228 Feared Dead as Air France Jet Is Lost Off Brazil!

Off-topic
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Sad :frowning:

Last night an Air France flight from Galeão Airport, Rio de Janeiro, going to Charles De Gaulle, Paris disappeared!

Both Brazil and France are searching for the airplane. It lost contact before Cape Verde Island, probably around Ilha de Sal and Fernando de Noronha (both in Brazilian North-East). The Airbus A330-200 didn’t send any “mayday” messages to the earth but the automatic advising system sent a pressure and eletric fail alerts.

A Brazilian Prince, the South American Michelin President, some Italian ONG members, the ThyssenKrupp CSA president and the major of Canal San Bovo (Trento, Italy) are some of the airplane disappeareds…

Brazil and France will keep the searchings during the night on the atlantic ocean. Sarkozy and Lula already gave some public messages, they hope to find surivivors but both knows that it will be hard.

There were 228 people boarded on the flight. 12 were crew and 216 passengers, inclduing one baby and 7 childs.

The Brazilian Vice President announced some minutes ago that a Tam Flight saw some fire in the Atlantic yesterday night, but Tam and the Brazilian Flighting Agency didn’t confirmed that as an official announcement.

The nationality of the passengers aren’r confirmed. ANAC, the Brazilian Flighting Agency says that there were more than 50 Brazilians, more than 60 French and more than 20 germans!

You can read more from NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/world/europe/02plane.html?hpopiafilmes.com/

There are about 30 names of people in the Flight. AirFrance only announced names for the familys for now. They say that some people changed flights, so it’s hard to confirm anything!

Many brazilian websites are covering the accident and talking with specialists to figure out what cause the accident. People say that bad weather and a ray could cause it.

I didn’t knew anyone on that flight, at least until now. I hope that you guys don’t have any relatives and friends in there. Anyway, I wish force and luck to all the familys.

Since the Brazilian Midia is really on the case, I will try to update it and as soon I have the complete list of passenger I will post.

Again, I hope they will find people alive, and I wish the best for all the familys of the passengers.

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Sayid wishes the best to the family of the victims.

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Very very sad. I can hadrly imagine what this would be like to go through.

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on a serious note, that must really suck. Didnt the airline just loose all contact with them?

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Preliminary reports say the jet was attempting to thread a line of thunderstorms when contact was lost. Typically, comms are sparse over the ocean anyway, and stuck in a storm cell with convective and electrical activity can quickly throw you into a veritable black hole wrt radios. The Airbus is equipped with some nice kit to help in picking through the cells, and the captain of a trans Atlantic passenger flight is sure to have been well-versed in such activity. . .but it’s still little more than a “wing and a prayer” type of operation.

It’s not the kind of flying ANYONE becomes a pilot to do. It’s not the kind of flying ANYONE will do if given another option.

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The airplane did the last contact at 22:33pm (Brazilian time) close to Fernando de Noronha. The airplane was supposed to contact earth again at 23:30 but didn’t contacted.

Tam Airlines noticed that another national fly saw some orange dots on the ocean. The state did not confirmed anything but some experts said that this airplane have some really good help systems for eletronic problems, so we hope to find people alive…

Brazil and France didn’t found any parts or the airplane but a guy from the French Government said that they defined the area where the airplane disappeared…

Let’s wait now and hope to find people alive!

I put the list of names that the Brazilian Media showed (Is not Oficcial!):

Adriana Francisco Sluijs
Ana Carolina Rodrigues
Andrés Suárez Montes
Antonio Gueiros
Bianca Machado Cotta
Carlos Eduardo Macário de Melo
Christin Pieraerts
Deise Possamai
Erich Heine
Giovanni Batista Lenzi
Gustavo Henrique Brito dos Santos
Gustavo Peretti
Harald Maximillian Winner
Izabela Maria Furtado Kestler
Isis
João Marques da Silva Filho
José Ronnel Amorim
Juliana Aquino
Leonardo Veloso Dardengo
Letícia Chem
Luigi Zortea
Luis Cláudio Monlevad
Luiz Roberto Anastácio
Kristian Berg Andersen
Marcela Marques Pellizzon
Marcelo Parente
Marcos Mendonça
Marcelo Parente Wife (Name not confirmed!)
Martin
Nelson Marinho Filhons
Octávio Augusto Ceva Antunes
Pablo Dreyfus
Prince Pedro Luis de Orleans e Bragança
Rino Zandonai
Roberto Corrêa Chem
Silvio Barbato
Valnilzia Betler
Vera Chem

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Never seen these guys? http://www.hurricanehunters.com/ They fly into hurricanes :wink:

Most of the time, you can fly around storms, it’s usually easy, just avoid the lightning, or fly above it. Even when lightning hits a plane, it very rarely does anything. Granted, this may have been one of those freak occurrences.

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Ever met any of them? I thought not.

I know a few of them. They’re good friends.

Their mission requirements and capabilities are very different from a bagged-out passenger airline on a transoceanic flight.

(I saw the smilies. Just trying to keep things factually correct for the kiddos.)

I’m sorry. What did you say your flying experience was?

How many thousand hours of PIC time in transport category aircraft to you have?

I’m betting it’s low.

Let’s try to correct this:

  1. Flying around storms depends on a lot of factors. Size of the storm, wx radar capabilities, and fuel ladder are the three big “gotcha’s” that come to my mind. I don’t know what this flight had for any of the above, but my educated guess is: one of the nasty horizon to horizon lines common to the tropics; a decent, but not amazing one; and not nearly enough for a serious change of course, especially so early in a translant flight.

Can’t go around, so maybe go over? Cb’s and their attendant thunderstorms can extend wayyyy up beyond the service ceiling of a heavy airliner. 20 Kft more, sometimes.

That leaves picking your way through the cells. This is where a good radar is key, but if the storm is solid with no holes, it’s not really gonna help.

  1. Avoid the lightning? Sure, sometimes you can see it and avoid a lightning “region”. And you should. But it’s not like you can juke and weave to dodge the bolts. And if you’re threading between or through storm cells, you’ve already passed up that “avoid the region” option.

“Fly above it.” You do know that lightning can be discharged up, right? Also, see part 1 of this answer re: storm tops.

“Even when lightning hits a plane. . .” Ever done it? Let’s just say it’s not always like “they” say it will be. Sure, we design planes to survive a hit, more or less, and there are design features to dissipate the charge. That doesn’t mean everything works as advertised. Electronics commonly fry in lightning strikes, even in hardened a/c that are supposedly safe. Sure, all the pax won’t be fried like chickens when lightning hits, but there’s a real risk of frying and losing such items as radios, navigation instruments, and even those whizz-bang fly-by-wire flight controls. So lightning is not a harmless incidental, but a major concern.

Preliminary report says there was probably an explosive decompression. At the reported cruising altitude, pilots would have had 30-60 seconds of useful consciousness prior. Really, half that due to the effects of the explosive D. With a limited quantity of passenger O2 on board and a storm down below, makes it a crappy choice to have to make.