French airliner missing over Atlantic

[Bounty]

An Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France has gone missing 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 plane was missing and said a search and rescue mission was under way near the island of Fernando de Noronha.

An airport official told AFP the Airbus 330-200 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, including three pilots.

Airport authorities have set up a crisis centre at Charles de Gaulle.

An Air France official told AFP that people awaiting the flight would be received in a special area at the airport's second terminal.

The plane is now more than two hours overdue for arrival in France, so I guess it extremely doubtful it's just a communications problem.

[Shroom Man 777]

If it suffered problems and landed safely on another air field far short of its destination, surely we would've heard of it immediately, right?

Maybe the plane ended up making a "water landing" on an uncharted island somewhere, and soon the survivors of Oceanic Air France 447 will be confronted by all sorts of crazy conundrums from Black Smoke Monsters to weirdo "others" - and the survivors will respond to all this in French dialogue! Like a dubbed episode of Lost!

Man, as if Airbus had enough problems...

[Bounty]

Unless there's a confirmed technical fault, I doubt this'll refllect badly on Airbus. The missing model has an otherwise very good reputation.

(EDIT: wiki says only two aircraft have been lost in accidents - one in a factory test flight, the other was written off when it got corroded by dangerous cargo)

My completely uneducated guess is that it went down over the ocean or - but I'll admit this is extremely unlikely - got hijacked and detoured.

[Broomstick]

Le Monde is reporting that Air France has given up hope regarding the safe landing of the flight (I'd post the article, but it's in French and my translation skills are weak). The Brazilian air force, as mentioned upthread, is looking for it.

Yes, if they landed at another airfield we would have heard about it. Maybe not immediately, but certainly within 2-3 hours. Transponder failure can cause problems with a plane showing up on secondary radar (the mode in which ATC normally operates) but that alone would not cause an airplane to crash, or to fail to reach its destination.

Two Airbuses have landed safely entirely without power beyond the most minimal emergency backup, Airbuses have landed safely missing parts of their rudder and other major structures... it takes a lot for one to malfunction to the point of being lost like this, something sudden and catastrophic.

There is a small, very small, chance of a successful water landing which may allow for survivors. Right now that's the best hope anyone has, I think.

[Stuart]

According to Yahoo News,

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, had 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand said. The flight left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time (2200 GMT Sunday). About four hours later, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said. The plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence" at 0200 GMT Monday (10:00 p.m. EDT Sunday). An automatic message was received at 0214 GMT (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday) "signaling electrical circuit malfunction."

I don't know if a really strong electrical storm would interfere with the aircraft's control and communications systems to the point where the aircraft was both rendered unflyable and unable to communicate. I've put a call in to the FAA and I'll post anything that I hear.

[Shroom Man 777]

My completely uneducated guess is that it went down over the ocean or - but I'll admit this is extremely unlikely - got hijacked and detoured.

But hijackers almost always announce what they've done, right? I never lived in that time where commercial airliners got hijacked by terrorists almost every weekend, but hijackings usually aren't this quiet, right?

[Solauren]

Possible explainations:

Hijacking by Unknown Persons
Except under highly unusual circumstances, who was behind it would Would have been announced if it was for a reason.
The only circumstances I can think of where a hijacking would not be claimed are out of detective novels and such.
May have resulted in ocean crash

Successful Suicide Attempt by a Passenger(s)
All it would take is someone storming the cockpit and putting the plane into a nose dive. Does anyone know what security is like a Brazilian airports?

Transmittor Problem
However, I can't see that causing a multi-hour delay unless it was combined with

Unexpected Bad Weather Pattern
Forcing a detour, and they haven't reached land yet. However, I can't for the life of me imagine the kind of weather that would cause such a massive detour and interfer with communications.
May have resulted in ocean crash

Fringe theory: Alien Encounter/Abduction.
About as likely as me winning the lottery this week.


I'm hoping it was an unlikely combination of Transmittor problem + Bad Weather causing a detour/delay, but after 2 - 3 hours....

[Bounty]

The BBC article has been updated with official speculation that the plane was struck by lightning and crashed:

An Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France has vanished over the Atlantic after a possible lightning strike, airline officials say.

The Airbus sent an automatic message at 0214 GMT, four hours after leaving Rio de Janeiro, reporting a short circuit as it flew through strong turbulence.

It was well over the ocean when it was lost, making Brazilian and French search planes' task more difficult.

