Airliners-India

Nimish

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4429304/

Pretty scary thread running on A.net - I don't know the veracity of the information there, but I do hope it's all a mistake and the flight is actually doing well!
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karatecatman · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:25 pm Post subject:

OBSERVER UK
French Airbus vanishes over ocean
Press Association
Monday June 1 2009
A plane with more than 200 passengers on board is missing over the Atlantic.

Contact with the Air France Airbus A330, which was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, was lost off the coast of Brazil.

The plane took off from Rio on Sunday evening and was due to land at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport at around 10.15am UK time.

A message on the Air France website said: "We have no information about that flight."
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karatecatman · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:34 pm Post subject:

www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0142922920090601
Brazil air force starts search for Air France jet
Mon Jun 1, 2009

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 1 (Reuters) - Brazil's air force said on Monday its planes had begun searching for an Air France airliner that went missing on a flight to France.

Henry Wilson, an air force spokesman, told Reuters that planes had taken off from the island of Fernando de Noronha off Brazil's northeast coast to look for the Air France jet, which went missing with 228 people on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
(Reporting by Pedro Fonseca, Writing by Stuart Grudgings)
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vikramv2 · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject:

Its officially confirmed missing. There is no information available aat this time.

http://airliners1.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/air-france-rio-paris-flight-missing-with-228-aboard-breaking-news/
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karatecatman · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 4:53 pm Post subject:

President Sarkozy has directed all Ministers to monitor the situation.

French civil avation authorities are not discounting that the "aircraft may have run out of fuel".

CNN says that technical issues may be in focus as Air France has been repeatedly offering that as a reason for recent flight delays on American flights.
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karatecatman · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:31 pm Post subject:

Air France now says the "plane had a short circuit after hitting turbulence".
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Punjabi Boy · Member Joined: 31 Jan 2008 Posts: 208 Location: LONDON LHR

Better to wait rather than to speculate on what little comments are made by AF.

vikramv2 · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:46 pm Post subject:

They apparently lost contact with the plane 3.5 hours into flight. It was apparently encountering some very heavy turbulence at upper altitudes and they lost contact 10 minutes after the turbulence began. This is beginning to look real bad. Apparently Brazil has scrambled jets to look for possible wreckage, but nothing so far is a little surprising given the fact the would have surely spotted something by now if any.

The pilot has not squawked any other emergency codes too. Atleast thats what is coming out till now
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karatecatman · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:49 pm Post subject:

www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE55029O20090601
Missing plane out of fuel by now: French minister
Mon Jun 1, 2009

PARIS (Reuters) - An Air France passenger jet that went missing during a flight from Brazil to France with 228 on board would have run out of fuel by now, a senior French minister said on Monday.

"By now it would be beyond its kerosene reserves so unfortunately we must now envisage the most tragic scenario," said Jean-Louis Borloo, the second most senior figure in the cabinet.
Borloo told France Info radio that the plane had disappeared from military as well as civilian radar screens.

Prayers. Let's have some hope still.
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Devesh · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 6:27 pm Post subject:

Sources say they fear the worst since Air France has purged the system of the flight. It is now more than two hours overdue.

An automated message from the aircraft was received at 02:14Z indicating short circuits and failure of multiple systems.

http://www.bangaloreaviation.com/2009/06/air-france-airbis-a330-flight-af447-rio.html
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HAWK21M · Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:05 pm Post subject:

Has the ELT signal been traced yet.

The ACARS mesage could also be generated post explosion.then the ROD would be more steep & debris localised.
Hopefully they bellylanded at a remote island.which truthfully seems tough.

regds
MEL
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

no the ELT signal has not been traced yet.

I think France is waiting for Brazils tracing since the last radio contact by the aircraft.
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d3vski · Member Joined: 17 Apr 2009 Posts: 172 Location: LHR T3

There are stories of the aircraft entering really bad weather and electrical storms!

vt-ala · Member Joined: 08 Apr 2008 Posts: 313

Look at this story !! It's unbelievable how our papers can be THIS stupid !!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Bermuda-Triangle-to-blame-for-crash/articleshow/4605926.cms

Bermuda Triangle to blame for crash?
2 Jun 2009, 0032 hrs IST, TNN

Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico mark out a triangular region on the western part of the Atlantic. Also known as the Devil’s

Triangle, this region has become notorious for the seemingly inexplicable disappearances of aircraft and surface-vessels.

