REVscene Automotive Forum - Air France Rio-Paris flight missing with 228 aboard

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Air France Rio-Paris flight missing with 228 aboard

Wow, lets just hope everything is fine.

Quote:

PARIS (Reuters) – An Air France plane on its way from Brazil to Paris has disappeared from radar screens, the Paris airports authority said on Monday.

Flight AF 447 had 228 people on board, Air France said.

It left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. and was expected in Paris on Monday at 11:15 a.m. (0915 GMT), a spokesman for the airports authority said.

Its last known location was unclear.

An Air France-KLM spokeswoman in Amsterdam said there had been no radio contact with the missing plane "for a while".

The people on board are 216 passengers and 12 crew.

The plane was an Airbus 330-200, airport authorities said.

(Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090601/...s_france_plane

Before anyone makes any Lost or Bermuda Triangle references - please don't.

But seriously, how does something like this happen in this day and age. If we can put GPS trackers on those hunk of junk tubs that B.C. Ferries forces us to use then why can't we do the same with airplanes?

The plane was supposed to land more than 3 hours ago. It doesn't look good :(

Quote:

Originally Posted by El Bastardo (Post 6446315)

yea i was thinking the same too

aircrafts have ELT, isn't that for locating an aircraft tho?

did a quick research, finding an ELT isn't easy if they use 121.5MHz

http://www.eaa.org/news/2009/2009-01-29_elt.asp

Here's another update by Reuters:

Quote:

PARIS (Reuters) – An Air France plane with 228 people on board was presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Monday after hitting heavy turbulence during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The airline offered its condolences to the families of the passengers, making clear it did not expect to find survivors.

At least 60 of those on board were French, roughly 60 were Brazilians and two were Slovaks, their countries said.

Air France said the Airbus flew into stormy weather four hours after take-off from Brazil and soon afterwards sent an automatic message reporting electrical faults.

A company spokesman said several of the plane's mechanisms had malfunctioned.

"It is probably a combination of circumstances that could have led to the crash," he said, adding that the airliner might have been hit by lightning.

Aviation experts said lightning strikes on planes were common and were not enough alone to explain a disaster.

The Brazilian air force said the plane was far out over the sea when it went missing.

Military planes took off from the island of Fernando de Noronha off Brazil's northeast coast to look for it and the Brazilian navy sent three ships to help in the search.

France sent one of its air force planes from west Africa.

Flight AF 447 left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. (4:00 p.m. EDT) and had been expected to land at Paris's Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday at 11:15 a.m.

STORM PATCH

On its flight northeast from Rio, the jetliner would have had to pass through a notorious storm patch shifting around the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

"It is a zone in the tropics where you can have particularly deep thunder clouds," said Barry Gromett, a meteorologist at the London Weather Center.

The carrier said 216 passengers were on board, including seven children and one baby, as well as 12 crew members.

The passenger list was not released, but French tire company Michelin said the head of its Latin American operations, Luis Roberto Anastacio, had been on the flight.

Tearful relatives and friends were led away by airport staff after they arrived at Roissy expecting to greet the passengers.

About 20 relatives of passengers also arrived at Rio's Galeao airport on Monday morning seeking information.

Bernardo Souza, whose brother and sister-in-law were on the flight, complained he had received no details from Air France.

"I had to come to the airport, but when I arrived I just found an empty counter," he said.

Senior French government minister Jean-Louis Borloo ruled out the possibility of a hijacking.

"It's an awful tragedy," he told France Info radio.

If no survivors are found it will be the worst loss of life involving an Air France plane in the firm's 75-year history.

The plane was an Airbus 330-200 powered with General Electric engines. If the plane is confirmed to have crashed, it would be the first time an A330 has been lost during an operational airline flight.

Air France said the plane had 18,870 flight hours on the clock and went into service in April 2005. It last underwent maintenance in a hangar in April this year.

The last major incident involving an Air France plane was in July 2000 when one of its Concorde supersonic airliners crashed just after taking off from Paris, bound for New York.

All 109 people on board were killed along with at least four on the ground.

(Additional reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey, Gerard Bon, Astrid Wendlandt and Tim Hepher in Paris, Pedro Fonseca in Rio; editing by Crispian Balmer and Richard Meares)

wow... RIP, i guess.. the flight shouldve been cancelled due to bad weather? thats realli sad to hear..

RIP...such a shitty way to die...gotta endure 5-10 minutes of horror before it's over...getting shot by a gun is so much easier!

no way everything is fine.. rip
this type of shit is my worst nightmare..
ive flown a lot but i hate flying word to dj am

rip
i still remember the 2000 concorde crash caught on a vid

Quote:

Originally Posted by El Bastardo (Post 6446315)

The purported lightning strike could have destroyed the satellite tracking transmitter on the airbus. Athough the ELT's and FDR/CDR's are supposed to be self contained and bulletproof, it's possible they might have been damaged electrically during the weatherstorm as well.

In addition, if the ELT and FDR/CDR's are still working, but they are not floating on the surface of the ocean, it will be impossible to find them, as the ocean is extremely deep where the wreckage would be.

thats sad

the plane was all good before it took off too

Thinking about it just gives me the chills and sad thoughts for the passengers/families.

sorry to hear that RIP to those on board
thats a really bad way to go....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rich Sandor (Post 6446536)

I have never heard of FDR/CDR? what are they.

also from my understanding, aircrafts are lightening proof, it could damage some electricals, but that's only for few seconds...it should have that little propeller thing to generate electricity by itself.

also A330 is a big aircraft, it wouldn't just crash because of turbulance...it was way up in the sky too. If it does ever spin/stall because of turbulance, the pilot should have time to recover.
Microburst can be hazardrous to big planes too, but I don't think you would see it above the cloud.

if they can find a black box I guess NTSB can find what went wrong.

RIP...

They were cruising at approximately 35000 feet in the air... if I calculated it correctly, that means they would have about 90 seconds in a free fall.

What would you do in the last 90 seconds of your life inside the airplane?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timpo (Post 6446588)

I have never heard of FDR/CDR? what are they.

Flight Data Recorder/Cockpit Data Recorder

that is just sad to hear, rip

Quote:

Originally Posted by InvisibleSoul (Post 6446596)

Probably would have been a lot longer than that, chances are the pilots would have tried everything they could to bring it down slowly, give themselves time to restore power, and ultimately to attempt to ditch as gently as possible so the passengers could evacuate. Big jets DO have some glide capability, so it's possible they had a good 5-10 minutes before hitting the water.

RIP
Indeed, it is a tragic way to end life... Imagine the horror...

insert Lost Theme Music..

RIP