Air France Flight 447 Status Update 3: Metal Debris Found

[ScreamingMeemie]

Source: The Post Chronicle

Officials have found metal debris off the coast of Brazil where Flight 447 is believed to have gone down - and they believe the debris may be part of the Airbus 330.

Authorities have not officially confirmed whether the debris belongs to the plane.



Read more: http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_212234615.shtml

[Ms. Toad]

1. You beat me by a few seconds.

Here'a a couple more links:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/02/brazil.france.plane.miss

Wreckage has been found in the Atlantic Ocean that could have come from a missing Air France jet that disappeared Monday with 228 passengers and crew on board, Brazilian aviation officials said Tuesday.

Also:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/104883/Missing-Air-France-jet-wreckage-found

WRECKAGE from a doomed Air France flight which vanished over the Atlantic has reportedly been spotted by the Brazilian air force.
Early reports suggest a search team has found plane seats 400 miles north-east of the Brazilian coastline.

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. Thanks!

:hi:

[ananda]

2. Also..

.. passenger seats have been sighted, as
well as various fires.

It's all over but the cryin...

[cboy4]

3. Imagine being able to find a small area of debris among the white caps of

a vast ocean. Unbelievable.

And heart-wrenching. :(


Hello my good friend!
:loveya:

[ScreamingMeemie]

4. It is heartwrenching, but also incredible that they found something.

:loveya:

I hope you are well and you are in my thoughts this week.

[cboy4]

6. !!

:hug:

[Beacool]

7. My heart goes out to these people and their families.

I've been in planes that were shaking like a leaf in turbulence and it is quite scary even though most people act cool about it. I can't imagine the horror that it must feel to go straight down knowing this is it and you're going to die.

I also feel for their loved ones and their agonizing wait for news. Hoping against hope that all will turn well, but knowing that the inevitable has happened.

:(

[psychopomp]

9. I've been three hours out over the Pacific headed towards Asia

and have the Captain come over the intercom telling us that "some of you, especially those in First Class, may have noticed a burning smell..."

Turns out that we had a fire in the electronics, out of reach of the crew...imagine how I felt when the reading lights and movie cut out! It was quite an ordeal.

Just in case anybody is wondering, we diverted to Anchorage and landed safely (after dumping fuel, which was also pretty freaky given the preceding events)--then they put us back on the same plane after it was repaired.:scared:

[Captain Hilts]

12. I would have had to be sedated. Oh, my....nt

[dugaresa]

27. that is why i take sleeping pills for transatlantic flights

I call the dr. tell them my problem with long distance air travel (fear) and I get two sleeping tablets; one for the flight over and one for the flight home.

[dipsydoodle]

8. usual old bollocks

French Defence Minister Herve Morin has stressed there is still "no evidence whatsoever" as to the cause of the plane's loss

"We cannot, by definition, exclude a terrorist attack, because terrorism is the main threat for all Western democracies," he added.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8079122.stm

[tocqueville]

11. he cannot say otherwise

because if traces of C4 on the debris are found, he would have been drawn and quartered if he had dissed that theory.

What talks against it is that no group has made a claim.

[Captain Hilts]

13. He shouldn't rank threats in a situation like this. nt

[dipsydoodle]

17. What talks against it ......

exactly.

[RamboLiberal]

15. Sounds like this plane broke up in flight

A bomb cannot be ruled out. Its a mystery right now what caused this plane to crash. I sure hope they can find the "black boxes" though it may be impossible since depth of ocean at that point is said to be 10,000 feet and mountainous.

Aviation Expert Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said on CBS' The Early Show that the automatic signals sent out from the plane indicating electrical problems and a loss of cabin pressure were "very ominous messages. These are automatic messages that are sent to the operations base of the air carrier, usually, for maintenance issues.

"I think what it indicated was that the plane was likely coming apart at that moment," he said.

Anyone know how much composites material is used in Airbus 330? I've been wondering about composites safety in the long run in airplanes since that plane crash in NYC where an airliner lost its composite tail.

[Baclava]

24. As of right now, the only thing we know for sure about this incident is those error messages

Everything else is pure conjecture.

And we don't even know if the errors reported in those messages were part of the cause or rather a result of the accident...

I'd say the best analogy to where we are right now is probably the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, where error messages and off-scale readings kept being sent as the aircraft (or the sensors themselves) disintegrated.

Without the FDR and CVR we may never know.

[Justitia]

26. That was also an Airbus, it was an A300 (NYC AA crash, lost tail fin). -eom

[bdamomma]

10. oh how terrible. all those people. just so sad.