There are theories galore “explaining” the disappearances but none that has been able to establish what happens conclusively. Some argue human error, others deliberate sabotage or powerful hurricanes. No merit in the innumerable scientific explanations offered. A sizeable section even pleads for alien abduction or other such paranormal activity beyond the scope of science.

karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:40 am Post subject:

Air France jet debris probably found
2 June 2009 | 08:25 | FOCUS News Agency

Dakar. The authorities in Senegal have announced that they might have found the debris of the Air France passenger jet which went missing over the Atlantic Ocean, Russian Vesti24 television channel reported.
For now it is not clear whether the debris found belong to the missing airplane.
The search operation is underway. Brazilian Air Force aircraft, military ships and U.S. satellites participate in it.

***
France does not confirm debris from missing Air France jet found

2 June 2009 | 07:44 | FOCUS News Agency

Paris. The French aviation company and the crisis center set up by the French government do not confirm the information that the debris of the airliner Airbus А330-200, which went missing on Monday, have been found, Brazilian Estado agency informs.
Earlier an official with the Brazilian Air Force told journalists that the pilot and some crew members of the airplane of Brazilian TAM aviation company had seen orange dots on the ocean surface in the region of the supposed crash of the Air France passenger jet.

***

Something should have been wrong with the Air France Airbus. Authorities now say that a Lufthansa 744 (Brazil-Frankfurt) and a Lufthansa Cargo MD-11 (Brazil-Africa) passed though the same area before and after the Air France plane.
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

a TAM pilot reported of seeing orange dots on the ocean while flying over the area.
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karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 12:41 pm Post subject:

Copyright
Flight path of the Air France jet

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karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:03 pm Post subject:

Passenger details:
Flight deck crew

Flight Captain:
· French
· 58 years old
· Entered Air France in 1988
· Qualified on Airbus A330/A340 in February 2007
· 11,000 flight hours, including 1,700 on Airbus A330/A340

2 co-pilots:
· French
· 37 and 32 years old
· Entered Air France in 1999 and 2004
· Qualified on Airbus A330/A340 in April 2002 and June 2008
· 6,600 flight hours, including 2,600 on Airbus A330/A340
· 3,000 flight hours, including 800 on Airbus A330/A340

Cabin crew
Chief purser:
· French
· 49 years old
· Entered Air France in 1985

2 pursers:
· French
· 54 and 46 years old
· Entered Air France in 1981 and 1989

6 stewards and stewardesses:
· 5 French and 1 Brazilian
· Between 24 and 44 years old
· Entered Air France in 1996 and 2007

***

Air France is now able to confirm the nationalities of the passengers who were on board flight AF 447 on 31 May 2009, which disappeared between Rio de Janeiro and Paris-Charles de Gaulle. This list of nationalities is based on the information provided by the Brazilian Authorities.

2 American
1 Argentinian
1 Austrian
1 Belgian
58 Brazilian
5 British
1 Canadian
9 Chinese
1 Croatian
1 Danish
1 Dutch
1 Estonian
1 Filipino
61 French
1 Gambian
26 German
4 Hungarian
3 Irish
1 Icelandic
9 Italian
5 Lebanese
2 Moroccan
3 Norwegian
2 Polish
1 Romanian
1 Russian
3 Slovakian
1 South African
2 Spanish
1 Swedish
6 Swiss
1 Turkish

***

Rio de Janeiro, June 2 (DPA) A pilot from Brazil's airline TAM possibly spotted a burning piece of wreckage on the Atlantic Ocean while he was crossing the Atlantic early Monday morning.

The Brazilian Air Force confirmed late Monday that the pilot saw 'orange-coloured spots' in the middle of the Atlantic. The observation could have approximately corresponded to the time Air France 447 disappeared from radar.

AF447, with 228 people on board, went missing at about 0215 GMT Monday. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in Paris the chances of finding any survivors are 'very slim'.

The TAM crew 'saw glowing spots on the high sea on its path between Europe and Brazil, about 1,300 km off the island Fernando de Noronha,' according to media reports based on an announcement by the TAM airline.

Fernando de Noronha is about 350 km off the Brazilian coast. TAM informed Brazilian authorities of the sighting.

The scale of rescue and recovery operations should be similar to that seen for "Kanishka".
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

in Indian Express today there is a picture of the particular aircraft in question (?) grounded at BLR? The pic is by Devesh Agarwal.

