By ALAN CLENDENNING and GREG KELLER, Associated Press Writer Alan Clendenning And Greg Keller, Associated Press Writer – 10 mins ago
SAO PAULO – A missing Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris ran into a tower of thunderstorms and heavy turbulence over the Atlantic Ocean, officials said Monday, fearing that all aboard were lost.
The area where the plane could have gone down was vast. Brazil's military searched for the plane off its northeast coast, while the French military scoured the Atlantic off the West African coast near the Cape Verde Islands.
Chief Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said "it is possible" the plane was hit by lightning, but aviation experts expressed doubt that a bolt of lightning was enough to bring the plane down.
Air France Flight 447, a 4-year-old Airbus A330, left Rio on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. local time (2230 GMT, 6:30 p.m. EDT) with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, said company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand.
The plane left Brazil radar contact, past the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, about three hours later (10:48 Brazil time, 0148 GMT, 9:48 p.m. EDT), indicating it was flying normally at 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) and traveling at 522 mph (840 kph).
About a half-hour after that, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said.
The plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence" at 0200 GMT Monday (10 p.m. EDT Sunday) and an automatic message was received fourteen minutes later reporting electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure.
That was the last communication sent from the plane, when it was about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of the Cape Verde Islands, according to the Brazilian Air Force.
Meteorologists said tropical storms are much more violent than thunderstorms in the United States and elsewhere.
"Tropical thunderstorms ... can tower up to 50,000 feet (15,240 meters). 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," Henry Margusity, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather.com, said in a statement.
Brazil's air force was searching near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, about 180 miles (300 kilometers) northeast of the Brazilian coastal city of Natal. The region is about 1,500 miles northeast of Rio.
Portuguese air control authorities say the missing plane did not make contact with controllers in Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores Islands nor, as far as they know, with other Atlantic air traffic controllers in Cape Verde, Casablanca, or the Canary islands.
In Washington, a Pentagon official said he'd seen no indication that terrorism or foul play was involved. He spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject.
Sobbing relatives of people aboard the plane arrived at an airport in Sao Paulo to fly onto Rio de Janeiro, where Air France was assisting relatives. Andres Fernandes, his eyes tearing up, said a relative "was supposed to be on the flight, but we need to confirm it," Globo TV reported.
At the Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris, family members who had arrived to meet passengers refused to speak to reporters and were brought to a cordoned-off crisis center.
Air France said it expressed "its sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew members" aboard Flight 447. The airline did not explicitly say there were no survivors, but no sign of the plane had turned up more than 12 hours after it disappeared.
Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, at a news conference, said the plane's pilot had 11,000 hours of flying experience, including 1,700 hours flying this aircraft.
"We are without doubt facing an air catastrophe," Gourgeon said.
Aviation experts said the risk the plane was brought down by lightning was slim.
"Lightning issues have been considered since the beginning of aviation. They were far more prevalent when aircraft operated at low altitudes. They are less common now since it's easier to avoid thunderstorms," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of Flight Safety Foundation, Alexandria, Va.
He said planes have specific measures built in to help dissipate electricity along the aircraft's skin, and are tested for resistance to big electromagnetic shocks and equipped to resist them. He said the plane should be found soon, because it has backup locators that should continue to function even in deep water.
Experts said the absence of a mayday call meant something happened very quickly.
"The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion," Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates told The Associated Press. "Potentially it went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilot on board didn't have a chance to make that emergency call."
Air France crisis center said 60 French citizens were on the plane. Italy said at least three passengers were Italian.
If all 228 people were killed, it would be the deadliest commercial airline disaster since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines jetliner crashed in the New York City borough of Queens during a flight to the Dominican Republic, killing 265 people. On Feb. 19, 2003, 275 people were killed in the crash of an Iranian military plane carrying members of the Revolutionary Guards as it prepared to land at Kerman airport in Iran.
