everyone on board and few people on the bridge. I felt nervous and nauseous all over again, but *very* lucky . . .
The threat was in a different country. There are very frequent threats about bombs on commercial flights. Most we never hear about, and all have turned out to be hoaxes. We only heard about the one in Argentina, because of the unexplained Air France crash 5 days later. Until that, the Argentina bomb threat, and subsequent 1.5 hour delay of the flight, was so routine as not to be newsworthy outside of the Buenos Aires media market. And it's still not worth paying attention to.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you used to be able to get a lot closer, until after the Challenger.
Thanks.
I don’t particularly enjoy flying myself. OTOH, I do enjoy long road trips as long as I’m driving or at least in the front seat. I don’t like the idea of being trapped in a metal tube with a bunch of other people flying through the air with absolutely no control over my own fate.
Now that I’ve retired, I have no time constraints to be somewhere “on time” so I drive a lot more and get to enjoy the countryside as well.
I still drive a large comfortable SUV. When they finally force us all into little plastic wagons, I’m sure this will all change though.
I don't think so. I've seen over a dozen launches since I was a little kid back during the days of Apollo. We've watched from a number of different areas, but I can't ever remember being closer than a mile.
There were two different launch pads that were used. The Challenger was either the last to use the old one, or the first to use the new one. This might be the cause of some of the confusion. Also, I think that they've now gone to a third pad as their primary launch site. These are all slightly different distance from the viewing galleries.
It is getting to the point where every aviation accident has it’s instant conspiracy theorists...instead of wasting time on conspiracy theories, use that time to study for a pilots license (at least take a ground school...they are cheap at night schools). Or attend an A&P school and study for your FAA airframe and powerplant license.
We still have a few around here paying lip service to their lies, especially where TWA 800 is concerned.
Regarding the current Air France disaster, I thought an explosion had been ‘ruled out’ based on the wide oil slick they found. As explained by a Brazilian official, the oil would have burned up.
Then they announced the debris in that area wasn’t from this plane.
So I wonder if the oil slick/no terrorism theory still applies. I still believe the aircraft most likely failed from the storm, but their one explanation to disprove terrorism may have been taken away.
That’s my favorite airplane brand also. I don’t bother asking for a single malt since I know I would get a befuddled look!
There are no facts. Nobody knows what brought this plane down. Yet, according to the ostrich brigade, anyone who hasn’t ruled out terrorism, ya know, just because, wears the dreaded “tin-foil hat”.
Maybe it would make y’all feel better if we left open the possibility of a “man-caused disaster” instead.
This one’s easy. The center fuel tank is always suspect in these cases.
Couldn’t resist...
I would suspect those effects would be even more prominent in this crash. I agree with your reasoning here.
I’m gonna say it was a terroists attack. The chances of 24 error messages on such a plane... well it could bad programming also.
We are so fragile, for all our metal superstructures and technology.
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