High seas search for Air France jet with 228 aboard

* 228 people feared dead as jetliner goes missing
* Brazilian, French planes search for wreckage in ocean
By Pedro Fonseca

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 2 (Reuters) - Search planes scoured the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean early on Tuesday, looking for the remains of an Air France jetliner that disappeared in a severe storm with 228 people on board.

The Airbus A330 went missing on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said there was little chance of finding any survivors.

France and Brazil sent military aircraft and ships to try to find wreckage on high seas between Brazil and West Africa.

Brazilian carrier TAM said the crew of one of its planes saw "bright spots" on the surface of the ocean, but Brazil's air force said a merchant ship in the area found no signs of burning debris from the Air France jet.

"We will search all night long and keep going through dawn," said Colonel Jorge Amaral of the Brazilian air force. "We have to work as if it were possible to find survivors."

If none are found, it would be the worst disaster in Air France's 75-year history and the deadliest since one of the company's supersonic Concorde planes crashed in 2000.

Air France flight 447 left Brazil on Sunday night and lost contact with air traffic controllers in the early hours of Monday morning.

It was carrying 216 passengers of 32 nationalities, including seven children and one baby, Air France said. Sixty-one were French citizens, 58 Brazilian and 26 German. Twelve crew members were also on board. Tearful relatives in Paris and Rio were attended to by teams of psychologists.

One of the Brazilians on board was Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, a direct descendant of Dom Pedro II, the last emperor of Brazil, a spokesman for the royal family told Reuters.

Executives from French tire company Michelin, the Brazilian unit of German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp, and Brazilian mining giant Vale were also among the passengers, said company officials and family members.

ELECTRICAL FAILURE

The Air France plane flew into turbulent storms four hours after taking off from Rio and 15 minutes later sent an automatic message reporting electrical faults, the airline said.

The company said a lightning strike could be to blame and that several of the mechanisms on the Airbus 330-200, which has a good safety record, had malfunctioned.

But aviation experts said lightning strikes on planes were common and could not alone explain a disaster. Sources with access to flight data sent to the World Meteorological Organization said two Lufthansa jets passed through the same area of turbulence on Monday without incident.

Experts also said the plane could have suffered an electrical failure, effectively leaving the pilots "blind" and making the plane more vulnerable in an area notorious for harsh weather.

Brazil's air force, which last had contact with the plane at 0133 GMT on Monday when it was 565 km (350 miles) from Brazil's coast, sent six jets to look for it and the navy dispatched three ships to help. Aviation specialists said it could take a long time to locate the black box.

France sent one of its air force planes from West Africa and several ships. It also asked the United States to assist in locating the crash site using satellite data.

Air France said the plane, which was powered with General Electric engines, went into service in April 2005. It last underwent maintenance in a hangar in April this year.

http://www.reuters.com/

This is just horrible. I can't imagine what the passengers familys are going through. You'd have to assume that everyone is dead. There is no mention in any of the reports about any islands nearby for a LOST style crash landing with survivors.

Great article here with some info on might have happened to make the plane go down:

What happened to Flight 447?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE55059220090601?sp=true

Wow that's insane!

There was a bit about this on the news tonight, of course, and I have a real beef with the people who record, and broadcast, footage of things like the families waiting for news on their loved ones. These people are grieving for their families and the news companies go in there with their cameras and shove them in their faces to get a shot of them crying to put on the news.

I have always thought this was in such bad taste. I also think funerals should be a news no-go zone.

I understand the need to report news, and get reactions from those who are effected, but do we really need to see footage of grieving people crying and trying to deal with the lose of a loved one? Isn't it enough for the newsreader to just say that the loved ones are gathered at the airport waiting for news? Why do I need to see the footage? Do the news companies think we wont believe them unless they have the footage?

I just think if that was me waiting for news on my loved one who had disappeared/ died in a tragic accident, I would not want news cameras in there filming me and I would probably go off at the camera man as well.

Do they need to get you to sign a waiver before they broadcast the footage of you? Do they have to stop recording if you ask them too? Can you sue the news company for invasion of privacy if they don't? If they continue filming and you punch a camera man in a situation like that, are you charged with assault?

