Air France jet likely broke apart above ocean

[Akoto]

Source: Associated Press

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (AP) -- Military planes located new debris from Air France Flight 447 Wednesday while investigators focused on a nightmarish ordeal in which the jetliner broke up over the Atlantic as it flew through a violent storm.

Heavy weather delayed until next week the arrival of deep-water submersibles considered key to finding the black box voice and data recorders that will help answer the question of what happened to the airliner, which disappeared Sunday with 228 people on board. But even with the equipment, the lead French investigator questioned whether the recorders would ever be found in such a deep and rugged part of the ocean.

As the first Brazilian military ships neared the search area, investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms. They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time saying he was flying through an area of "CBs" - black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning. Satellite data has shown that towering thunderheads were sending 100 mph (160 kph) updraft winds into the jet's flight path at the time.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRAZIL_PLANE?SITE=WYCHE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Politicalboi]

1. I heard on the news that

In that part of the ocean could be 19,000 feet deep. It will be hard to get a lot of the plane back or the black boxes. And since it broke up it could be scattered miles for miles. Really a sad story for all those people.

[FarCenter]

8. 19,000 feet depth would be about 8,800 pound per square inch of pressure

That is at the edge of the depth that the black boxes will survive.

[FreeJG]

2. Officials investigate bomb threat -pilot claims blown out of sky by terrorists

Officials investigate Argentina bomb threat as pilot claims Air France Flight 447 was blown out of the sky by terrorists


By Peter Allen, Ian Sparks and David Williams
Last updated at 8:34 PM on 03rd June 2009


Investigators are examining a bomb threat called in on a flight from Buenos Aires to Paris just days before Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic ocean, it has been revealed.

Aviation authorities are examining the possibility of a link between the threat to the Buenos Aires flight and the mysterious disappearance of Flight 447 with 228 people on board, a source has claimed.

Meanwhile an Air France pilot said it was 'highly likely' the jet was blown out of the sky by a bomb.

(snip)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk:80/news/worldnews/article-1190307/Pilot-claims-Air-France-Flight-447-blown-sky-terrorists-officials-investigate-Argentina-bomb-threat.html

sorry if this was already posted....

[regnaD kciN]

3. Actually, it's highly UNLIKELY that it was a bomb...

-- The first automated message indicating a dive was sent four minutes after the first message indicating a problem. If there had been a bomb explosion, it would have happened instantaneously.

-- There's a twelve-mile oil slick on the ocean. Had there been a bomb, practically all that fuel would have burned up in the upper atmosphere and never reached the ocean.

It's not impossible, but the evidence sure doesn't point in that direction at this stage.

[Baby Snooks]

5. Might have been both...

It doesn't speak well of the Airbus if it was torn apart by winds and it doesn't speak well of Air France if someone managed to get a bomb onboard.

The assumption is it was one or the other. It might have been both.

If an airplane was torn apart by winds, wouldn't there have been sparks from electrical wiring that would have also caused an explosion?

Maybe the plane was disabled and then a bomb went off while the cockpit was attempting to regain control.

The real mystery is why there was no actual communication by the cockpit beyond the initial communication about the turbulence.

Other planes apparently had flown through the same turbulence with no problems. Were any of them Airbuses?

Lots of questions. Maybe they will be able to recover the black box and maybe they won't.

For the time being if I were flying I wouldn't fly Air France and I wouldn't fly on an Airbus.

[XemaSab]

7. Would Air France be in charge of security at the airport?

AA and United were not responsible for the boxcutters on 9-11. :shrug:

[RamboLiberal]

9. Could still have been a bomb though I lean toward weather

Bojinka test bombing Philippine Airlines Flight 434. Tore a hole in the fuselage and killed a passenger but plane landed safely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines_Flight_434

Then there is this on the Air France crash:

A Spanish newspaper said a transatlantic airline pilot reported seeing a bright flash of white light at the same time the Air France flight disappeared.

"Suddenly we saw in the distance a strong, intense flash of white light that took a downward, vertical trajectory and disappeared in six seconds," the pilot of an Air Comet flight from Lima to Madrid told his company, the El Mundo newspaper reported. "We did not hear any communication on any emergency or air to air frequency either before or after this event."

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L413345.htm

[Winterblues]

11. Depends upon the size of the bomb

A hand grenade could probably blow a hole big enough to cause an airliner to come apart at thirty thousand feet without actually blowing the whole plane to pieces and igniting the fuel.

[tocqueville]

4. the Daily Heil will write ANYTHING

that can be turned into French bashing. Even if it's true that an Air France pilot said something like that, it doesn't mean anything.
The unidentified pilot talks about "drug smugglers" (at 30000 ft ?), military jets (would have been known immediately) and didn't mention UFOs, lesbian cannibals from the BBC ahd other "possible" explanations...

Do you people really take seriously that xenophobic, racist, homophobic and fascistoid rag (founded by a British fascist who liked to pose with Hitler) ?

[tabatha]

6. A site about the crash

http://www.airfrance447.com/

[groundloop]

10. CNN had an article about problems with other Airbus 330 flight control computers

Apparently there are two backup systems for determining angle-of-attack, if the computer detects problems with the primary system it's supposed to switch to one of the backups. In at least one case the flight control computer kept using bad data and sent the plane into an abrupt dive, but the pilots were able to recover.

Now, given the apparent severity of thunderstorms in the area, weather alone is likely the cause. But just IF that plane's flight control computers messed up while in one of those storms it would have been horribly difficult to recover.