France - Air France Plane from Rio to Paris Goes Missing Over Atlantic, 1 June 2009

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/11/air.france.crash.daly/

In one way we know a huge amount about the loss of Air France flight 447 -- much more than is usual so soon after an accident. But in another, we know nothing at all.


This Airbus 330 crashed into the Atlantic on June 1 while flying from Rio de Janiero to Paris.

The simple fact is that the blizzard of airworthiness directives, company memos, weather reports, technical specifications and diverse other documents that have surfaced since last week constitute entirely circumstantial evidence.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOegnahAFcEgwJZ4WKGkVz9Dgq5wD98OMU3O0

Brazilian authorities started to identify bodies recovered from a downed Air France jet on Thursday, and the names of victims found 53 miles (85 kilometers) apart in the ocean could help prove whether the jet broke up in the air.

A French ship also reported sighting more bodies, but here was no immediate information on how many were spotted or when they might be picked up, said Brazilian Air Force. Gen. Ramon Cardoso.

Paintr said:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOegnahAFcEgwJZ4WKGkVz9Dgq5wD98OMU3O0

Brazilian authorities started to identify bodies recovered from a downed Air France jet on Thursday, and the names of victims found 53 miles (85 kilometers) apart in the ocean could help prove whether the jet broke up in the air.

A French ship also reported sighting more bodies, but here was no immediate information on how many were spotted or when they might be picked up, said Brazilian Air Force. Gen. Ramon Cardoso.

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I just heard the 50 miles apart; that says the plane came apart in the air, with bodies flying out over a span of up to 5 minutes??

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOegnahAFcEgwJZ4WKGkVz9Dgq5wD98P55D00

A Brazilian ship recovered three more bodies from the Atlantic as searchers said weather and currents complicated their job and warned it is unlikely that all the dead from Air France Flight 447 will be found.

Forty-four bodies have been recovered from the Airbus 330 that crashed into the sea May 31 en route from Brazil to Paris. Bad weather continued over the search area on Friday.



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=as_IAXADNn1c

The Air France plane that crashed June 1 may have partly broken up in the air before hitting the Atlantic Ocean, O Estado de S. Paulo reported, citing investigators it didn’t identify.

Most of the 16 bodies examined in preliminary stages of the probe into the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were found naked or with minimal clothing, suggesting the wind may have removed the garments, the newspaper said. The possibility of an explosion or fire in the jet is also unlikely because the bodies showed no sign of burns, Estado said.

Almost all of the bodies had multiple fractures, the paper reported. Investigators haven’t found water in the victims’ lungs, which would indicate drowning, Estado said. Bodies were found 85 kilometers (53 miles) apart, which may also indicate the Airbus A330-200 broke up before reaching the ocean, Estado reported.


http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-12-2009/0005042924&EDATE=

As the data are analyzed to find the causes of the Air France Flight 447 tragedy, calls are being made for a "live black box", a method of streaming critical flight information in real time to provide insight into incidents in the event that an aircraft's Flight Data Recorder cannot be recovered.


http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTech/News/1132/ca8f89316fce44ba85c3ba22e2836a3c/12-06-2009%2002-06/Flight_447_pic_hoax_revived

Cape Town - A fake email dating from a 2006 plane crash has been revived for the Air France Flight 447 crash, with "two shots taken inside the plane before it crashed".

But the blurry shots of a passenger being sucked out of a gaping hole in an aircraft were ascertained to be screen shots from the pilot trailer for the popular series, Lost.


http://www.news24.com/Content/World/News/1073/88f5520fdcae4dc48a64c97c1764c52f/12-06-2009%2002-06/Airbus_chief_defends_A330

"The A330 is one of the best and safest planes ever built," Enders told the mass circulation daily Bild Zeitung in an interview.

"An Airbus plane takes off every two seconds somewhere in the world, air travel is and will remain the safest means of transport," he added.

It was the first time the Airbus boss reacted publicly to the June 1 crash of the Air France A330 during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris for reasons that remain unclear.

Trino said:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/10/plane.crash.black.box/index.html

The wreckage is believed to be about 15,000 feet deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash. Retrieving anything may be a real challenge.