This isn't like paparazzi where they're filming someone who has volunteered themselves to be in the public eye, these are normal people dealing with a horrible ordeal. I just think they should be left alone.

I barely caught a mention of this on CNN. No one is talking about it. Weird. Just goes to show what passes for news over here.

The fuckin' Octomom, douchey John & Kate, and the gay marriage war is about what's on these days.

-HECK!

Debris Confirms Crash Of Air France Flight 447

3-Mile Path Of Wreckage Found, Official Says

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil -- An airplane seat, a fuel slick and pieces of white debris scattered over three miles of open ocean marked the site in the mid-Atlantic Tuesday where Air France Flight 447 plunged to its doom, Brazil's defense minister said.


Brazilian military pilots spotted the wreckage, sad reminders bobbing on waves, in the ocean 400 miles northeast of these islands off Brazil's coast. The plane carrying 228 people vanished Sunday about four hours into its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.


"I can confirm that the five kilometers of debris are those of the Air France plane," Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told reporters at a hushed press conference in Rio. He said no bodies had been found and there was no sign of life.


The effort to recover the debris and locate the all-important black box recorders, which emit signals for only 30 days, is expected to be exceedingly challenging.


"We are in a race against the clock in extremely difficult weather conditions and in a zone where depths reach up to 22,966 feet," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told lawmakers in parliament Tuesday .

Brazilian military pilots first spotted the floating debris early Tuesday in two areas about 35 miles (60 kilometers) apart, said Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral. The area is not far off the flight path of Flight 447.

Jobim said the main debris field was found near where the initial signs were spotted.


The cause of the crash will not be known until the black boxes are recovered -- which could take days or weeks. But weather and aviation experts are focusing on the possibility of a collision with a brutal storm that sent winds of 100 mph straight into the airliner's path.


"The airplane was flying at 500 mph northeast and the air is coming at them at 100 mph," said AccuWeather.com expert senior meteorologist Henry Margusity. "That probably started the process that ended up in some catastrophic failure of the airplane."


Towering Atlantic storms are common this time of year near the equator -- an area known as the intertropical convergence zone. "That's where the northeast trade winds meet the southeast trade winds -- its the meeting place of the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere's weather," said Margusity.


But several veteran pilots of big airliners said it was extremely unlikely that Flight 447's crew intended to punch through a killer storm. "Nobody in their right mind would ever go through a thunderstorm," said Tim Meldahl, a captain for a major U.S. airline who has flown internationally for 26 years, including more than 3,000 hours on the same A330 jetliner.


Pilots often work their way through bands of storms, watching for lightning flashing through clouds ahead and maneuvering around them, he said.

"They may have been sitting there thinking we can weave our way through this stuff," Meldahl said. "If they were trying to lace their way in and out of these things, they could have been caught by an updraft."

The same violent weather that might have led to the crash also could impede recovery efforts.


"Anyone who is going there to try to salvage this airplane within the next couple of months will have to deal with these big thunderstorms coming through on an almost daily basis," Margusity said. "You're talking about a monumental salvage effort."


Remotely controlled submersible crafts will have to be used to recover wreckage settling so far beneath the ocean's surface. France dispatched a research ship equipped with unmanned submarines that can explore as deeply as 19,600 feet (6,000 meters).


A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane -- which can fly low over the ocean for 12 hours at a time and has radar and sonar designed to track submarines underwater -- and a French AWACS radar plane are joining the operation. France also has three military patrol aircraft flying over the central Atlantic, two commercial ships reached the floating debris, and Brazilian navy ships were en route.


Even at great underwater pressure, the black boxes "can survive indefinitely almost. They're very rugged and sophisticated, virtually indestructible," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.


"I would expect they'll dedicate the rather substantial resources of the French navy to this," Voss added. "I've got to figure this will go quickly. I'm hoping they'll have stuff up in a month, if not just a few weeks."

Rescuers were still scanning a vast sweep of ocean. If no survivors are found, it would be the world's worst civil aviation disaster since the November 2001 crash of an American Airlines jetliner in the New York City borough of Queens that killed 265 people.


Investigators have few clues to help explain what brought the Airbus A330 down. The crew made no distress call before the crash, but the plane's system sent an automatic message just before it disappeared, reporting lost cabin pressure and electrical failure.