The worst single-plane disaster was in 1985 when a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed into a mountainside after losing part of its tail fin, killing 520 people.
Airbus would not further comment until more details emerged.
"Our thoughts are with the passengers and with the families of the passengers," said Airbus spokeswoman Maggie Bergsma.
She said it was the first fatal accident of a A330-200 since a test flight in 1994 went wrong, killing seven people in Toulouse.
The Airbus A330-200 is a twin-engine, long-haul, medium-capacity passenger jet that is 190 feet (58.8 meters) long. It is a shortened version of the standard A330, and can hold up to 253 passengers. There are 341 in use worldwide today. It can fly up to 7,760 miles (12,500 kilometers).
Rick Kennedy, a spokesman for GE Aviation, expressed doubt that the engine was at fault. He said the CF6-80E engine that powered the Air France plane "is the most popular and reliable engine that we have for big airplanes in the world." He said there are more than 15,000 airplanes flying in the world with that engine design.
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Keller reported from Charles de Gaulle airport in Roissy, France. Associated Press reporters Emma Vandore, Laurent Lemel and Laurent Pirot in Paris and Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Belgium, Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Airlines and Transportation Editor Greg Stec in New York contributed to this report.
Missing French jet hit thunderstorms over Atlantic
Assasin- Admin
- Posts: 12
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Join date: 2009-05-21
Location: Tucson,AZ
Assasin- Admin
- Posts: 12
Points: 70
Join date: 2009-05-21
Location: Tucson,AZ
- Post n°2
Re: Missing French jet hit thunderstorms over Atlantic
by Assasin on Tue Jun 02, 2009 10:01 pm
THE JET DIDNT MAKE IT TO THE DESTINATION HERE IS THE FULL REPORT
FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil – Brazilian military planes found a 3-mile (5-kilometer) path of wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean, confirming that an Air France jet carrying 228 people crashed in the sea, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said Tuesday. Jobim told reporters in Rio de Janeiro that the discovery "confirms that the plane went down in that area," hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.
"There isn't the slightest doubt that the debris is from the Air France plane," Jobim said.
He said the strip of wreckage included metallic and nonmetallic pieces, but did not describe them in detail. No bodies were spotted in the crash of the Airbus A330 in which all aboard are believed to have died.
The discovery came just hours after authorities announced they had found an airplane seat, an orange buoy and signs of fuel in a part of the Atlantic Ocean where ocean depths range from less than 1,610 meters (one mile) to more than 4,800 meters (three miles).
Jobim said recovery of the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders and other wreckage could be difficult because much of the wreckage sank.
"It's going to be very hard to search for it because it could be at a depth of 2,000 meters or 3,000 meters (1.2 miles to 1.8 miles) in that area of the ocean," Jobim said.
The initial discovery of wreckage announced before Jobim spoke came about 36 hours after the jet went missing as it flew from Rio de Janeiro toward Paris.
A Brazilian air force spokesman said the two spots where debris was located suggested the pilots may have tried to turn the plane around to return to Fernando de Noronha.
"The locations where the objects were found are toward the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted," said the spokesman, Col. Jorge Amaral. "That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis."
Amaral said some of the debris was white and small, but did not describe it in more detail.
Jobim made the announcement after two commercial ships that joined the search late Tuesday morning reached sites where the debris was found, a Navy spokeswoman said.
"Once they come across the objects, they will be analyzed to determine if they are parts of the plane or just junk," she said.
A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane and 21 crew members arrived in Brazil on Tuesday morning from El Salvador and was to begin overflying the zone in the afternoon, U.S. officials said in a statement. The plane can fly low over the ocean for about 12 hours at a time and has radar and sonar designed to track submarines underwater.
The French dispatched a research ship equipped with unmanned submarines to the debris site. The subs can explore depths of up to 19,600 feet (6,000 meters). The U.S. was considering contributing unmanned underwater vehicles in the search as well, according to a defense source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
The 4-year-old plane was last heard from at 0214 GMT Monday (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday) about four hours after it left Rio.