Meanwhile, the US and France have all but ruled out terrorism. Sources told ABC News that no Islamic extremists were aboard flight 447. A former senior White House official said "no names on the manifest triggered any U.S. intelligence persons of interest."

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7810385&page=1

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Does anyone else find it somewhat concerning (embarrassing) that the names of these two people do not generate interest from the US intelligence side yet we are hearing the names do to foreign intelligence? I think they have stated there was a case of the passengers happening to have the same name but why wouldn't our intelligence sources have this?

Zuckerschnecke said:

Does anyone else find it somewhat concerning (embarrassing) that the names of these two people do not generate interest from the US intelligence side yet we are hearing the names do to foreign intelligence? I think they have stated there was a case of the passengers happening to have the same name but why wouldn't our intelligence sources have this?

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Every country has their own agenda. Someone who's a terrorist to us isn't necessarily a terrorist to other countries - vice versa. For example, Nelson Mandala is on our watch list and needs special permission to enter the US.

Zuckerschnecke said:

Does anyone else find it somewhat concerning (embarrassing) that the names of these two people do not generate interest from the US intelligence side yet we are hearing the names do to foreign intelligence? I think they have stated there was a case of the passengers happening to have the same name but why wouldn't our intelligence sources have this?

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Trino said:

Every country has their own agenda. Someone who's a terrorist to us isn't necessarily a terrorist to other countries - vice versa. For example, Nelson Mandala is on our watch list and needs special permission to enter the US.

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ITA. There is an author of a parenting book who is banned from England. Although I personally agree, I don't think s/he's a terrorist.

In this case, it sounds like there were two passengers with Muslim sounding names that matched people on the watch list. The American gov't may know that they were just duplicate names because they already know where the real people that we are worried about with those names are. Did that make sense?

Did you notice how quickly that story faded? I think one or another gov't confidentially said to France and Brazil, "Psst...It wasn't them."

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=825245

In the photographs, the seats in the crew area were folded with the seatbelts hanging down, which "suggests that the crew was moving about the passenger cabin. If there had been an alert or a warning about a pending risk, the crew would have been seated," he said.

"They did not have the time to do anything," added the former pilot, who also recognised an orange first aid kit that was left intact.

All of which raises the question: Why aren’t commercial planes streaming cockpit video to airlines in real time?

According to Arthur Wolk, America’s pre-eminent aviation expert and lawyer, the technological capability is there, but the support of the union that represents US pilots isn’t.

“The problem is the pilots unions have objected to that because they say that then the companies will be looking over the pilots’ shoulders to make sure that they haven’t exceeded any of the airplanes’ capabilities,” he said.




http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=296832&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/weekinreview/14McNEIL.html?_r=1

Early reports said the jet had gone down with 228 aboard in radio silence, in the middle of a towering tropical storm, untracked on any of the world’s radar screens and in a swath of ocean three times the size of Europe. If anything looked fated for a cliché Bermuda Triangle ending, with the deep refusing to yield up its secrets, this was it.

Interestimg article...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOegnahAFcEgwJZ4WKGkVz9Dgq5wD98PADTO2

Military ships and planes struggled in worsening weather Friday to find more bodies and debris from the Air France jet that likely cracked apart over the Atlantic Ocean. On the coast, investigators examined corpses and received the first wreckage: two plane seats, oxygen masks, water bottles, and several structural pieces, some no bigger than a man's hand.

SeekingJana said:

Cut from a long article here:http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo...wo_Passengers_Shared_Names_Of_Radical_Muslims

"Soon after news of the fatal crash broke, agents working for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), the French equivalent of MI6, were dispatched to Brazil.
It was there that they established that two names on the passenger list are also on highly-classified documents listing the names of radical Muslims considered a threat to the French Republic.
A source working for the French security services told Paris weekly L'Express that the link was "highly significant".
Agents are now trying to establish dates of birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections.
There is a possibility the name similarities are simply a "macabre coincidence", the source added, but the revelation is still being "taken very seriously".
France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan."

