Air France jet 'disappears' over Atlantic.

Not looking good.


Full read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/wo...2plane.html?em

Snip:
===============
PARIS — Air France said Monday that it had lost radar contact with an
Airbus A330 passenger plane travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Officials said that search efforts were underway around a small island
off the Brazilian coast.

“We have received no news from Flight AF 447,” said an Air France
spokeswoman in Paris, Brigitte Barrand.

The plane was carrying 228 people — 216 passengers and 12 crew
members. Among the passengers were 126 men, 82 women, seven children
and one infant, the airline said. There were nine cabin crew members
and three pilots.

One hour after the flight took off at 7 p.m. local time on Sunday, the
plane encountered “very heavy turbulence,” the Air France spokeswoman
said. The plane disappeared from radar screens at 8:10 a.m. local
time, 10 minutes after the heavy turbulence was reported. However, she
and other officials briefed on the situation said it was not known if
the turbulence caused the disappearance.

All jets are built to withstand severe turbulence, especially at upper
flying levels, and Ms. Barrand said that the pilot was very
experienced, having clocked 11,000 flying hours, including 1,100 hours
on A330 jets.
=========

On Jun 1, 5:38*am, Duh_OZ wrote:
Not looking good.

Full read:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/wo...2plane.html?em

Snip:
===============
PARIS — Air France said Monday that it had lost radar contact with an
Airbus A330 passenger plane travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Officials said that search efforts were underway around a small island
off the Brazilian coast.

“We have received no news from Flight AF 447,” said an Air France
spokeswoman in Paris, Brigitte Barrand.

The plane was carrying 228 people — 216 passengers and 12 crew
members. Among the passengers were 126 men, 82 women, seven children
and one infant, the airline said. There were nine cabin crew members
and three pilots.

One hour after the flight took off at 7 p.m. local time on Sunday, the
plane encountered “very heavy turbulence,” the Air France spokeswoman
said. The plane disappeared from radar screens at 8:10 a.m. local
time, 10 minutes after the heavy turbulence was reported. However, she
and other officials briefed on the situation said it was not known if
the turbulence caused the disappearance.

All jets are built to withstand severe turbulence, especially at upper
flying levels, and Ms. Barrand said that the pilot was very
experienced, having clocked 11,000 flying hours, including 1,100 hours
on A330 jets.
=========

There is no such atmospheric turbulence at that cruising altitude,
much less lightening. However, this is also the prime downrange
gauntlet for satellite junk.

~ BG

BradGuth wrote:

There is no such atmospheric turbulence at that cruising altitude,
much less lightening.

Tropical thunderstorms can rise as high as 50,000 feet. Well above the
cruising altitudes of commercial aircraft. The local weather data at the
time of the flight indicates very unstable air in the area.

BradGuth wrote:
There is no such atmospheric turbulence at that cruising altitude,
much less lightening.

I've seen both lightening and darkening at those altitudes.
Pretty much depends on when you take off and how long
the flight is.

However, this is also the prime downrange
gauntlet for satellite junk.

Oh, right, getting hit with a bit of de-orbiting junk is a
WHOLE lot more likely than turbulence or lightning...

Bob M.

In article ,
"Bob Myers" wrote:

BradGuth wrote:
There is no such atmospheric turbulence at that cruising altitude,
much less lightening.

I've seen both lightening and darkening at those altitudes.
Pretty much depends on when you take off and how long
the flight is.

However, this is also the prime downrange
gauntlet for satellite junk.

Oh, right, getting hit with a bit of de-orbiting junk is a
WHOLE lot more likely than turbulence or lightning...

Bob M.

After the set-up, I was rather disappointed that this was the best he
could come up with. I was at least expecting some sort of Rogue Nation
missile test or perhaps run afoul of America testing some new laser
weapon. Not much Conspiracy Theorists can do with space junk.

--
The inevitable Godwinization of Usenet threads is a principle
as immutable as Newton's Third Law meaning that, for every action
there is an equally disproportionate overreaction.

Kurt Ullman wrote:

missile test or perhaps run afoul of America testing some new laser
weapon. Not much Conspiracy Theorists can do with space junk.


It was Dick Cheney and his ilk still trying to insult France for not
having supported their war crimes in Iraq. Cheney still controls all the
secret undocumented weapons that were deployed around the world without
the knowledge of the USA military.

Is that a better conspiracy theory ?

On Jun 1, 5:38*am, Duh_OZ wrote:
Not looking good.

Full read:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/wo...2plane.html?em

Snip:
===============
PARIS — Air France said Monday that it had lost radar contact with an
Airbus A330 passenger plane travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

can't they use GPS to find the jet

wrote:

can't they use GPS to find the jet

Not sure if the ACARS system trasmits the aircraft's current location or
not. But even if it does, having an aircraft at 33k feet altitude flying
at 800/900km/h when there is a total system failure does not give you
very precise location of where the wreckage will fall.

Consider the Transat glider (another A330) which was able to glide for
roughly 30 minutes without engines, and they started from about 20k feet
altitude.

At 33k feet, if they have some control over the aircraft, they could
have travelled a fair distance before crashing in the water.
If the aircraft broke up right away, then it would have quickly lost
forward momentum and fallen down quicky (as did TWA800 or the AirIndia
aircraft).

IF the pilots were able to get some form of control over aircraft and
glided for some time, changes would be that they would have had time to
radio a mayday signal.

A survivable landing on ocean in total darkness has extremely low odds,
especialy of the aircraft wouldn'T have enough power to turn on its
headlights.

BradGuth wrote:



There is no such atmospheric turbulence at that cruising altitude,
much less lightening.

Oh yes there bloody is.


However, this is also the prime downrange
gauntlet for satellite junk.

Wooo...

Tin-foil hat time...

--
William Black

On Jun 1, 9:24*pm, John Doe wrote:

At 33k feet, if they have some control over the aircraft, they could
have travelled a fair distance before crashing in the water.

This was an Airbus, so the control by the pilot in an emergency is
limited. This is one of the reasons why Airbus planes have a much
poorer safety record than Boeing planes. There's a good article about
this at "http://www.seattlepi.com/business/boe202.shtml".