[Broomstick]

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, had 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand said. The flight left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time (2200 GMT Sunday). About four hours later, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said. The plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence" at 0200 GMT Monday (10:00 p.m. EDT Sunday). An automatic message was received at 0214 GMT (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday) "signaling electrical circuit malfunction."

I don't know if a really strong electrical storm would interfere with the aircraft's control and communications systems to the point where the aircraft was both rendered unflyable and unable to communicate. I've put a call in to the FAA and I'll post anything that I hear.

No, airplanes get struck by lightning and barely notice. Well, OK, there's usually a flash and a really big !BANG! but I can't recall the last time even a direct hit by lightning caused anything more than the most minor damage to an airliner. It's possible that a direct hit might cause electrical problems of more than a momentary nature, but it shouldn't be enough to down the airplane. Maybe fry the radios or GPS, but the airplane should still be flyable. I don't think just a lightning strike would down an Airbus, but it certainly could be a contributing factor.

However - a really strong thunderstorm COULD have turbulence severe enough to cause structural failure/breakup. But even a lot of small airplanes have weather radar and systems that should indicate such severe weather activity prior to entering the area, allowing for diversion around it. I can't imagine why anyone would willingly fly through a severe thunderstorm, it's damn close to suicide.

Still - it was at night. If the flight computers were trashed by a lightning hit, or something else happened to knock out the instruments being used to fly in the dark, that could result in spatial disorientation and some sort of death spiral - the cockpits have backups to the electrically driven systems but transitioning to them isn't the easiest thing, take at least a few seconds or even minutes, and if you're being tossed around by turbulence it just complicates things.

Well, it's starting to make a little more sense.... but also looking tragic. I can't see pulling off a water landing in a thunderstorm at sea.

[cosmicalstorm]

It has to be something seriously bad, I figure that even if the plane began a free fall nosedive all of the sudden there would be at least 10-30 seconds for the pilots to yell some french curses over the radio before they hit the ocean. Lets hope whatever got them was quick and painless

[Broomstick]

Possible explainations:

Hijacking by Unknown Persons
Except under highly unusual circumstances, who was behind it would Would have been announced if it was for a reason. The only circumstances I can think of where a hijacking would not be claimed are out of detective novels and such.

The 2001 September 11 hijackings were unannounced. It's not just fiction. But that would be terrorism hijackings, presumably to cause damage where it would be highly visible. Disappearing at sea doesn't fit the plan, although I suppose a hijacking gone wrong could have that effect.

Successful Suicide Attempt by a Passenger(s)
All it would take is someone storming the cockpit and putting the plane into a nose dive. Does anyone know what security is like a Brazilian airports?

Not personally, but Brazil isn't a total backwater. They do have security. It was also an Air France flight - I'm assuming Air France cockpit doors are up to modern standards and not too easy to break into, although I don't know for sure. This scenario is pretty unlikely, between passengers having a self-interest in stopping anyone from storming the cockpit (several attempts in recent years have been rather brutally dealt with by the passengers before the flight crews could react) and cockpit doors being reinforced in recent years.

Transmittor Problem
However, I can't see that causing a multi-hour delay

It shouldn't. A dead transponder and/or radios doesn't affect the ability of the airplane to fly, just the ability of ATC to track it. There are standard international procedures in place to deal with this, which all pilots learn in primary training. It's an annoyance, not an emergency.

Unexpected Bad Weather Pattern
Forcing a detour, and they haven't reached land yet. However, I can't for the life of me imagine the kind of weather that would cause such a massive detour and interfer with communications.

I can't either. And usually when an airplane detours like that they radio the course deviation to someone. Even going around a hurricane shouldn't cause such a lengthy delay.

NOT detouring around a severe thunderstorm, however, can buy you a fuckload of trouble...

I'm hoping it was an unlikely combination of Transmittor problem + Bad Weather causing a detour/delay, but after 2 - 3 hours....

Too long a time period. And as I type we're pushing a 4 hour delay... far too long for a detour to account for it. The airplane is down, somewhere, and the odds of anyone surviving an ocean ditching in a storm are.... well, on par with alien abduction, just about.

Apparently the waters off Senegal are also being searched - that's quite a longshot, it assumes the airplane continued to fly after losing communications. Possible, but it's reaching. They're thinking Air Transat Flight 236, an Airbus without power which glided over a significant portion of the Atlantic to a safe landing in the Azores. They were out of contact for awhile, too, but they weren't flying in bad weather. It's possible, but real damn unlikely.

