Free Republic

Cruising at 35,000 feet and nearly four hours into what seemed a routine overnight flight to Paris from Rio de Janeiro, an Air France cockpit crew got a stall warning and responded by doing what even weekend pilots know to avoid: They yanked the nose of the plane up instead of pointing it down to gain essential speed. Apparently confused by repeated stall warnings and reacting to wildly fluctuating airspeed indications, pilots of Flight 447 continued to pull back sharply on the controls—contrary to standard procedure—even as the Airbus A330 plummeted toward the Atlantic Ocean, according to information released Friday...

SAO PAULO — A weak signal from the flight data recorders of the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located, French newspaper Le Monde reported on its web site Tuesday. According to the report, French naval vessels picked up a weak signal from the flight recorders on Monday and that a mini submarine has been dispatched to try and find the "black boxes" on the bottom of the rugged ocean floor. An Air France spokeswoman told Reuters she could not confirm the report. The Transport Ministry and the air accident...

An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week, killing all 228 on board, has died in a car accident, Italy's ANSA news agency reported. Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from the Bolzano-Bozen Province (South Tyrol), and her husband Kurt, were vacationing in Brazil and missed Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1. The couple took a flight to Europe later that day. The car veered off the road near Kufstein, Austria, killing Johanna.