Looking bad at this stage. Flight from Brazil to Paris with 228 onboard disappeared off radar, no radio contact and now over three hours overdue.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0601/airfrance.html
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Looking bad at this stage. Flight from Brazil to Paris with 228 onboard disappeared off radar, no radio contact and now over three hours overdue.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0601/airfrance.html
The sad thing is, it's probably run out of fuel at this stage. Hope answers come out soon, dread to think what might have happened. It's stories like this that make you nervous about long haul flights.
From what I've read, they reported heavy turbulence ten minutes before contact was lost. There was also an automatic signal indicating an electrical fault.
The BBC are suggesting that it may have been struck by lightning, though I've not seen their reasoning yet (and planes are routinely hit by lighting, I thought).
EDIT: For those with a morbid sense of humour, http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42594 (Sorry, but you click at your own peril).
Certainly shouldn't be enough to bring an Airbus down.Quote:
Originally Posted by John83
Looking likely now it went down an hour or so north east of Fernando de Noronha. It was never picked up by Cape Verde radar which probably means it didn't make it that far.
I've read speculation that positive lightning might do the trick.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lionel Ritchie
A couple of informative images.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...e_crash466.gif
http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/IFG12-02452009152.jpg
That's scary.Quote:
Originally Posted by John83
it appears there are 3 irish on board also
Two according to Folha.Quote:
Originally Posted by hula4
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/c...5u574807.shtml
irish times article says 3 irish confirmed...
horrible way to go it has to be said. I can barely watch a plane crash scene on tv without getting a sick feeling in my stomach. My thoughts go out to the passengers and their families.
I read that one of them was an Irish citizen from Belfast, which might be the source of the confusion.
Yep, one from Belfast, one Tipp and one Dub.
I think it is always a concern when plane from major airliner goes down as these would be perceived as having the best maintenance & newest planes. When a plane goes in the third world I feel there is a perception the plane was old or not maintained properly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John83
thanks John
I'll not get too caught up in morbid details and it's little or no consolation to all who've lost loved ones anyway that the end may have been very, very quick.Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
We may never know what actually happened but the Brazilian Air Force as opposed to Brazilian Air Traffic Control are saying they picked up the automatically generated signals from the plane that indicated multiple electrical short circuits and loss of cabin pressure.
When you add to that info that there was no mayday (that we know of as yet and likely won't now until the black box is retrieved) it may point to a catastrophic cabin failure. In that scenario the end for all those misfortunes will have been about as close to instantaneous as it gets.
Not quick enough that they couldn't send a few text messages home, according to wiki (quoting a couple of sources).
Cabin pressure sounds the most likely reason alright. Would explain why the pilots didn't radio in. Although if passengers could turn their phones on and send texts, you'd have thought the pilots would have had time to send some manner of radio signal.
Odd. I'd have thought they were too far from a base station to do that. Unless this is one of the planes where they allow phones and have equipment to connect them to a network (at least, I think some of them do that now; never been on one that did).
Anyway, it only takes some people a few seconds to send a message as short as the examples given in that link, "I love you" and "I'm afraid", and the pilots may have been busy with the whole plane crashing thing.
A sick in the head friend of mine said "its like in Lost where the plane goes missing".
Not loooking good,there is some archipelico's(spellings) off the Brazilian coast but they would have hit the water too hard to survive anyway.A sad day.
True, but I'd have thought that the first thing you'd do when the plane was crashing was to radio in saying that the plane was crashing. There were three pilots/co-pilots, so (and I don't profess to be a pilot expert or anything) I would have thought two could try stop the plane crashing and one could radio in. Even if, hypothetically, they'd brought the plane to a safe landing in the middle of the Atlantic, that's still worthless without backup help.Quote:
Originally Posted by John83