[Stuart]

No, airplanes get struck by lightning and barely notice. Well, OK, there's usually a flash and a really big !BANG! but I can't recall the last time even a direct hit by lightning caused anything more than the most minor damage to an airliner. It's possible that a direct hit might cause electrical problems of more than a momentary nature, but it shouldn't be enough to down the airplane. Maybe fry the radios or GPS, but the airplane should still be flyable. I don't think just a lightning strike would down an Airbus, but it certainly could be a contributing factor. However - a really strong thunderstorm COULD have turbulence severe enough to cause structural failure/breakup. But even a lot of small airplanes have weather radar and systems that should indicate such severe weather activity prior to entering the area, allowing for diversion around it. I can't imagine why anyone would willingly fly through a severe thunderstorm, it's damn close to suicide. Still - it was at night. If the flight computers were trashed by a lightning hit, or something else happened to knock out the instruments being used to fly in the dark, that could result in spatial disorientation and some sort of death spiral - the cockpits have backups to the electrically driven systems but transitioning to them isn't the easiest thing, take at least a few seconds or even minutes, and if you're being tossed around by turbulence it just complicates things. Well, it's starting to make a little more sense.... but also looking tragic. I can't see pulling off a water landing in a thunderstorm at sea.

Word from the herd is that the plane may have broken up from extreme turbulence. There is also a possibility that a lightning strike may have exploded a partially-filled fuel tank. Without any commitment since the evidence available is not-existant, one theory is that a lightning strike caused a momentary disruption of the aircraft's electronic controls at the same time as severe turbulence caused a radical maneouver. The crew tried to compensate, found their controls weren't working and by the time they got control authority back, the aircraft had passed beyond its structural limits and fell apart. That is, however, purely hypothetical at this time.

[tim31]

But it does follow conditions discovered in many previous accidents.

Here's a clip of a big jet getting struck by lighting

[Pelranius]

I don't suppose that icing on the wings could have played a part in it? (I know that typically the deicing equipment could work but severe conditions or malfunctioning systems could have very serious consequences).

Wouldn't meterological data have warned the pilots to steer away from the storm?

[Broomstick]

I don't suppose that icing on the wings could have played a part in it? (I know that typically the deicing equipment could work but severe conditions or malfunctioning systems could have very serious consequences).

While a malfunction in the de-icing system could, potentially, take down an Airbus I can't imagine any such malfunction doing it so quickly that there was no time to radio distress. Pilots routinely report icing conditions, even when their de-ice systems are working perfectly.

Wouldn't meterological data have warned the pilots to steer away from the storm?

Yes. But sometimes people are idiots.

For weather related information there is oodles of stuff - satellite reports and weather forecasts are available through a variety of channels and checking on that is mandatory before a flight, even at my level of aviation much less what the airlines are required to do. In addition, real-time weather is available from weather stations around the world. Airlines have offices with departments that relay weather information to pilots while in flight. Airplanes - even many small ones, but definitely passenger jets - have on board equipment that detects bad weather right in the cockpit. Finally, there is looking out the window and measuring the use of barf bags.

A really bad storm has effects that extend beyond the clouds making up that storm. You can feel the effects dozens of kilometers from the edge of a storm. Even if you flew into one unawares (a concept I'm having a little trouble imaging, but maybe at night...) you'd notice that you're in weather.

Of course, an Airbus is capable of handling some weather and some storms. They're pretty tough machines, and they'll skirt the edges of bad weather systems routinely. What you want to avoid is going through the middle of a cell, THAT's where the deadly turbulence is.

Sure, the pilots might have neglected to pay attention to the weather, despite having a vested interest in surviving the flight. But that's a LOT of stuff they'd have to be ignoring. It is also possible that the weather was worse than forecast, or a lightning strike took out their warning systems, or something else bizarre happened. It's my suspicion, though, that we're looking at a multi-factorial accident here. First, because most aircraft accidents are multi-factorial these days, especially in regards to the airlines, and second, because an Airbus is a damn tough machine with robust backup systems.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Quick question; if it was flying from France to Brazil, would it have passed through the Bermuda triangle? I only ask because if it did, we're gonna be in for a LOT of stupid crap over the next few days.

[Broomstick]

Short answer: No.