Any ideas the reasons for the grounding?
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HamiltonAir · Member Joined: 25 Dec 2006 Posts: 797 Location: Bangalore

Any more updates on this? I guess theres no hope for any survivors or maybe there is Crying or Very sad

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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

seeing the aircraft went down more than 30 hours ago i think chances of any survivors are one in a million.
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HAWK21M · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:33 pm Post subject:

Can an explosion be ruled out yet......Indications point to that......
Lighteining strike at such high altitude does not seem destructive enough.
regds
MEL.
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HamiltonAir · Member Joined: 25 Dec 2006 Posts: 797 Location: Bangalore

If the plane had exploded in midair, they could have spotted some debris floating on the atlantic, no? This whole news is really creepy. May god be with those passengers and crew.
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karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 2:28 pm Post subject:

karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:11 pm Post subject:

Mini-subs sent to look for jet
2009-06-02 19:08

Paris - A French research ship equipped with two mini-submarines is on its way to a stretch of the Atlantic where an Air France flight carrying 228 people vanished, officials said on Tuesday.

The "Pourquoi Pas" ("Why Not") will join the hunt currently being carried out by French and Brazilian air force jets hundreds of kilometres off the Brazilian coast, the ecology ministry said in a statement.

The mini-subs it carries can work at depths of up to 6 000m. The ocean area where the plane disappeared has maximum depths of 4 700m, French naval experts said.

Black boxes

The black boxes aboard the missing Air France jet can survive as deep as 6 000m underwater and emit a signal for one month, according to French air disaster investigators.

But none has ever been found this deep in the ocean, they said.

A French military spokesperson meanwhile said he believed that aircraft debris found by the Brazilian air force "appeared to be a very serious lead".

The items include a seat from a plane, bits of white material, an orange buoy, a barrel and fuel slicks, according to the air force, which said it could not be immediately confirmed that the debris was from the Air France flight.

Three cargo ships nearby - two Dutch-flagged and one French - had also been asked to deviate to inspect the area and should arrive "in the next few hours", a Brazilian navy official, Lieutenant Henrique Afonso Lima, said.
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karatecatman · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 11:17 pm Post subject:

CNN
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Kabir · Member Joined: 24 Oct 2008 Posts: 322 Location: DEL

Can anyone shed any light on why this A330 was grounded at BLR a while back? As indicated in the Indian Express?
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sammyk · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:56 am Post subject:

starvmgopal · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 1:40 am Post subject:

This article says it was the same planed that crashed as was stuck in BLR for 5 days in March 2009. was see the caption of the picture when you click on it
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_12497902?source=rss
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iah87 · Member Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 558

In the Anet, it has been reported that the aircraft had no known major maintenance issues.

The grounded aircraft in BLR could have been another A330 of Air France.

I just hope that they find the Blackbox quickly as it sends signals only for up to 30 days.

ssbmat · Member Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 691

A.NET discussion thread is centered on how the airplane got into the turbulence , tried to ride above it, entered the dreaded 'coffin' corner and then suffered an upset, leading to breakup of fuselage.

Here is a fundamental question: WHY DID the pilots NOT deviate from the storm earlier ? couldnt they spot the 'red' cells' on their Weather radar?

If the Weather radar was malfunctioning, it would have been surely relayed via ACARS?

I think there is something missing here (assuming we are following the turbulence/weather theory)..
If it is explosive decompression, its a different case altogether.

If it is a design problem with composites etc.. then i think the Airline industry is in deep trouble. Because structural standards are uniform.

sammyk · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 10:27 am Post subject:

karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:55 pm Post subject:

Air France flight flew well beyond range of radar
By SLOBODAN LEKIC
June 3, 2009

BRUSSELS (AP) — Before it vanished, Air France Flight 447 was flying hundreds of miles beyond the scope of the nearest radar station, just as scores of commercial flights do every day over the world's oceans.

Above those vast waters, pilots follow different rules for navigation and safety because they are so far from land that air traffic controllers may not be able to pinpoint their precise positions.

Much of what happened to Flight 447 is still unknown, largely because the plane was soaring in a remote zone between Brazil and West Africa. Air crews in that region are never out of radio contact with the ground, but radar cannot track them until they draw closer to shore.

The route was not unusual. Pilots of long-haul flights are often beyond the reach of radar for many hours at a time. Radar coverage over oceans is largely limited to coastal areas extending no more than a couple of hundred miles out to sea.

Because of this radar-free void, crews aboard many transoceanic flights must observe safety procedures that are significantly different from those for flying over land.

Land overflights are normally separated by 5 to 10 miles. But long-range oceanic flights are spaced 20 minutes apart — the equivalent of 80 nautical miles — to minimize the possibility of midair collisions in places far beyond radar.

