Missing Air France jet 'hit by electric fault'

[Exterminator]

Terror Names Linked To Doomed Flight AF 447

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.

French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.

Flight AF 447 crashed in the mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.

While it is certain there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.

Oh, for crying out loud, you freaking pansy; look past your fear and imagine the possibility that an airplane crash in the midst of a violent storm after the plane had reported a malfunction might be something other than the mean-ole-boogey-man.   

[Palehorse]

Oh, for crying out loud, you freaking pansy; look past your fear and imagine the possibility that an airplane crash in the midst of a violent storm after the plane had reported a malfunction might be something other than the mean-ole-boogey-man.   

Perhaps Henry and I both should. . . I cannot help but have the thoughts given the what has transpired over the last 10 years though. Doesn't mean I believe it to be the source until scientifically confirmed though. . .

I am still finding it hard to understand how the crew could have lost control and flew into a storm that had the potential to drive such an incident; given the state of the art radar and capability to understand what they were flying into so well in advance. If the crew didn't have complete confidence in the equipment and its performance they could have flown around that storm, no?

Shit happens, and I guess you get the right combination of turds and this is what you get. . .

[Exterminator]

Shit happens, and I guess you get the right combination of turds and this is what you get. . .

Exactly and you don't know how true what you've just written is as it relates to aviation accidents; it is virtually never a single problem, event or response that brings down an aircraft but a series of them.

If terrorists were involved, why has no one claimed responsibility?  What's the point of crashing a plane if there's no political statement to be made?

[Henry Hawk]

Oh, for crying out loud, you freaking pansy; look past your fear and imagine the possibility that an airplane crash in the midst of a violent storm after the plane had reported a malfunction might be something other than the mean-ole-boogey-man.   

I'm just passing on the news EX....I am not afraid of anything regarding this.......but, terrorism HAS not been ruled out...that is ALL I'm saying....it is YOU who says there is absolutely NO way it could be terrorism....and, despite your incredible intellect, you MAY be wrong.

[Exterminator]

Yes, I could be...but I'm not.

[Palehorse]

The point surrounding the fact no one has claimed responsibility is a good one, and the very thought that has kept me from talking about that possibility in depth to this point.

Yes, I initially had that train of thought, and no it has not entirely left. I just believe that had it been the case some dill weed would have stepped to the plate and laid claim to it by now. . . as Ex stated.

[Henry Hawk]

I agree too, I have my doubts that it is terrorist related....I always have.....I just said it could be possible...based upon some of the reports.  It has NOT been 100% ruled out for a reason though.

[dan foster]

Now the media is reporting that this plane encountered a storm just before it went down. . . (Or did it go down? Aliens may have absconded with it!) 

Maybe they just tried to go over the storms:

http://elf.gi.alaska.edu/movies/wf3541.mpg

[Exterminator]

More commentary from Ask The Pilot.

[Locutus]

SAO PAULO – Autopsies revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, a Brazilian official said Wednesday. Experts said those injuries — and the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic — strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air.
There have been no visible signs of burning or charring on bodies or wreckage, though that doesn't rule out an explosion somewhere outside the passenger cabin, these crash experts told The Associated Press.

A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told the AP that the fractures were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.

"Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures — arm, leg, hip fractures — it's a good indicator of a midflight break up," said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. "Especially if you're seeing large pieces of aircraft as well."
The pattern of fractures was first reported Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, which cited unamed investigators. The paper also reported that some victims were found with little or no clothing, and had no signs of burns.

That lack of clothing could be significant, said Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, D.C., who is a former accident investigator. "In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away."

Casey also said multiple fractures are consistent with a midair breakup of the plane, which was
cruising at about 34,500 feet (10,500 meters) when it went down.

"Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall — even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect," Casey said. "Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess."

When a jet crashes into water mostly intact — such as the Egypt Air plane that hit the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from New York in 1999 — debris and bodies are generally broken into small pieces, Ciacco said. "When you've had impact in the water, there is a lot more fragmentation of the bodies. They hit the water with a higher force."

Lack of burn evidence would not necessarily rule out an explosion, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

If something caused the lower fuselage to burn or explode, "passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage" and the plane would still disintegrate in flight," Goglia said. "These are scenarios that cannot be ruled out."

In Paris, Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the French air accident investigation agency BEA, said search teams had recovered more than 400 pieces of debris — reason for "a little more optimism," since it has helped narrow the search for the black boxes in a vast area of the mid-Atlantic.

"We are in a situation that is a bit more favorable than the first days," Arslanian told a news conference at BEA headquarters outside Paris. "We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism."

"(But) it is premature for the time being to say what happened," he added.
Searchers from Brazil, France, the United States and other countries are methodically scanning the surface and depths of the Atlantic for signs of the Airbus A330 that crashed May 31 after running into thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 people aboard were killed.

Still missing are the plane's flight data and voice recorders, thought to be deep under water.
French-chartered ships are trolling a search area with a radius of 50 miles (80 kilometers), pulling U.S. Navy underwater listening devices attached to 19,700 feet (6,000 meters) of cable. The black boxes send out an electronic tapping sound that can be heard up to 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) away, but these locator beacons will begin to fade after just two more weeks.

"It is one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation," Arslanian said.
Without the black boxes to help explain what went wrong, the investigation has focused on a flurry of automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact; one suggests external speed sensors had iced over, destabilizing the plane's control systems.

Arslanian said most of the messages appear to be "linked to this loss of validity of speed information." He said when the speed information became "incoherent" it affected other systems on the plane that relied on that speed data. But he stressed that not all the automated messages were related to the speed sensors.

The automated messages were not alarm calls and no distress call was picked up from the plane, he said.

Air France has replaced the sensors, called Pitot tubes, on all its A330 and A340 aircraft, under pressure from pilots who feared a link to the accident.

Arslanian said a French doctor from the BEA was not allowed to participate in autopsies done so far on some Flight 447 bodies by Brazilian authorities, and those autopsy results have not been released to the BEA. He said he was "not happy" with this situation.

However, he added that French judicial authorities, who are conducting a parallel criminal probe, were present at the autopsies.

Brazil's Federal Police and state medical authorities in Recife who are overseeing the autopsies said in a statement that two French investigators, a dental expert and a doctor, had been following the examinations as observers since June 10.

The French are leading the crash investigation, while the Brazilians are leading the rescue operation.


Yahoo News

[Locutus]

Looks like a midair breakup.   

[Palehorse]

Looks like a midair breakup.   

It was raining men, women, and children! 

[Locutus]

Hopefully, they died quickly.  I can't imagine how horrific that must have been for them.

[Palehorse]

Hopefully, they died quickly.  I can't imagine how horrific that must have been for them.

Given the fact they were at cruising speed and altitude when whatever happened, happened, that is probably right. . . They'd have suffocated at worst, but more than likely were knocked out by the wind forces and debris. . .

I specualte that such is far better than a 3-4 minute fall to the water in any case. BAM! Then whatever is next. . . Seems better anyway. . . 

[Exterminator]

Given that the plane reported that the cabin had depressurized, it is unlikely anyone was even conscious.