Missing Plane!!

[Irenses]

I doubt it was a bomb. If terrorist were involved im sure someone would have claimed it by now and as far as im aware there have been no creditable claims on it. My guess is a series of unlikely faults that snowballed into this tragedy. All of which possibly triggered by a worse than expected storm they couldn't see. (explained by Muppet's diagram above)

[Treasurer]

Two different newspaper reports today - both carrying basically the same story about autopsy reports confirming no water in lungs, multiple fractures, particularly to legs and hips implying they died in their seats, etc - yet both coming to opposite conclusions.  One concluded that the injuries implied they had broken up mid air, the other saying they hit the water pretty much intact. 

[Tyrones own]

Real life Final Destination 

Just what I was thinking Gab

the plane in final destination was also supposed to go to paris.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8125664.stm

Right enough...what the hell is it about Paris? this one was supposedly a connection from it !

[orangeman]

So many unanswered questions. 

[bcarrier]

Another airbus down in apparent bad weather.

[DennistheMenace]

Another airbus down in apparent bad weather.

Serious ? Where ?

[tyrone girl]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/5693873/Yemenia-Air-plane-crash-150-missing-as-Paris-to-Comoros-islands-flight-crashes-in-Indian-Ocean.html

[the Deel Rover]

By Charles Bremner in Paris


Wednesday July 01 2009

A TEENAGE girl has survived the crash of a Yemeni airlines Airbus which hit the Indian Ocean with 153 passengers on board yesterday as it was attempting to land on the Comoros islands.

The girl, aged about 14, was plucked from the water off Moroni, on Grand Comore island, as rescue boats collected bodies in high seas after the second disaster in a month involving an airliner from the Airbus family.

The Yemenia Air flight was an elderly Airbus 310 airliner which was on a flight from Sanaa to Moroni on the final leg of a route from Paris Charles de Gaulle via Marseilles to the Comoros.

At least 66 of the 142 passengers were French. Experts dismissed any link with the crash of Air France Flight 447, a modern Airbus A330 which crashed off Brazil on June 1 killing all 228 aboard. Attention focused on the severe weather at Moroni, an under-equipped airport, and on the shaky record of Yemenia Air.

The pilots were reported to have been making their second attempt at landing at Moroni after aborting a first touch-down in gusty crosswinds of up to 50 mph. Circling back to land while low over the water, the aircraft hit the ocean, according to first reports.

Sergeant Said Abdela, of the Comores armed forces, said that he had helped rescue the girl, who he said was a Comorienne aged about 14. "She is talking. She's OK," he said.

Attacked

The sea was too rough for rescue boats to collect more than a few bodies, he said.

As counsellors comforted relatives at Paris and Marseilles airports, members of the French Comoros community attacked the airline, which is on an official French watch-list after safety breaches. "We were expecting this crash to happen," said a spokesman for the France-Comores association in France.

"There have been times when people have turned up at the airports and seen the conditions of the planes and refused to get on," he said.

Dominique Bussereau, the French Transport Minister, said the Airbus A310 that came down was a 19-year-old aircraft which had been banned from French air space since 2007, after an inspection at Paris airport found that it did not meet safety standards.

The airline used a larger Airbus A330 for the Paris-Sanaa stretch of the flight.

"The plane that was involved today was not allowed into France," said Mr Bussereau.

"The company was not on the blacklist but was subject to stricter checks on our part, and was due to be interviewed shortly by the European Union's safety committee," he said.

News of a second Airbus crash was another blow to the company as it awaits the investigators' report from the Rio-Paris crash. They are expected to outline a sequence of catastrophic failure that began when the airliner ran into icing conditions and lost vital instruments and controls early in the morning of June 1. (©The Times, London)

- Charles Bremner in Paris

[muppet]

As counsellors comforted relatives at Paris and Marseilles airports, members of the French Comoros community attacked the airline, which is on an official French watch-list after safety breaches. "We were expecting this crash to happen," said a spokesman for the France-Comores association in France.

"There have been times when people have turned up at the airports and seen the conditions of the planes and refused to get on," he said.

Dominique Bussereau, the French Transport Minister, said the Airbus A310 that came down was a 19-year-old aircraft which had been banned from French air space since 2007, after an inspection at Paris airport found that it did not meet safety standards.

The airline used a larger Airbus A330 for the Paris-Sanaa stretch of the flight.

"The plane that was involved today was not allowed into France," said Mr Bussereau.

"The company was not on the blacklist but was subject to stricter checks on our part, and was due to be interviewed shortly by the European Union's safety committee," he said

That is some statement coming from the French Transport Minister. Nice to a Department of Transport that takes action even some of the time with rogue airlines.

Don't know anything about this one yet but unlike the Air France it appears to fit into the more frequent '2nd or 3rd attempt to land in bad weather' type accident. It seems they have the black box so we should get some info soon.

RIP.