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 on both sides of the ocean are trying to determine what brought the plane down, with few clues to go on. Potential causes include violently shifting winds and hail from towering thunderheads, lightning or some combination of other factors.
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. The plane's cockpit and "black box" recorders could be thousands of feet (meters) below the surface.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that if the debris is confirmed to be part of Flight 447, "This will allow us to better determine the search zone."
"We are in a race against the clock in extremely difficult weather conditions and in a zone where depths reach up to 7,000 meters (22,966 feet)," he told lawmakers in the lower house of French parliament Tuesday. Black box recorders can emit signals for up to 30 days.
The chance of finding survivors now "is very, very small, even nonexistent," said Jean-Louis Borloo, the French minister overseeing transportation.
The Airbus A330-200 was cruising normally at 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) and 522 mph (840 kph) just before it disappeared.
But just north of the equator, a line of towering thunderstorms loomed. Bands of extremely turbulent weather stretched across the Atlantic toward Africa.
Borloo called the A330 "one of the most reliable planes in the world" and said lightning alone, even from a fierce tropical storm, probably couldn't have brought down the plane.
"There really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation," Borloo said on RTL radio Tuesday.
France's junior minister for transport, Dominique Bussereau, said the plane sent "a kind of outburst" of automated messages just before it disappeared, "which means something serious happened, as eventually the circuits switched off."
French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said France has three military patrol aircraft flying over the central Atlantic, but could shift its search operations closer to the site of the Brazilian discovery. He said an AWACS radar plane also had been dispatched and should join the operation on Wednesday.
French police were studying passenger lists and maintenance records, and preparing to take DNA from passengers' relatives to help identify any bodies.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin said "we have no signs so far" of terrorism, but all hypotheses must be studied.
Alain Bouillard, who led the probe into the crash of the Concorde in July 2000, was put in charge of France's accident investigation team.
President Barack Obama told French television stations the United States is ready to do everything necessary to find out what happened.
On board the flight were 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians. A lesser number of citizens from 27 other countries also were on the passenger list.
Two Americans living in Rio de Janeiro were on board. Michael Harris, 60, a geologist, and his wife Anne, 54, were headed to Europe for work and vacation. They lived previously in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Among the passengers were three young Irish doctors, returning from a two-week vacation in Brazil. Aisling Butler's father John paid tribute to his 26-year-old daughter, from Roscrea, County Tipperary.
"She was a truly wonderful, exciting girl. She never flunked an exam in her life — nailed every one of them — and took it all in her stride," he said.
___
Alan Clendenning reported from Sao Paulo. Associated Press writers Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo; Marco Sibaja in Brasilia; and Angela Charlton, Emma Vandore, Jean-Pierre Verges and Laurent Joan-Grange in Paris contributed to this report.
FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil – Brazilian military planes found a 3-mile (5-kilometer) path of wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean, confirming that an Air France jet carrying 228 people crashed in the sea, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said Tuesday. Jobim told reporters in Rio de Janeiro that the discovery "confirms that the plane went down in that area," hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.
"There isn't the slightest doubt that the debris is from the Air France plane," Jobim said.
He said the strip of wreckage included metallic and nonmetallic pieces, but did not describe them in detail. No bodies were spotted in the crash of the Airbus A330 in which all aboard are believed to have died.
The discovery came just hours after authorities announced they had found an airplane seat, an orange buoy and signs of fuel in a part of the Atlantic Ocean where ocean depths range from less than 1,610 meters (one mile) to more than 4,800 meters (three miles).
Jobim said recovery of the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders and other wreckage could be difficult because much of the wreckage sank.
"It's going to be very hard to search for it because it could be at a depth of 2,000 meters or 3,000 meters (1.2 miles to 1.8 miles) in that area of the ocean," Jobim said.
The initial discovery of wreckage announced before Jobim spoke came about 36 hours after the jet went missing as it flew from Rio de Janeiro toward Paris.
