French Plane Vanishes over Brazil!

[3113]

Actually, the plane had just left Brazil and was over the Atlantic. Scary. Terrible.

Brazilian air force planes are searching the Atlantic for an Air France plane that vanished from radar screens as it flew to Paris today with 228 people on board. Flight AF447, an Airbus A330-200, left Rio de Janeiro at 7pm local time (2300 BST) yesterday. It had been expected to arrived in Paris at 11.15am....The plane was carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew. The French authorities have set up a crisis centre at Charles de Gaulle airport.

The Brazilian air force told the Associated Press that a search was under way near the island of Fernando de Noronha. A spokesman said the search and rescue mission was mounted after the jet failed to make regular radio contact. According to the French media, Paris airport authorities were informed by their Brazilian counterparts that the aircraft had vanished from radar screens.

France Info radio quoted an airport authority source as saying that its absence from the radar could be a question of a transmitter failure, but that this would be a very rare occurrence. Chris Yates, an aviation expert, told the BBC: "There is not radar coverage across the Atlantic because it is too far from radar stations....Normally, aircraft crossing the oceans are in contant contact with traffic control, updating them with details of their route information or location. If there is an emergency on board, they declare that. So it is somewhat surprising that there doesn't appear to have been a warning."

...David Gleave, another aviation expert, told the BBC: "We are running out of time for the plane to reappear, given the amount of fuel it had on it. Had it been a communcation problem, it would have appeared now on Spanish or French radar or Brazilian, had it turned around. The first thing is to find out where it is. It may have been reporting its position by satellite. It is very unusual that there is no location information."

Complete article here.

 

[Handley_Page]

I guess it's time to have a word with your particular God.
Sympathy to those left.

 

[sr71plt]

Brazil has a thing about eating up planes. I'll have to remember to see that country by ship.

 

[3113]

Brazil has a thing about eating up planes. I'll have to remember to see that country by ship.

I put in a quick edit above--they were actually out to sea, but still just off Brazil when they fell off the radar.

 

[3113]

Crashed!

I posted too quickly. It seems that it's been confirmed. The plane crashed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu5bnReLtTo

 

[trysail]

It's never a bad idea to check to see that the pilot doesn't have a parachute. Identity of interest is an extremely powerful motivator.

I prefer flying with pilots who have a little reminder taped just above the windscreen:

"REMEMBER, DUMMY, THIS END HITS FIRST."​

The Froggies have a long and accomplished history of aviation. They were frequently pioneers and hold many "firsts." Similarly, many in the West are ignorant of the fact that the Russkies have produced some exceptional aeronautical engineers and designers such as Sukhoi, Tupelov and Mikoyan.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Air travel has gotten so safe that the only things left to go wrong are unpredictable random errors . . . which sadly are just as deadly as any other kind.

 

[oggbashan]

The area for search is massive. The plane was a very long way from land when the automated signal about an electrical failure was sent. It might have diverted from its planned course to avoid electrical storms.

The French have asked the US for any assistance that might be possible from satellite imagery to show where the plane was last in the air.

Og

 

[voluptuary_manque]

If the right satellite was over it, we could! But those satellites-which-do-not-exist are not in geosynchronous orbits so it might have been and then again, it might not.

 

[amicus]

If you are not aware of the South American Anomaly, (SAA), you may find interest in the following:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970307a.html

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/rosat/gallery/display/saa.html



http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/rosat/gallery/misc_saad.html

The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA, the large red area in the image) is a dip in the Earth's magnetic field which allows cosmic rays, and charged particles to reach lower into the atmosphere. This interferes with communication with satellites, aircraft, and the Space Shuttle. While there are theories as to why this occurs, the geologic origin is not yet known.

As the disappearance of this aircraft seems somewhat of a mystery, perhaps an answer lies in the above information.

Amicus

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It reeks of Cheney and Rumsfeld involvement.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Here is one pilot's view of what might have happened. It's scary and makes me not want to fly in that direction, especially in summertime.