[Declan]

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/national-news/remains-of-irish-plane-crash-victim-identified-1800550.html

some closure for one of the families

[Treasurer]

French: Air France Flight 447 fell intact into sea


LE BOURGET, France (AP) — A French investigator says Air France Flight 447 did not break up in flight but plunged vertically into the Atlantic Ocean.

Alain Bouillard, leading the investigation into the June 1 crash for the French accident investigation agency BEA, also says life vests found among the wreckage of the plane were not inflated.

All 228 people aboard the plane were killed when it plunged into the ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Bouillard said at a news conference outside Paris on Thursday that the search for the plane's black boxes has been extended by 10 days and will continue through July 10.

[Treasurer]

French: Air France Flight 447 fell intact into sea


LE BOURGET, France (AP) — A French investigator says Air France Flight 447 did not break up in flight but plunged vertically into the Atlantic Ocean.

Alain Bouillard, leading the investigation into the June 1 crash for the French accident investigation agency BEA, also says life vests found among the wreckage of the plane were not inflated.

All 228 people aboard the plane were killed when it plunged into the ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Bouillard said at a news conference outside Paris on Thursday that the search for the plane's black boxes has been extended by 10 days and will continue through July 10.

Seems this was interpreted incorrectly in the haste and that the actual translation was it most likely entered the water belly first.

Copy of the english report here (but apparently it's a lot shorter than the original french version) http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601e1.en/pdf/f-cp090601e1.en.pdf

[muppet]

Thanks Treas that is very informative.

The conclusions for the moment at the end were (the comments in italics are mine and come with the usual caveats):

2. INITIAL FINDINGS
On the basis of the first factual elements gathered in the course of the investigation, the
following facts have been established:
• The crew possessed the licenses and ratings required to undertake the flight,
• The airplane possessed a valid Certificate of Airworthiness, and had been maintained
in accordance with the regulations,
• the airplane had taken off from Rio de Janeiro without any known technical problems,
except on one of the three radio handling panels,
• no problems were indicated by the crew to Air France or during contacts with the Brazilian
controllers,
• no distress messages were received by the control centres or by other airplanes,
• there were no satellite telephone communications between the airplane and the
ground,
• the last radio exchange between the crew and Brazilian ATC occurred at 1 h 35 min
15 s. The airplane arrived at the edge of radar range of the Brazilian control centres,
• at 2 h 01, the crew tried, without success for the third time, to connect to the Dakar
ATC ADS-C system,
• up to the last automatic position point, received at 2 h 10 min 35 s, the flight had followed
the route indicated in the flight plan,
• the meteorological situation was typical of that encountered in the month of June in
the inter-tropical convergence zone,
• there were powerful cumulonimbus clusters on the route of AF447. Some of them
could have been the centre of some notable turbulence, [This is an understatement but understandable due to the media attention]
• several airplanes that were flying before and after AF 447, at about the same altitude,
altered their routes in order to avoid cloud masses, [One of the testimony from other aircraft, another Air France, suggests difficulty seeing the weather both visually and on the radar. Avoiding something you can't see with either of the two tools available is rather difficult. All the others said they went around a major CB, one aircraft went up to 70 miles off course to avoid it. I think there is enough evidence to suggest AF 447 didn't avoid that particular storm, certainly not to the extent that the other aircraft mentioned did.]
• twenty-four automatic maintenance messages were received between 2 h 10 and 2 h
15 via the ACARS system. These messages show inconsistency between the measured
speeds as well as the associated consequences, [ In the less than 5 minutes that these messages were transmitted they would only have travelled a maximum of 40 miles.]
• before 2 h 10, no maintenance messages had been received from AF 447, with the
exception of two messages relating to the configuration of the toilets,
• the operator's and the manufacturer's procedures mention actions to be undertaken
by the crew when they have doubts as to the speed indications,[This is steering towards blaming the crew. The number of alarms and warning messages that would have been going off simultaneously would have made it very difficult to recognise which was the critical failure and therefore what exactly was the correct procedure.]
• the last ACARS message was received towards 2 h 14 min 28 s,
• the flight was not transferred between the Brazilian and Senegalese control centres,
69
• between 8 h and 8 h 30, the first emergency alert messages were sent by the Madrid
and Brest control centres,
• the first bodies and airplane parts were found on 6 June,
• the elements identified came from all areas of the airplane,
• visual examination showed that the airplane was not destroyed in flight ; it appears to
have struck the surface of the sea in a straight line with high vertical acceleration [ I would interpret this the same as Treas, the straight line is from nose to tail. If it went in nose first then they would have referred to it entering at a point, i.e. the nose].

[Treasurer]

Can't take any credit for the interpretation - just read a longer report quoting Mr Bouillard.

[Treasurer]

I know nothing about any of this stuff, but if the plane hit the water belly first, wouldn't that suggest they had some control on it at that point?