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Georg Burdicek

Air France A330 F-GZCP Flight AF447 GIG-CDG Crashed Into the Atlantic Ocean All 228 POB Killed

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Just saw the latest updates from Phoenix news, Astro channel 323 saying that there are 8 chinese onboard, acoording to China embassy in Brazil, one of them is from Zhe jiang, China. Not sure how true is that.

How come they say "一名華僑", then "一名中國華來自浙江" and then six other people from a steel company ?

 

The family of the guy whose surname is "Chen" from Zhejiang confirmed with the media that he is onboard the missing flight.

 

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An aircraft owned and operated by Air France disappeared from the radar screens this morning. The aircraft with 215 passengers on board was travelling from Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris, as it disappeared at 8am local time above the sea, approx. 1,15hours before estimated arrival.

 

At the moment no further information is available, but it is said that SAR and rescue teams are looking for evidence.

mate...228 passengers/crew on board

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Oh well, hopefully and the passengers/crews on board can survive through this disaster! !

May God bless them and be with them always !

 

Edited by shane

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Any news? I did a quick check and seems like no confirmed crashed yet... 21mins ago..

 

 

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1902151,00.html

 

Article : What Might Have Made the Air France Flight Disappear Over the Atlantic?

Edited by Irni Mastura

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June 2,2009

Source: PTI

Missing plane hit by multiple technical failures: Air France

 

Paris, June 1 (AFP) A missing Air France passenger jet with 228 people on board suffered multiple technical failures before crashing into the Atlantic, the airline's chief executive said today.

 

"A succession of a dozen technical messages"sent by the aircraft around 0215 GMT (0745 hrs IST) showed that"several electrical systems had broken down"which caused a"totally unprecedented situation in the plane,"said Pierre-Henry Gourgeon.

 

"It is probable that it was shortly after these messages that the impact in the Atlantic came,"he told reporters at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris where the flight from Rio de Janeiro was meant to land today.

 

Gourgeon said that military planes had narrowed down their search area to a zone of a few dozen nautical miles half-way between Brazil and west Africa.

 

The search operation could be aided by the Airbus A330's Argos beacons which will emit signals for several days, he said. Earlier, however, the French space studies agency said they had not picked up any signals from the beacon.

 

http://www.indopia.in/India-usa-uk-news/la...national/2/20/2

 

===

 

Factbox: Nationalities of passengers

 

An Air France plane with 216 passengers and 12 crew on board was presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean amid heavy turbulence on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

 

Air France gave the following official list of passengers of 32 different nationalities.

 

The list differed from earlier numbers given out by the airline in Brazil. Its list did not give details on the crew:

 

61 French

 

58 Brazilians

 

26 Germans

 

9 Chinese

 

9 Italians

 

6 Swiss

 

5 Britons

 

5 Lebanese

 

4 Hungarians

 

3 Irish

 

3 Norwegians

 

3 Slovakians

 

2 Moroccans

 

2 Poles

 

2 Spanish

 

2 US citizens

 

1 Argentine

 

1 Austrian

 

1 Belgian

 

1 Canadian

 

1 Croatian

 

1 Danish

 

1 Dutch

 

1 Estonian

 

1 Gambian

 

1 Icelandic

 

1 Philippines

 

1 Romanian

 

1 Russian

 

1 South African

 

1 Swedish

 

1 Turkish

 

http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/factbox-natio...sengers-2765096

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To put more mystery into the equation :-

 

1. There is no confirmation of crash.

2. If there is no crash the plane should have found land after so many hours in the air and landed. They were scheduled to land at their destination after 10 hours took off but an emergency would demand that they land whenever possible.

3. If it is a crash it is hard to pinpoint the exact location to rescue survivor or retrieve the 2 black boxes. The tropical thunderstorm does help either.

 

Sorry, not trying to pour cold water but we have to prepare fore the worst.

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Very big possibility that the aircraft suffered multiple failures possibly related to the thunderstorm activities. Apparently prior to the aircraft losing total communications, the ACARS sent a number of component failure reports to AF maintenance.

 

The fact that no distress signals were sent out indicates some form of catastrophic electrical/control failure.

 

A lot of speculation points out to lightning involvement as one of the contributory cause of electrical problems. Whatever the case it could not have happened at a worse time and place....at night, in a storm area, remote area of the Atlantic....etc etc.

 

If such a scenario took place, the FDR and the CVR can only confirm events relating to the failures as total loss of electrics will cause the FDR and the CVR to stop recording.

 

The chances of this accident being a survivable one gets slimmer by the minute.

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AF4747 shows the hallmarks of a mid-flight breakup/structural failure. A few years ago, CI 611, which suffered structural breakup at FL350, did not make any distress transmission.

 

http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

af447-route.jpg

 

af447-0215-zoom.jpg

 

3. Conclusions

 

The satellite imagery indicates that numerous cumulonimbus towers were rising to at least 51,000 ft, and were embedded in extensive stratiform anvils with tops of 35,000 to 45,000 ft. This kind of configuration is actually quite normal for equatorial storms due to the higher tropopause height, but it emphasizes that the aircraft was certainly within the bulk of an extensive cumulonimbus cloud field for a significant amount of time and that storms could indeed have been a contributing factor to the crash.