 

[oggbashan]

What worries me is that if everything reported about the flight has been accurate - we may never know what happened.

Og

 

[3113]

The Latest

Officials have found metal debris off the coast of Brazil where Flight 447 is believed to have gone down - and they believe the debris may be part of the Airbus 330.

Authorities have not officially confirmed whether the debris belongs to the plane.

 

[CharleyH]

The area for search is massive. The plane was a very long way from land when the automated signal about an electrical failure was sent. It might have diverted from its planned course to avoid electrical storms.

The French have asked the US for any assistance that might be possible from satellite imagery to show where the plane was last in the air.

Og

I have to admit ... I NEVER knew that there were points, flying over the Atlantic, where there was no radio contact. I seriously thought that satellites took care of every communication and I was safe. Any comments?

I also (on our recent trip) articulated to Lauren that I didn't understand why there were lights on life jackets (I also thought there should be parachutes rather than life jackets on our intercontinental flight over no water). Shouldn't there be (in this day and age of GPS) homing beacons on life jackets? Thoughts?

 

[freshface]

I have to admit ... I NEVER knew that there were points, flying over the Atlantic, where there was no radio contact. I seriously thought that satellites took care of every communication and I was safe. Any comments?

I also (on our recent trip) articulated to Lauren that I didn't understand why there were lights on life jackets (I also thought there should be parachutes rather than life jackets on our intercontinental flight over no water). Shouldn't there be (in this day and age of GPS) homing beacons on life jackets? Thoughts?

They really don't expect people to walk away from water landings. The planes tend to disintegrate on landing, and that's when the pilots still have some control.

Having said that, at least some life jackets do have GPS that turns on when the life jacket is activated. I've read about a few airline employees who learned the hard way that it maybe wasn't a good idea to take company life jackets on their river expeditions.

 

[trysail]

I have to admit ... I NEVER knew that there were points, flying over the Atlantic, where there was no radio contact. I seriously thought that satellites took care of every communication and I was safe. Any comments?

I also (on our recent trip) articulated to Lauren that I didn't understand why there were lights on life jackets (I also thought there should be parachutes rather than life jackets on our intercontinental flight over no water). Shouldn't there be (in this day and age of GPS) homing beacons on life jackets? Thoughts?

There is communication across the entire Atlantic ( and Pacific, for that matter ). I don't know where you got the idea there wasn't.

All commercial aircraft carry transponders ( i.e., beacons ).

Small vessels ( particularly sailboats ) carry EPIRBs ( Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons ) that are activated in an emergency. EPIRBs can be activated by any number of methods including immersion or a simple switch. An EPIRB is not inexpensive and there's no particular point to having one for each individual.

Unless you're familiar with parachutes, you're just as likely to strangle yourself with one as to use it properly.

 

[CharleyH]

They really don't expect people to walk away from water landings. The planes tend to disintegrate on landing, and that's when the pilots still have some control.

Having said that, at least some life jackets do have GPS that turns on when the life jacket is activated. I've read about a few airline employees who learned the hard way that it maybe wasn't a good idea to take company life jackets on their river expeditions.

Thank you. However, lets talk. I am not hopeful for the French flight. Even IF they landed on water, the ocean in a storm like that is a harsh mistress. She (the ocean) will never be settled and if the pilot tried to land on her, he would be crushed by her wrath (waves). Could people escape such a tragedy? I would like to think that a parachute pulled might save some.

 

[freshface]

Thank you. However, lets talk. I am not hopeful for the French flight. Even IF they landed on water, the ocean in a storm like that is a harsh mistress. She (the ocean) will never be settled and if the pilot tried to land on her, he would be crushed by her wrath (waves). Could people escape such a tragedy? I would like to think that a parachute pulled might save some.

Let's start with agreeing that there's no way to actually land an airplane on the ocean. Even a glassy calm ocean has too many waves for the plane to survive the landing, so no one would survive an ocean landing.

