AF Rio-Paris Flight is Missing

Ah shit.

Ooops, ......... i'll leave you 2 alone in here!

Bermuda Triangle is back?

Not good.

pretty weird that it went "missing"

How does an air bus 332 go "missing" ?

Is that just the PC way of saying it's in the Atlantic?

It left the radar and hasn't arrived at it's destination. I would consider "missing" the proper word until they find some shred of evidence of it's location. I'm sure that will come fairly soon as they know where it went off radar and they would have S&R out there.

No radar coverage over the Atlantic, ATC uses verbal or automated position reports and plug these numbers into a computer or gridmap. The A330 has a automated position reporting system called CPDLC (Controller Pilot Data Link Communications) that reports the airplanes position, and fuel status. This system will not work if the airplane is having electrical issues, or has switched to an alternate control "law".

A330 is very safe, as well at this was this was an ETOPS (extended twin engine operations) flight which are different ruled that allow reliable twinjets to fly over great stretches without a viable alternate.

Read on MSN that they had recieved some kind of info regarding an electrical problem and loss of cabin pressure before they lost contact. Almost sounded like it was an automatic notification rather than from the crew, but I'm not sure. MSN says it was heavy weather.

words can say when I imagine the horror of that. For the passengers or the surviving family's. I hope the best for all.

JPT--That makes sense, the Airbus will automatically "e-mail" the company when there is a maintenance issue.

I haven't seen much of the coverage on TV but if they lost primary electrical power (due to a lightning strike) they would loose the forward looking weather radar, and could have possibly flown into a nasty cell. Loss of pressure means either the engines quit or the airplane started to breakup, possibly from the extreme turbulence from the cell.

It's seems odd that by now we don't have technology that makes this sort of aircraft tracking trivial. You would think we could have a simple device in every plane that continuously sends in GPS coordinates and altitude. Then when something like this happened you would know "exactly" where to search. Steve Fossett wouldn't have been missing for so long. There would never be another Amelia Earhart. Maybe I need to start working on this device and make it affordable and mandatory in all aircraft.

ZJ, or anyone else,
isn't that plane that went down fairly new? In the scope of mechanical issues on those planes don't the older plane usually suffer mechanical issues? Horrible thing that happened. I feel for those people.

The A330 has only been produced since the mid-90's, so it can't be older than that. Normally these long haul airplanes have a tremendously long life, they make a small fraction of the landings and takeoffs that shorter haul airplanes make. This airplane could be 10 years old and still be in excellent shape. It's also ETOPS certified, so it's maintained at a higher standard.


New or old, if you penetrate severe turbulence overspeed.. you are asking for something to happen.

Confirmed mass amounts of debris found.

Bum deal.

Debris trail three miles long, and an oil slick...

Very bum deal.

three miles long, man. You know that thing broke up long before it hit the water. It gives me chills thinking about what happened to the people on the airplane. I really doubt it was quick and painless.

Very tragic circumstance but at least all those who lost their lives should know that their families will be taken care of.

I was wondering how in the world they could have encountered a thunderstorm...

I consider the flight crew's interpretation of their airborne radar to be better than the info proivided by our ground-based ATC radar (for giving weather info), and weather avoidance is a primary concern - not only will no one knowingly fly into a thunderstorm (except maybe the research and hurricane guys), but they are generally given a wide berth due to the associated weather -

I would have thought they'd have ample redundancy on such a critical component as weather radar on an oceanic flight.... terrible tragedy...

I thought planes flew around or over bad weather?

I realize thunderclouds can be towering way up there, but still.

ZJ??

They can, the tops can be 50+k feet and hundreds of miles wide especially in the ICZ.

I don't know if Air France uses this but, some airlines use XM linkups with the pilots laptop. We can access up to date weather information. A decent backup and good for planning ahead, it still doesn't replace the need for accurate real-time info from he ships radar. If they lost the radar due to a lightning strike while threading the needle between cells (over the Atlantic with little outside help) it could get sketchy.

It's hard to see these storms at night over the ocean unless your eyes are adjusted and the cockpit overhead lights are off (likely they would be on if you were having issues and were running checklist)..

The worst experience I ever had on a plane was on a short C5 flight in Saudi. We were flying along straight and level at altitude and everything was smooth and out of the nowhere it felt like the wings must have snapped off and the bottom fell out. Not just the bottom falling out but even a down force from above creating a negative G situation. Many people (including me) didn't have our seat belts strapped and my cat like reflexes and instincts caused me to grab the armrests to keep from flying out of my seat. Unfortunately the left armrest detached from whatever it was mounted to and I float out of my seat with my right hand still clutching the still attached armrest and my left arm holding the left armrest toward the ceiling. People, blankets and everything else not attached floated to the ceiling. After what seemed like 10 seconds (but probably only a few) we came out of it and I was able to get back into my seat. I had no idea what had just happened and figured we were going to go down and everyone looked at each other and started making our peace.

Then things smoothed out and we ended up landing at our destination safely. As we're getting off the airplane I see the pilots near the exit door acting like nothing had happened. I stopped and asked them WTF happened and they said we had flown through a storm and hit a down draft. There are no windows to look out of in the passenger area of a C5 (passengers face backwards on the upper deck) so we had no idea we were flying through a storm. They also don't have speakers to tell the passengers what is going on like on civilian airliners. I guess in those thunderheads it's not uncommon to have 100MPH downdrafts. I definitely had to put on a new set of drawers first chance I got. Also, ever since that ride I wear my seat belt 100% of the time I am in my seat when flying.

Actually it looks like a macroburst can generate a 135 mph downdraft and a microburst can generate 170 mph downdraft:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream//tstorms/wind.htm

Freaky story Void. Weather is such a crap shoot, sometimes you can fly through an area of moderate storm and have a smooth ride. While others you can be threading the needle through some "green alleys" and get rocked. Flight attendants get injured often by either slamming into the roof, or slamming into the floor (broken ankles) whenever I walk through the cabin I'll put my hand on the overhead to ensure I can at least have a shot at protecting my skull from being rammed into the roof of the cabin.

Turbulence from storms and the associated burst and thermal drafts can really impact aircraft. You think this big powerful machine couldn't be brought down by these phenomenons, but they really are like are greatly effected especially close to the ground.

I think it was Delta 191 an L1011 at DFW that was slammed into the ground. Really interesting stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_Flight_191