Oceanic flights also use different navigation techniques. A land-based flight typically follows aerial pathways marked with radio beacons that crisscross the continents. But those paths do not exist over water.

Instead, flight controllers determine specific flight tracks each day — one eastbound and one westbound — on the basis of weather reports and other information. Thousands of airliners follow each other along these tracks.

Pilots can still speak with ground controllers, but standard VHF radios do not work on transoceanic routes because of the earth's curvature. Long-haul pilots must use less reliable HF voice communications which are more susceptible to interference.

Modern airliners also have a digital datalink that automatically transmits and receives messages between the aircraft and ground stations. Those messages are then relayed to air traffic control centers or the airline's own dispatch center, and are used by controllers to determine the aircraft's approximate position.

On Tuesday, Brazilian aircraft located debris from the Airbus A330 in two areas about 410 miles beyond the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha.

The only other clue to the plane's fate was an automated message received by an Air France dispatch center in Paris that reported an electrical failure and loss of cabin pressure.

There was no mayday or distress call, but an Air France spokesman has mentioned that a lightning strike in an area of heavy turbulence may have sparked a chain of events that led to disaster.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the jet just as it was entering a band of violent thunderstorms and heavy turbulence that stretched along the equator.

All modern planes like the A330 are equipped with weather radar that displays a multicolored map showing hazardous weather in yellow or red colors.

Since thunderstorms can tower to altitudes of more than 60,000 feet, where passenger planes cannot climb over them, pilots will often weave left and right to find a route that avoids the worst of the weather.

"I've been on flights that have had to divert hundreds of miles to avoid a wall of thunderstorms," said Gideon Ewers of the London-based International Federation of Air Line Pilots Association.

Some analysts have speculated that the pilot may have been trying to return to Fernando de Noronha, about 220 miles off Brazil's northeastern coast, when disaster struck.

The airport there, built by the U.S. military during World War II, has a runway that is more than 6,000 feet long — sufficient for an Airbus A330 to land safely in case of emergency.

As the crash investigation progresses, analysts will zero in on the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — if they are recovered from ocean depths up to 9,800 feet.

"The aircraft was cruising at 35,000 feet," Ewers said. "Wreckage could have dispersed over a wide area of ocean and then drifted even further apart while sinking to the ocean floor a couple of miles down."

Despite the lack of radar data, officials from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and from Eurocontrol, Europe's aviation agency, say that investigators have many ways to begin investigating the accident even before they recover any wreckage or the black boxes.

"Investigators will have to do a forensic analysis, by piecing together all available information as best they can," said Jim Hall, a former chairman of the NTSB.

They will review the maintenance records of the aircraft, interview the crews who flew the plane in the last few weeks and go to the locations where recent maintenance was done to interview mechanics.

They will also study the personal histories of the crew members and reconstruct what they did in the last 36 hours before the crash.

"In other words, they'll be compiling as much background information as they can to compensate for the lack of other data," Hall said.
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karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 1:30 pm Post subject:

Copyright pictures

Members of the Brazilian air force going and returing from a search operation over the area where Air France flight AF447 went missing en route from Rio to Paris, at a base in Fernando de Noronha island June 2, 2009. Wreckage spotted in the Atlantic Ocean is "without a doubt" from the Air France jet that disappeared en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro with 228 people on board, Brazil's defense minister said on Tuesday. A Brazilian Hercules plane on a search mission for the missing passenger jet saw a band of wreckage along a 5-km (3-mile) strip, Minister Nelson Jobim told a news conference.

A Meteosat non real-color composite IR satellite image from EUMETSAT company, which operates Europe's network of meteorological satellites, shows the weather condition over the Atlantic ocean at 03:00 GMT on June 01, 2009, approximately at the time when an Air France Airbus 330-200 hit a fierce storm before it dropped off of the radar off the Brazilian coast. Search teams scoured remote Atlantic waters on June 2, 2009 for an Air France plane that vanished with 228 people on board, with scant hope of finding survivors and few clues to explain the crash. As investigators puzzled over a series of error messages sent by the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight, Brazilian and French spotter planes searched seas halfway between South America and Africa.

***

It has also been confirmed now that the Air France flight was not alone in the region, as another Air France Boeing 777-300 had left from Sao Paulo for Paris, Iberia had an Airbus A340 en route to Madrid, and Lufthansa had a Boeing 747-400 bound for Frankfurt. Apart from this was a Lufthansa Cargo MD-11 bound for Africa. All those flight crews were likely watching the same weather systems.