Assuming that every passenger had a parachute, and that every passenger would know how to wear it and use it, and that the plane was flying calmly enough for people to make an orderly exit, you still have a lot of problems. Planes fly at 30,000+ feet, so the pilot would have to get it down to 10,000 feet or lower for the passengers to have enough oxygen. The water is pretty hard when you land on it from any distance, so even experienced parachutists get injured with water landings. You have to get the parachute off immediately after landing or it drags you under and drowns you. You have to see the water coming up so you can land properly. How long you survive after landing depends on water temperature. On a sunny days, with experienced jumpers and perfect conditions, the jumpers would likely not have survived their jumps. In this case, the pilots didn't even have time to broadcast a distress signal. The plane sent an automated message reporting lost pressure and electrical failure. The passengers were probably unconscious or dead long before it hit the water.

At the beginning of the last paragraph, we made some assumptions that we know don't work in the real world. The military spends two weeks teaching people how to jump out of airplanes before they start allowing them to jump out of airplanes. When they do allow them to jump out of the airplane, they do it on a static line, where the parachute automatically deploys after they jump. Even experienced jumpers have been known to fail to pull the draw cord. At the end of Jump School, they are counted as barely qualified to parachute. It takes a lot more experience before they're really competent and soldiers still die every year in parachute accidents. Airline passengers wouldn't have a chance.

 

[Weird Harold]

Let's start with agreeing that there's no way to actually land an airplane on the ocean. Even a glassy calm ocean has too many waves for the plane to survive the landing, so no one would survive an ocean landing.

You start with a fallacious assumption. It is possible to "land" an commercial airliner on calm seas -- they are called glassy calm seas because there are no waves. ETA: Landing there would be no more difficuly or dangerous than landing in the Hudson River (without the skyscrapers to dodge.)

Even in moderately heavy seas, or other less than ideal conditions, it is possible to "ditch at sea" with minimal casualties if the airplane can be controlled. People hav esurvived ditching at sea in much worse conditions than a dead calm (which wouldn't have been the case anyway because they apparently hit a thunderstorm and lost electrical power -- lightening strike?

The last news I heard was that wreckage has been found 400 miles from Brazil and that it appeared that the plane had attempted to turn back to Rio. That suggests that the plane was not controllable, and there has been no mention of emergency transponders from life rafts or mention of any survivors in life vests. So it doesn't sound like the crew got an opportunity to even try a controlled landing.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

With no good reason, I have this terrible feeling that the plane came apart in the air. At flight altitude, the passengers would have been unconscious within seconds and dead from the cold long before they hit the sea.

 

[trysail]

With no good reason, I have this terrible feeling that the plane came apart in the air. At flight altitude, the passengers would have been unconscious within seconds and dead from the cold long before they hit the sea.

All of which ( given the circumstances ) would be good.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I have to admit ... I NEVER knew that there were points, flying over the Atlantic, where there was no radio contact. I seriously thought that satellites took care of every communication and I was safe. Any comments?

I also (on our recent trip) articulated to Lauren that I didn't understand why there were lights on life jackets (I also thought there should be parachutes rather than life jackets on our intercontinental flight over no water). Shouldn't there be (in this day and age of GPS) homing beacons on life jackets? Thoughts?

Its not points that are out of radio contact. It's points where they are not on radar. Had the crew had time to send a distress radio call, it would have been heard. That's one of the mysteries of this accident, why they didn't send one. The only radio contact was automated.

 

[CharleyH]

Its not points that are out of radio contact. It's points where they are not on radar. Had the crew had time to send a distress radio call, it would have been heard. That's one of the mysteries of this accident, why they didn't send one. The only radio contact was automated.

I understand, but, but ... lets get laymen here. In my laymen idea, I think that wherever I am flying in the world, people know where I am. What do you mean there are points when planes (MY PLANE) is not on radar?

 

[trysail]

I understand, but, but ... lets get laymen here. In my laymen idea, I think that wherever I am flying in the world, people know where I am. What do you mean there are points when planes (MY PLANE) is not on radar?

Radar is basically "line of sight." When you go over the horizon, you go off radar. Transponders have a much longer range.