It will all be revealed in time. I don't care who blames the crash on the pilot, the weather or some Pitot tubes. The tubes and the weather are cover stories because there were other passenger jet flights the same night through the same storm which didn't crash.
There are also no crashes of the Airbus 330 attributable to Pitot tube malfunctions.

It is looking more and more like the reluctant French are slowly edging the world into the truth-There were known terrorists on board the flight, and the plane exploded in mid-air.

Sadly
Maria

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I don't believe this for an instant. There was bad weather, nothing more. What is it with you? Must you scare everyone from flying? Other articles have said there were no terrorist attacks. Why must you keep bringing it up?

I don't think terrorist connections might scare me anymore than faulty parts, pilots who don't get enough sleep or other "accidents" waiting to happen.

It's all scary but it all needs to be looked at. I'm glad that some aren't simply chalking it up to bad weather because that will happen to most of us during a flight.

We can't change the weather, but we could guard against terrorists blowing up planes.

I think it's an important issue. If it's found to not be true, that's fine, but obviously you can bet more than just people on this forum are taking the possibility seriously.

Paintr said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/weekinreview/14McNEIL.html?_r=1

Early reports said the jet had gone down with 228 aboard in radio silence, in the middle of a towering tropical storm, untracked on any of the world’s radar screens and in a swath of ocean three times the size of Europe. If anything looked fated for a cliché Bermuda Triangle ending, with the deep refusing to yield up its secrets, this was it.

Interestimg article...

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Thanks Paintr for that beautifully written article. Boy, the NYT always comes thru.

The article mentioned that possibly hydrophones picked up the sound of exploding oxygen bottles.

Where are the hydrophones? And do they mean the oxygen supply that feeds the fall down oxygen masks that are above every seat in the plane? Where would these bottles be on the plane? Just trying to figure this out. xox

Hydrophones are underwater microphones, used before sonar. They can convert a sound signal to an electrical signal. I'm surprised they're still around - never thought they could be of use today.

Trino said:

Hydrophones are underwater microphones, used before sonar. They can convert a sound signal to an electrical signal. I'm surprised they're still around - never thought they could be of use today.

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thanks Trino, So do you think this journo was implying these hydrophones were in place under the path of that airplane?

Paintr said:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=825245

In the photographs, the seats in the crew area were folded with the seatbelts hanging down, which "suggests that the crew was moving about the passenger cabin. If there had been an alert or a warning about a pending risk, the crew would have been seated," he said.

"They did not have the time to do anything," added the former pilot, who also recognised an orange first aid kit that was left intact.

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Thanks so much for the update! I'm confused though about the photos. Are the photos taken of the debris that was recovered that still shows the crew seats being folded? It just seems remarkable that the folded seats/seatbelts would still be intact after the crash.

http://www.cctv.com/program/worldwidewatch/20090614/101715.shtml

Military ships and planes are continuing to search for bodies and debris from Air France Flight 447. The jet crashed into the Atlantic on June 1st with 228 people onboard.

The number of bodies retrieved still stands at 44.

Another six have been pulled from the Atlantic by French ships but won't become part of the official death tally until they are counted by Brazilian officials.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a7nHuRxId3II

June 14 (Bloomberg) -- A merchant ship traveling between Uruguay and the United Kingdom found a “medium size” piece of debris from the Air France plane crash site in the Atlantic Ocean, the Brazilian military said yesterday.

The Gammagas, a ship sailing under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda, recovered the debris, which will be transferred to the Brazilian Navy, Vice Admiral Edison Lawrence told reporters in Recife, northeast Brazil. Lawrence didn’t say from which part of the plane the piece came.

http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/20090613196271/wire/world-news/submarine-at-air-france-crash-scene-to-hunt-black-boxes.html

A French nuclear submarine reached the crash zone of Air France Flight 447 on Wednesday to join the search for the plane's black boxes, which may be the key to determining what brought the Airbus down in the sea off Brazil with 228 people on board.

The attack sub Emeraude plans to trawl 13 square miles (35 square kilometres) a day, using sonar to try to pick up the boxes' acoustic beacons or "pingers," French armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck said Wednesday.