Air France A330 Missing over the Atlantic...

[Dasha]

French plane lost over Atlantic

An Air France plane carrying at least 228 people from Brazil has disappeared from radar screens over the Atlantic.
Paris Charles de Gaulle airport said contact was lost with the flight from Rio de Janeiro at 0600 GMT. Brazil's air force confirmed the disappearance.
An airport official told AFP the Airbus 330 had been expected to arrive in Paris at 1110 local time (0910 GMT).
Another official said it was possible that the plane had a transponder problem but this was very rare.
"We are very worried," he said, quoted by AFP news agency. "The plane disappeared from the screens several hours ago."
Flight AF 447 left Rio at 1900 local time (2200 GMT) on Sunday. It had 216 passengers and 12 crew on board.
Airport authorities have set up a crisis centre at Charles de Gaulle.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8076848.stm

[thedr2]

Very bad news. The chance of all the plane's communication systems failing at once is very slim. I just pray the brazilian authorities sent out search parties long befoe the aircraft failed to turn up at CDG. The plane could have ditched in the atlantic nearly 5 hours ago!

[Dasha]

'Brazil's air force confirmed the plane was missing and said a search and rescue mission was under way near the island of Fernando de Noronha.'

So they are searching... dunno when they started though... BBC keeps their links updated so you should check back every once in a while...

[jagalubnan]

I just heard about this... hope that everything is ok...

[toyotaboy95]

This may be the same scenario as LOST. i'm not kidding

[Jps]

The plane is reported to have had some kind of electric circuit failure after suffering from heavy turbulence at around 0200 GMT.
More info on BBC.

Furthermore, the plane has already run out of fuel (if it has been in the air that long), and Brasilian air force has sent airplanes to fly towards Europe searching the plane.

[Williamsfilms]

My prayers are with the passengers and crew. 

[Idioteque]

Same here... my thoughts and prayers for the passengers, crews and their family and loved ones...

[Dasha]

I'm afraid that's where it's going to end yes 

I hope they find out soon what can bring down a 4 year old aircraft of one of the safest airlines in the world...

[RisteMakedonski]

My guess is that they might have made a water landing shortly after and are in the Atlantic on the slides. I hope that's what happened and that everyone will be okay. 

[swiftus27]

They should find something.....  Heck, they found tons of pieces of TWA 800 that exploded over the atlantic and came to the ground in many pieces.

[bigdogshark62]

With TWA 800, though, it was right off the coast (shallower waters), and there were a ton of witnesses.  No one really knows exactly where the AF 447 night have made it to, and it was over the deeper parts of the Atlantic. 

Generally safe aircraft, and rare that storms would reach as high as they would have been flying.  It'll be a while before we find out what might have happened.  If at all...

[jagalubnan]

Generally safe aircraft, and rare that storms would reach as high as they would have been flying.  It'll be a while before we find out what might have happened.  If at all...

Actually they're saying that the region where they think it went down is known for strong storms, with lightning reaching as high as 50,000 feet.

[Dorito_25]

I heard about this in the Australian news. It was a big shock to all. I'm speechless...

[Filippo]

I'm only a 13 year old passionate about aviation guys, so my opinion might not be very accurate but,

This video on youtube (air crash investigation - the plane that vanised pt1,2,3,4,5) tells a similar story. A plane that vanished from radar screens after severe turbulence and the reckage was found in a different place before it lost contact.

Basically, it says that when swithching from navigation to autopilot, the plane needs to fly straight for 30 seconds. This is a bit hard to do when you are in a severe thounder storm, so, the symtems calibrated the route wrongly pushing them off course.

If you look at the route that planes take from South America to Europe, it is very close to Africa. The plane could have been deviated on to the African continent, and realising that there was not enough fuel for them to get to an airport, they attemped an emergency landing. They were not found as some areas of inner Africa have a very low population density.

The communication antenna could have been struck by severe lightening, and, the altimeter could have had a malfunction due to the bad weater as well because readings are difficult to make in bad weather as the measuring systems was disturbed. Due to the darkness, they could not see the proximity to the sea, and understand that the were too low, so they went below the covering of the radars.


I join in saying that my foughts are for the passengers, crew, and their loved ones

[Dorito_25]

Wow I thought I was the only 13 year old 

Anyway, back on topic, this sad topic...

I haven't seen the whole episode of Air Crash Investigations you are talking about, but from what I have seen, it looks like the same sort of story as the Air France flight when I compared it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I have heard, the pilots of the AF flight didn't tell Air Traffic Control that they were struggling. Only the plane's automatic system sent it out. Finding the black boxes will help finish this case, but since it is believed to be in the ocean, it isn't easy to find it. This ACI that you're talking about Filippo happened in 2007, so it must have been easier to find the blackboxes as it was really quick because the case must be closed by now.

[thedr2]

My little theory goes with the lightning strike theory but takes it a little further, since a lightning strike should not bring down a modern airliner.

Ok, so they are flying through a storm at night. There are no visual references so they are relying on their insturments for navigation. It would be disastorous if something were to cause those intruments to give false readings, wouldn't it? Insert lightning strike. If the lightning strike is large (as suggested) and strikes a particular part of the aircraft, potentially it might be able to hit the fly-by-wire system. If the instruments then begin telling them they are banking/climbing/diving when they're not, the pilot, or possibly the auto-pilot, would try to correct this. I don't need to tell you how bad that would be. It could also be spacial disorientation if the instruments stopped working completely or told them they were flying straight and level when they were not.

The lack of ATC contact is a little disconserting and suggests that either something happened suddenly, or so slowly that the cockpit crew didn't even notice it happening.

But that's just my speculation.

[cdightman]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I have heard, the pilots of the AF flight didn't tell Air Traffic Control that they were struggling. Only the plane's automatic system sent it out.

That's what I've heard as well...the aircraft sent an automatic message to maintenance that it had electrical failures and a loss of cabin pressure.  This morning it was reported that the search has turned up sparse debris and an oil slick.  I can't imagine what those people must have gone through and I hope they're at rest and their families / friends can find peace.

[Jps]

There are many possibilities for why pilots haven't contacted the ATC. Most likely it's because 
1.) this happened too fast that they had no time
2.) the weather was so poor that the radiowaves just didn't reach the ATC

There are other possibilities, as well.

[Southsky]

...could be a positive lightning strike. Positive lightning is much more formidable than negative lightning (what is most always seen by us).