A Brazilian air force spokesman said the two spots where debris was located suggested the pilots may have tried to turn the plane around to return to Fernando de Noronha.
"The locations where the objects were found are toward the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted," said the spokesman, Col. Jorge Amaral. "That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis."
Amaral said some of the debris was white and small, but did not describe it in more detail.
Jobim made the announcement after two commercial ships that joined the search late Tuesday morning reached sites where the debris was found, a Navy spokeswoman said.
"Once they come across the objects, they will be analyzed to determine if they are parts of the plane or just junk," she said.
A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane and 21 crew members arrived in Brazil on Tuesday morning from El Salvador and was to begin overflying the zone in the afternoon, U.S. officials said in a statement. The plane can fly low over the ocean for about 12 hours at a time and has radar and sonar designed to track submarines underwater.
The French dispatched a research ship equipped with unmanned submarines to the debris site. The subs can explore depths of up to 19,600 feet (6,000 meters). The U.S. was considering contributing unmanned underwater vehicles in the search as well, according to a defense source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
The 4-year-old plane was last heard from at 0214 GMT Monday (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday) about four hours after it left Rio.
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 on both sides of the ocean are trying to determine what brought the plane down, with few clues to go on. Potential causes include violently shifting winds and hail from towering thunderheads, lightning or some combination of other factors.
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. The plane's cockpit and "black box" recorders could be thousands of feet (meters) below the surface.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that if the debris is confirmed to be part of Flight 447, "This will allow us to better determine the search zone."
"We are in a race against the clock in extremely difficult weather conditions and in a zone where depths reach up to 7,000 meters (22,966 feet)," he told lawmakers in the lower house of French parliament Tuesday. Black box recorders can emit signals for up to 30 days.
The chance of finding survivors now "is very, very small, even nonexistent," said Jean-Louis Borloo, the French minister overseeing transportation.
The Airbus A330-200 was cruising normally at 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) and 522 mph (840 kph) just before it disappeared.
But just north of the equator, a line of towering thunderstorms loomed. Bands of extremely turbulent weather stretched across the Atlantic toward Africa.
Borloo called the A330 "one of the most reliable planes in the world" and said lightning alone, even from a fierce tropical storm, probably couldn't have brought down the plane.
"There really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation," Borloo said on RTL radio Tuesday.
France's junior minister for transport, Dominique Bussereau, said the plane sent "a kind of outburst" of automated messages just before it disappeared, "which means something serious happened, as eventually the circuits switched off."
French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said France has three military patrol aircraft flying over the central Atlantic, but could shift its search operations closer to the site of the Brazilian discovery. He said an AWACS radar plane also had been dispatched and should join the operation on Wednesday.
French police were studying passenger lists and maintenance records, and preparing to take DNA from passengers' relatives to help identify any bodies.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin said "we have no signs so far" of terrorism, but all hypotheses must be studied.
Alain Bouillard, who led the probe into the crash of the Concorde in July 2000, was put in charge of France's accident investigation team.
President Barack Obama told French television stations the United States is ready to do everything necessary to find out what happened.
On board the flight were 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians. A lesser number of citizens from 27 other countries also were on the passenger list.
Two Americans living in Rio de Janeiro were on board. Michael Harris, 60, a geologist, and his wife Anne, 54, were headed to Europe for work and vacation. They lived previously in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Among the passengers were three young Irish doctors, returning from a two-week vacation in Brazil. Aisling Butler's father John paid tribute to his 26-year-old daughter, from Roscrea, County Tipperary.
"She was a truly wonderful, exciting girl. She never flunked an exam in her life — nailed every one of them — and took it all in her stride," he said.
___
Alan Clendenning reported from Sao Paulo. Associated Press writers Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo; Marco Sibaja in Brasilia; and Angela Charlton, Emma Vandore, Jean-Pierre Verges and Laurent Joan-Grange in Paris contributed to this report.