Brazilian air force says debris was not from Air France crash

[Baclava]

Source: CNN

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CNN) -- The Brazilian air force said Thursday night that debris picked up near where officials believe Air France Flight 447 crashed Monday into the Atlantic Ocean was not from the plane.

The news came after the Brazilian navy began retrieving debris Thursday that it believed was wreckage from the flight, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean.

On Wednesday, searchers recovered two debris fields and had identified the wreckage, including an airplane seat and an orange float as coming from Flight 447. Officials now say that none of the debris recovered is from the missing plane.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/04/plane.crash/index.html

---

OK - now it's getting spooky.

[Duer 157099]

1. I can't help wondering if there was a mid-air crash

maybe the debris is from a second, unidentified plane.

The oil slick would certainly indicate *something* happened right there!

[Baclava]

8. Drug smugglers?

If they are finding parts from a different airplane (if the seat was not from the AF A-330), maybe there is a second plane which collided with it...and since no commerical flight were reported missing...

Maybe a smugglers plane, flying with it's transponder turned off which would make the collision avoidence systems non-functional.

A mid-air collision in the middle of a thunderstorm.


That sounds like a novel.

[spindrifter]

9. I don't think a drug plane would have been

able to fly into the air turbulence. I also think they would not be flying at the same altitude as the commercial carriers--too risky, when they can avoid detection more easily flying lower. I wonder if the threat made to Air France in Argentina had anything to do with this.

[theHandpuppet]

2. Well that's totally weird

So is someone else missing a plane?

:shrug:

[pam4water]

17. The other plane would have had to have the special skin that makes it invisible to radar, which as

far as I know is still only on US military planes.

[Pachamama]

22. But I thought where the AF plane disappeared, there was no radar coverage, thus the difficulty in

locating and knowing its last location.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that radar towers do not cover the entire Atlantic or Pacific flight paths and that there are large segments where they are "off the screen" and other than occasional radio contact or auto transmits, that there is no official "radar image" of that plane on someones screen.

Thus, if that is the case, its entirely possible that another plane could have been there and hit it and no one would have seen it....except perhaps satelites and military if they were watching....but not commercial airline radar systems....

[14thColony]

23. You are correct

After a few hundred miles at most from most coastlines there is no radar coverage. Simple physics - radars can't see past the 'radar horizon' of the Earth, which at ground level is as close as about 30 miles. To have radar coverage in the mid-Atlantic would require scores of radar picket ships on permanent station. So airliners report via radio, either automatically or when the crew does it manually, until they come back into radar controlled airspace on the other side.

There are no satellites that would have been able to provide a radar fix on the airliner, although there are some in orbit that would have been able to detect an explosion or fire related to the aircraft -- but only if they happened to be looking at the mid-Atlantic at that monent, which there would be no point in doing.

[Robb]

33. Special shape, really, more than skin

...although the skin is slightly special too. ;)

[LadyoftheRabbits]

3. Someone (can't recall who) posited an interesting theory

that perhaps it collided with a drug plane. :shrug:

[JI7]

6. but even then wouldn't some of the debris be from the Air France plane ?

[LadyoftheRabbits]

7. Yeah, I'd think...

this is weird.

[Baclava]

4. Totally vanished. like, totally

I'm open to the transdimensional UFO stories now.

[global1]

5. Welcome To The Final Season Of "Lost"..........nt

[Duer 157099]

13. *snort* n/t

[Canuckistanian]

10. What are the odds of finding ANOTHER plane in the middle of the Atlantic?

That is just weird.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

11. So we have another plane. One that until now was not known about?

But we still have no evidence of the plane we knew about that's vanished without a trace.

Eat your heart out Rod Serling. This one has potential to out do even your wild twists.

[Baclava]

21. Not even a plane now - debris found was from a "shipwreck"

It's a circus

PARIS — The French government expressed deep disappointment Friday over the news that ocean debris recovered by the Brazilian military this week appeared to be the remains of a shipwreck and not from an Air France jet that crashed in the South Atlantic on Monday.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/world/europe/06plane.html?ref=europe

[Lone_Star_Dem]

38. Oh, for the love of chocolate! What a mess up situation!

My first thought was a ship explained the oil on the water, then I read your link and it says that was exactly the case. They're not even in the right location it would appear.

What a mess they've made of this search. Somewhere out there there is the blackbox of flight 447. If they hope to ever piece together what actually did take place, they only have until the end of the month to find it.

[conspirator]

12. TANDANDAN! The plot tickens. I say Bermuda Triangle style interdimensional portal

Have you seen the sci-fi movie millenium?

[AzNick]

16. Dude, people died. It's too soon, dude.

[conspirator]

37. My comment is inappropriate

If there is no debri maybe the plane sunk in one piece. That's more likely.

[AzNick]

43. I was spoofing South Park

When Crocodile dude shows up at the Devil's sweet sixteen.

[DFW]

14. Horse Latitudes

When the still sea conspires an armor
And her sullen and aborted
Currents breed tiny monsters,
True sailing is dead.
Awkward instant
And the first animal is jettisoned,
Legs furiously pumping
Their stiff green gallop,
And heads bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony
Carefully refined
And sealed over.

--Jim Morrison

Apparently, that is where the plane went missing.

[Baclava]

15. Portals, stargates

We've been softened up by these sci-fi theme's for years.