Brazilian officials described a three-mile strip of wreckage, and have refused to draw any conclusions about what that pattern means. But Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, D.C., and former accident investigator for airlines and aircraft manufacturers, said it could indicate the Air France jetliner came apart before it hit the water.


A debris field of that length that is strung out in a rough line rather than in a circle, especially when an airplane comes down from a high altitude, "typically indicates it didn't come down in one piece," Casey said. "But it doesn't have to be a jillion little pieces. It can come down in three or four main pieces, and then the ocean drift takes care of the rest."


Casey cautioned it's possible, although less likely, that the plane did not break apart and spread of the debris field is due entirely to ocean drift. Since the disaster happened in violent weather, thunderstorms and deep ocean swells could have scattered the debris during the 32 hours that passed before it was spotted on Tuesday.


"The big thing to understand right now is we don't know," said Casey, chief operation officer of Safety Operating Systems LLB. "These are tough airplanes. They don't just come apart."

I don't get, if the black boxes are so indestructable why don't they just make the whole plane out of that shit?


Sorry, probably not a good idea to joke right now. But this accident has happened, it's horrible but I guess there are no survivors so the next step is to find out what happened so it doesn't happen again.

Well, it's true.

I guess they need to make them so they float as well

Thats a good point, why dont these black boxes have flaotation devices surronding them? all you need is the same kind of device that sets off an airbag in a car crash

Brazil mistakes trash for plane debris

Brazilian officials say debris they thought was from an Air France crash in the Atlantic was in fact sea "trash", adding to the uncertainties surrounding the jet tragedy.

"Up to now, no material from the plane has been recovered," Brigadier Ramon Cardoso, director of Brazilian air traffic control, told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.

Items, including a cargo pallet and two buoys, pulled from the ocean early Thursday - which Brifadier Cardoso himself had initially said came from downed Air France flight AF 477 - actually came from another source, most certainly a ship.

"We confirm that the pallet found is not part of the debris of the plane. It's a pallet that was in the area, but considered more to be trash," he said.

The pallet was made of wood, and the Air France Airbus A330 did not have any wooden pallets on board. "That's how we can confirm that the pallet isn't part of the remains of the aircraft," he said.

He also said a big oil slick originally thought to come from the plane probably also came from a ship passing through the zone, 1,000 kilometres off Brazil's north-east coast.

Despite the mistake over the debris, it appeared the Brazilian navy was in the right general area where the Air France came down.

Air force planes on Tuesday and Wednesday spotted items in the water, including a seat from a plane and a seven-metre chunk of what looked like fuselage, that Defence Minister Nelson Jobim said were beyond a doubt from the French jet.

Air France flight AF 477 came down early on Monday as it was transporting 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Speculation over what caused the accident has ranged from a massive, lightning-packed storm in the area at the time, to turbulence, to pilot error or a combination of factors.

No mayday call was received from the plane, just a series of data transmissions signaling it had lost power and then had either broken up or gone into a fatal dive.

Memorial services were held on Wednesday in Paris and Thursday in Rio for those on board the plane, though no bodies have been spotted at sea.
Many relatives of the passengers attended, but others declined, refusing to give up hope that somehow, despite the evidence, their loved ones had survived.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said after speaking at the Rio ceremony "it will probably take some time" before the reason for the catastrophe - the worst in Air France's history - would be known.
The point in the Atlantic where the plane came down is "immensely deep," between 3,000 and 4,000 metres, complicating the search for the black boxes, he said.

Mr Jobim on Wednesday called an explosion on board the downed plane "improbable" based on the presence of slicks at the crash site, inferring that the fuel would have burned away in a blast or fire.

But with the biggest of those slicks now found to be oil from a ship, that hypothesis seemed undermined.

Also, a Spanish pilot who was flying at high altitude some distance behind the doomed Air France jetliner said he saw an "intense flash of white light," according to his airline, Air Comet.

A co-pilot and passenger also saw the bright light, according to a report initially given to Spain's El Mundo newspaper and confirmed by AFP.
"Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds," the unidentified captain wrote.

http://www.abc.net.au/

oh crap, so it's still missing? Incredible. Wonder where it's gone.