 

Turbulence -- Turbulence is a possible candidate for this incident, if weather related. There is an isolated storm at (1.6,-31.5) that appears suddenly at 0200Z just as the A330 enters the main MCS cluster. From a turbulence perspective it is by far the most dangerous formation found on the loop. However it is 10-25 km to the left of UN873 and it is doubtful the crew would have been deviating at this time. Other cells like this one embedded within the main MCS may have caused severe turbulence. Young updrafts are particularly dangerous to flights because they contain significant rising motion yet precipitation fields have not yet fully developed and airborne radar signatures are weak, reducing the likelihood the crew will deviate around the cell. Another concern is the extensive upper-level dry air shown on the SBFN sounding (not counting the anvil debris at 350-300 mb), which may have contributed to enhanced evaporative cooling in and around the anvil and aggravated the turbulence experienced by the flight.

 

Icing -- With a flight level temperature of -43 deg C suggested by the proximity sounding the A330 would have been flying mostly in rime ice, though if it crossed over an updraft some larger particles and even clear ice might be probable. The sounding does not show substantial amounts of positive energy, so it is unlikely that substantial amounts of supercooled droplets reached flight level. It is believed icing would have been a contributing factor only if the plane was forced by other factors to a lower altitude.

 

Lightning -- Due to the high cloud tops and freezing level at 16,000 ft, there was extensive precipitation by cold rain process and it is likely the MCS was electrified. Lightning of course is a candidate here as the A330 is heavily fly-by-wire; furthermore the loss of gyros inside a cloud at night, if it occurs, will cause complete disorientation. Personally I'm not sure that this was the cause as lightning would probably not take out the entire electronics system, and if it did, the plane probably wouldn't have been capable of transmitting the 0214Z ACARS message.

 

Overall it does appear weather was a factor. In the main MCS alone, the A330 would have been flying through significant turbulence and thunderstorm activity for about 75 miles (125 km), lasting about 12 minutes of flight time. Of course anything so far is speculation until more evidence comes in, and for all we know the cause of the downing could have been anything from turbulence to coincidental problems like a cargo fire.

 

The complete lack of a radio call, though, and the clear evidence that the plane's route crossed through an active complex of thunderstorms does make it likely in my view that structural failure from turbulence occurred.

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/0...r-france-brazil

Brit woman claims to have called husband's cellphone, and it rang...

Last night, a woman from North Yorkshire told the BBC that she believed her husband, Arthur Coakley, from Whitby was on the flight.

 

Patricia Coakley said the couple had spoken on Sunday night, adding that he had called every day and emailed several times a day during a four-week stint in Brazil working on an oil rig.

 

She told Sky News: "He was very excited about seeing his children and going on holiday to Corfu on Friday. My only hope is I keep phoning his mobile … and it rings … so it can't be at the bottom of the sea.

 

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I still hope that all, or at least some of them survived.

 

But if it is to be a crash, I do hope it is due to a man-made cause (such as a bomb) rather than some unexpected natural cause or design error. I hope the A330 will remain to be a very safe aircraft.

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Well if it rings.. it means there's line in the middle of the atlantic ocean??

 

The poor bloke accidentally left it in Rio.

Edited by Naim

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http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.p...-air-france-jet

Hans Weber, head of the Tecop aviation consulting firm in San Diego, offered a hypothesis about the episode, based on his knowledge of severe losses of altitude by two Qantas jets last year.

 

The new Airbus 330 was a “fly-by-wire” plane, in which signals to move the flaps are sent through electric wires to small motors in the wings rather than through cables or hydraulic tubing. Fly-by-wire systems can automatically conduct manoeuvres to prevent an impending crash, but some Airbus jets will not allow a pilot to override the self-protection mechanism.

 

On both Qantas flights, the planes’ inertia sensors sent faulty information into the flight computers, making them take emergency measures to correct problems that did not exist, sending the planes into sudden dives.

 

If the inertia sensor told a computer that a plane was stalling, forcing it to drop the nose and dive to pick up airspeed, and there was simultaneously a severe downdraft in the storm turbulence, “that would be hard to recover from,” Weber said. – NYT

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PWN3D

 

 

For some reason, some Gulf newspapers are ALREADY reporting the incident as a crash. How odd :o

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I just wondering, at that distance from departure, what flight level that A330 might be?

 

and what kind of storm can bring down such a plane at very high altitude (if so).?

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The B777 has fly by wire

 

The Airbus fly by wire is somewhat different though ... Hmmm .. Well , this sorta thing happens , anything can happen really , look at the BA 777 shooting a clear approach with no problems and have twin engine failure . You never know what to expect , it just happens

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The B777 has fly by wire

 

My car also fly-by-wire. If the processor(s) kaput, only tow truck can help. :)

 

02plane.jpg

 

...

and what kind of storm can bring down such a plane at very high altitude (if so).?

 

The odd ones that go up to 50,000+ ft.

 

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I wonder ... with virtually no traffic in that part of the sky, why did the plane not avoid the mess?

 

===

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8078147.stm

 

...

'Experienced' pilot

 

The plane's automatic report was generated at 0214 GMT on Monday, about four hours after Flight AF 447 left Rio de Janeiro, and as it was heading through turbulence towards the west African coast.

 

"A succession of a dozen technical messages" showed that "several electrical systems had broken down" which caused a "totally unprecedented situation in the plane", said Mr Gourgeon.

 

"It is probable that it was shortly after these messages that the impact in the Atlantic came," he told reporters at Charles de Gaulle airport, where the airliner had been due to land.

 

Flight AF 447 was flying at an altitude of 10,670m (35,000ft) shortly before it went missing.

 

A meteorologist who spoke to the Associated Press said tropical thunderstorms in the Atlantic could tower up to 15,240m (50,000ft).

 

"At the altitude it was flying, it's possible that the Air France plane flew directly into the most charged part of the storm - the top," said Henry Margusity, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather.com.

 

French officials have stressed that the plane's captain was very experienced, clocking up more than 11,000 hours of flight.

 

...

Edited by Naim

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