The armada approaches.


I, for one, welcome our alien overlords.

[BrklynLiberal]

18. A lot more questions than answers...for sure.

[krispos42]

19. This is getting weird

Now they're saying the debris and oil slick was from a ship. So the plane is still missing. But where's the ship?

What if the plane had problems and tried to crash near the ship so they could be rescued... but accidently crashed into the ship instead?



It's like a Clive Cussler story!

[Xithras]

35. Boats sink in the ocean every day.

And light debris from shipwrecks can float for months.

[sofa king]

39. Yeah, and that's a bad neighborhood.

Where the plane was thought to have disappeared is also near the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, which is a potential navigational hazard.

The area of the Atlantic Ocean is so vast that it's something of a miracle that anyone can find anything there. Seagoers in the days of sail nearly always stopped for a "gam" with other ships they met, no matter how much they disliked one another, in part because the sheer improbability of the event added an aura of providence to the meeting.

But don't underestimate the power of science. Sooner or later someone is going to find a floating seat cushion, calculate its probable path through the ocean currents and prevailing winds, and come up with a likely place to search.

[krispos42]

40. But the kicker is the oil slick

Those evaporate and disperse.


I don't know what the timeline for an oil slick is, but if the ocean was stormy, the wind, rain, and waves would have aided the dispersion if not the evaporation.

[Xithras]

41. There was an oil drum recovered nearby

You might remember that the first debris found was a life jacket, a seat cushion, and an oil drum. If the oil drum had oil in it, the drum could have been breached by the same storm that brought the plane down. The oil spilling out could have caused the slick.

It's common for ocean trawlers and smaller freighters to carry extra oil and fuel onboard in case of emergencies.

[krispos42]

42. I hadn't heard of the oil drum

Just the life jacket and a wooden pallet.



Hmmmm... sounds like the puzzle is coming together!

[Baclava]

20. Everything you thought you knew or were told so far is all bullshit

It's a fine mess you've gotten us into this time, Ollie.

Back to square one. Nobody knows nothing.

[spinbaby]

24. Welcome to the Twilight Zone

This is just spooky.

[Baclava]

32. "It was a dark and stormy night..."

Something is up with Brazil's approach to this, France says they haven't found a thing then Brazil then makes a complete reversal of everything they say they've found so far.

Curiouser and curiouser

[slackmaster]

25. Fascinating

This is about as "developing" as a story can get.

[Baclava]

34. The Langoliers

Now that's a story.

[Junkdrawer]

26. I smell a History Channel special...Giant, mystery alien Aztec bird downs airliner

2012 Doomsday confirmed.

[Baclava]

28. ...or a meteor

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/06/04/did-a-meteor-bring-down-air-france-447/

"Could a meteor have brought down Air France 447? Today we are starting to see reports that there actually may have been a meteor:

However, both pilots of an Air Comet flight from Lima to Lisbon sent a written report on the bright flash they said they saw to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority, the airline told CNN.

“Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,” the captain wrote."

[Baclava]

27. This whole "investigation" is now officially a complete clusterfuck

I stand by that statement.

[ecstatic]

29. Why did it take so long for them to figure that out?

:eyes: I guess you just have to knock on wood before flying out of certain countries.

[ellisonz]

30. I wonder how much the authorities really know.

[Baclava]

31. They sound pretty clueless to me.

Now they go back to sifting through the ocean's garbage in the hopes they can locate some of the plane's wreckage.

Like I said. Back to square one. They have no idea now where the plane may have gone down.

[underpants]

36. This is getting bizarre

[Baclava]

44. Air France memo - it will immediately change flight sensors in all it's jets

RECIFE, Brazil (AP) — An Air France memo to its pilots about the crash of Flight 447 says the airline is replacing flight-speed sensors in all its medium- and long-haul Airbus jets.

Air France declines to comment on the memo obtained by The Associated Press, saying it is for pilots only.

Airbus says the matter is part of the probe into the crash that killed 228 people flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The memo sent Friday says Air France has been replacing instruments known as pitot tubes and will finish in "coming weeks." It does not say when it started.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOegnahAFcEgwJZ4WKGkVz9Dgq5wD98KKO880

------------------------

What?

Somebody knows something they're not telling.

[Bankhead_ATL]

45. this getting very odd..someone is trying to cover up something or .....

.........

[Baclava]

46. ...or, the Brazilians just got too excited and reported every piece of floating crap in the ocean

There was no "shipwreck"...and no crash debris. (so far)

Just garbage floating around in the ocean.


Back to the drawing board.

[gulfcoastliberal]

47. I thought at first they were looking 400 miles west of Senegal.

Then suddenly it was 400 miles off the coast of Brazil, the country of origin? The plane was supposedly 4 hours into the flight when it disappeared. In any case, it's sad the oceans are so polluted that a mistake like this occurred.

[Baclava]

49. Sad - for the families of the people on the plane

I could see them believing that there was going to a quick resolution to this tragedy.

Now, not so much.

[Roland99]

48. What the f.......

[Algorem]

50. too much garbage floating out there to figure out what's what.

[Baclava]

51. Horse lattitudes, converging currents, flotsam and jetsam

I read Kon Tiki

[Mika]

52. Who was on the plane?

A meteor? Streaks of light and then an explosion reportedly seen by other pilots? TWA 800 all over again?

Who was on that plane?