[Baclava]

14. They won't be able to confirm anything till a ship arrives tomorrow

[NJCher]

16. all I can say is

:cry:

I will send thoughts of support to the families. I will light a white candle.


Cher

[mn9driver]

18. Two wreckage drifts now, 35 miles apart.

It is sounding more and more like an in-flight breakup. A major electrical failure, possibly due to lightning, but more likely due to hail or a turbine unstack could have compromised the flight control system. Trying to fly a plane this size in a thunderstorm with only rudder and stabilizer trim (which is what would be left after the engines and RAT turbine failed) would be just about impossible. If the turbines unstacked due to extreme precipitation, all the hydraulics would be gone as well-and that would be the end.

Or it could be something else, like a bomb. I hope they can find and retrieve the flight data recorders.

[Xithras]

19. I wouldn't be suprised if one of the drifts isn't from the plane.

The description of one of the debris fields said that it contained floating white bits, a life jacket, and an oil drum. Aircraft don't normally have life jackets and oil drums on board. The description of that field sounded more like garbage that you'd see dumped from a ship.

[Baclava]

21. Hard to tell from the air - all these early reports get jumbled up

When you are dealing with many separate agencies and news organizations from around the world and various time zones and the "news" provided may be of different ages and from sources that are not communicating with the other sources. Also different agencies send out information of varying quality based on their rules for what constitutes "releasable" information. What you hear from AF will be different than what you hear from the French navy, which will be different from what the Brazilian navy says which will be different from what Brazilian news agencies say.

Time will tell.

[LostinVA]

20. What is "turbine unstack"?

[GliderGuider]

22. I think it means the turbine in a jet engine comes apart.

A turbine consists of a bunch of rotor disks and other parts "stacked" on a central shaft. When the engine fails the stack comes apart and the pieces fly all over the place doing lots of damage. That was what did in the Sioux City DC-10 in 1989.

[mn9driver]

23. If enough water or hail goes into a turbine, it can destroy it.

Here is annother case of a jet penetrating extreme precipitation, and the result:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_242

We still have some of Southern's old DC9's flying today. The reason the engines wouldn't relight is because the compressor and turbine discs were literally jammed together by the force of the water being ingested. In a smaller, older jet like a DC9 you still have full control, even if you are dead stick with no hydraulics.

In an A330 no electrics would mean very little control, and no hydraulics would mean no control at all. There are a lot of redundant systems in these airplanes to keep something like this from "ever" happening, but a really ferocious thunderstorm might be able to overwhelm everything very quickly. Recovering the flight data recorders from this crash is going to be really important.

[LostinVA]

25. Thanks!

[RamboLiberal]

28. Wreckage is from Air France flight: minister

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 2 (Reuters) - 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, Nelson Jobim told a news conference.

"It confirms that the plane fell in this area," he said. (Reporting by Maria Pia Palermo; writing by Brian Ellsworth; editing by Stuart Grudgings and John O'Callaghan)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8537812

[Baclava]

29. Brazil confirms Air France jet crashed in ocean

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (AP) — 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.

Jobim said the discovery "confirms that the plane went down in that area" hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.

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 in which all aboard are believed to have died.

"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 (6,500 to 9,800 fee) in that area of the ocean," Jobim said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOegnahAFcEgwJZ4WKGkVz9Dgq5wD98IOPLG0

[Baclava]

30. Then there are the lucky ones.....Final Destination?

Air France flight 447 passengers recount escape stories


Two were saved by an expired passport.
Two more postponed their flight on a whim.
The people who narrowly missed flight AF447 today recounted their escapes.

A Brazilian legal analyst João Marcelo Calaça, 37, was turned away at the gate as his passport had run out. The friend he was travelling with was furious, but neither got on the flight. Calaça didn't realise the jet had gone down until he woke in a hotel the next morning to 25 missed calls from his panicking family.

A Brazilian couple, Rodrigo Motta and Bianca Igrejas, decided on the dance floor of their Copacabana wedding celebrations that they wanted another night to enjoy their luxury wedding hotel. In the middle of their party, at 1am on Saturday, they postponed their flights using their mobile phones.

Claude Jaffiol, a French medical professor, had been at a congress in Rio before he and his wife visited a friend, the Dutch consul, in Brasilia. They decided to return early to Montpellier in southern France and insisted on getting flight 447. Their diplomatic friend pulled every string he could to get them on the flight but to their frustration, it was full. "It's a miracle," Jaffiol said, after arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport on a later flight. "We should have been on that plane."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/02/air-france-passengers-escape-air-crash