***

The part of the Atlantic Ocean where debris has been confirmed as that from the Air France Jet that disappeared on Monday, averages over 9,000 feet. The combination of ocean depth, rough seas and thunderstorms on a daily basis may hinder salvage efforts. It could take years for the full recovery efforts to be completed. To put things in perspective, the Titanic lies at a depth of 12,600 feet, a depth that requires special submarines to reach it.

While the heavier parts of a plane wreckage sink to the bottom of the ocean, the lighter parts will drift with the prevailing ocean currents. The currents in the area where the plane went down go from west to east and will take the debris field toward the African coast. The typical speed of the ocean current is about 5 mph. At that speed, it will take about a week before any debris would reach the African coast.

Now that the debris of the Air France Jet has been found, the salvage efforts will likely be hampered by heavy thunderstorms and high seas. These thunderstorms will develop on a daily basis as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ, becomes more active over the next several months. Thus salvage experts will likely have to fight heavy storms and rough seas almost daily while trying to reach the remains of the airplane.

In addition, large clusters of thunderstorms will roll off the African coast about every few days. If conditions are right, the thunderstorms can form into tropical depressions or tropical storms.

According to Brazil's defense minister, The debris located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil is officially that of the wreckage from the Air France jet that disappeared Monday. The debris includes plane seats, metallic objects and jet fuel stains in the water. The plane took off from Rio de Janeiro Sunday en route to Paris, France and went missing Sunday evening.
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karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 1:49 pm Post subject:

Based on Air France data room report:

Air France Flight A447.
The Last 4 Minutes.
Tim Marshall

SKY NEWS
'The ACARS messages of system failures began to arrive at 02:10Z. Indication was that the autopilot had disengaged and the fly by wire system had changed to alternate law. Between 02:11Z and 02:13Z a flurry of messages regarding ADIRU and ISIS faults arrived. At 02:13Z PRIM 1 and SEC 1 faults were indicated, at 02:14Z the last message received was an advisory regarding cabin vertical speed."

"Received 4 minutes of automatically triggered satcom transmission from the plane, cascading systems failures, electrics, depressurization."

The plane automatically sent the messages. These are not verbal messages from the pilots. A sudden event caused the autopilot to disengage. The 'cascade' is one system after another failing within seconds of each other. That included the cabin pressure. This suggests the pilots would have had little or no time to attempt to do anything.

The advisory on 'cabin vertical speed' is the last message. It may be an automated 'ping' but it still manages to be chilling. The expert says the the fact that the messages were sent out over a four minute period concurs with significant parts of the plane, especially the cockpit, still being intact as the different parts of the signalling computers would have to be attached to the mainframe.
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karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 4:03 pm Post subject:

BBC
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karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 4:16 pm Post subject:

Brazilian media reports say the plane was at FL 35(0) instead of its designated FL 37(0) right through.

French Govt says it is not sure whether the commander was at the controls at the time of the accident.
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karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:11 pm Post subject:

It's a bit surprsing to hear France giving up hope of ever finding the black boxes, even citing the example of the Titanic and how long it took to find it!

However, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said he was confident that the black boxes – two separate devices containing cockpit voice recordings and instrument data – offer the best chance of finding out why the Airbus jetliner vanished.

"I think a country that can find oil 6,000 metres under the ocean can find a plane 2,000 metres down," he told reporters yesterday in Guatemala, referring to recent oil finds by Brazil's state energy company in ultra-deep waters. (From BBC)

More information seems to be coming out from the Brazilian side.
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karatecatman · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2009 9:01 pm Post subject:

Copyright -- Reuters

A slick that is believed to be from the fuel of Air France flight AF447 is seen from the window of a Brazilian Air Force plane patroling the crash area in the open Atlantic Ocean some 745 miles (1,200 km) northeast of Recife, June 2, 2009. Brazilian and French navy vessels were rushing to the area where debris from Monday's disaster was found, hoping to retrieve as much of the wreckage as possible.
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Jaysit · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 2295

The black boxes of both AI 182 and the South African 747 that crashed two years later in the Indian Ocean were recovered. The former crashed in about 6500 feet of water, the latter in almost 15,000 feet of water. However, the underwater terrain in the South Atlantic is quite different from where AI 182 and SA295 crashed. It's very rugged and resembles an alpine landscape.

Also, unlike both the previous crashes, there appears to be very little floating debris, and no bodies at the surface.