Of course, unless we find the wreckage and/or black boxes we'll never know for sure what happened... but the odds of finding those things under the ocean are pretty damn slim.

[tim31]

Not likely.



EDIT: Broom beat me.

[Broomstick]

Yes, but you had pickchures.

[Stuart]

Short answer: No.

That's never stopped the nut-cases before. They'll just move the Bermuda Triangle or change the course of the aircraft.

In the world of sanity, people are beginning to look at a fire on board the aircraft as being a likely cause. There was a short circuit warning and its possible that electrical discharges started a hidden fire in the airframe that compromised integrity enough so that being bounced around in a storm caused structural failure. That more or less happened to a Swissair bird back in '98.

[Wicked Pilot]

Apparently the waters off Senegal are also being searched - that's quite a longshot, it assumes the airplane continued to fly after losing communications. Possible, but it's reaching.

That is where you would expect to find the aircraft actually. Their route of flight most likely took them on UN866, which overflies Cape Verde and the Canaries. They would have been right in the area or just south of it at the four hour mark when contact was lost.

GHETTO EDIT:



Cape Verde is the first dot under the line, the Canaries are the second. Dakar is the one on the African coast.

[charlemagne]

Since this is the first plane of this type to ever (presumably) crash besides one that crashed during a test flight back when the plane was in development, I really wonder what happened there. I mean, are planes normally that reliable? I guess not, since this type's reliability is emphasized in every article I've read so far.

(A bit offtopic - but again, media are stressing that there have been so-and-so many German passengers on board. I'm always a bit bothered by how the point of exactly how many countrymen are amongst the victims is emphasized, as if the catastrophe got worse with every German added and as if the other 200 people on board just weren't as important.)

[Broomstick]

Apparently the waters off Senegal are also being searched - that's quite a longshot, it assumes the airplane continued to fly after losing communications. Possible, but it's reaching.

That is where you would expect to find the aircraft actually. Their route of flight most likely took them on UN866, which overflies Cape Verde and the Canaries. They would have been right in the area or just south of it at the four hour mark when contact was lost.

Well, in that case my geography was a bit off, so I stand corrected. You are certainly much more an authority on that sort of long-distance travel than I am.

From CNN:

PARIS, France (CNN) -- The jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that disappeared overnight as it entered an area of strong turbulence probably crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, the CEO of Air France said Monday.
A photo of the Airbus 330 that went missing over the Atlantic early Monday.

The first three hours of what was to have been an 11-hour flight appear to have been uneventful, CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said.

But about 4:15 a.m. Paris time, Flight 447's automatic system began a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating that "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down," he said.

Several messages? A multi-system failure?

"This succession of messages signals a totally unforeseeable, great difficulty," he said. "Something quite new within the plane."

During that time, there was no contact with the crew, Gourgeon said.

"It was probable that it was a little bit after those messages that the impact of the plane took place in the Atlantic," he added.

He said the Airbus A330 was probably closer to Brazil than to Africa when it crashed.

He noted that turbulence made flying "difficult" in the area but that it is "too early to say" exactly what happened.

The chances of finding any survivors from were "very low," French President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted Monday.

"This is a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen before," he said at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, where he met with relatives of the missing.

"I said the truth to them: The prospects of finding survivors are very low," he said.

Asked the nationalities of those aboard, he said most of them were Brazilians but added, "that changes nothing, of course. They're victims. It doesn't matter about their nationality."

The airline company identified the nationalities of the victims as two Americans, an Argentinean, an Austrian, a Belgian, 58 Brazilians, five British, a Canadian, nine Chinese, a Croatian, a Dane, a Dutch, an Estonian, a Filipino, 61 French, a Gambian, 26 Germans, four Hungarians, three Irish, one Icelandic, nine Italians, five Lebanese, two Moroccans, three Norwegians, two Polish, one Romanian, one Russian, three Slovakian, two Spanish, one Swedish, six Swiss and one Turk.

Sarkozy said French authorities had sent ships and planes to the area about 400 kilometers from Brazil. "Our Spanish friends are helping us; Brazilians are helping us a lot as well."

He added that authorities were seeking the help of satellites that might be able to pick up signs of what happened to the 4-year-old Airbus 330.

No possibility was being excluded: Turbulence in the area was strong, but other planes were able to pass through it without incident, he said.

The plane had reported a problem with the electrical system, "but the specialists refuse for the moment to express themselves about any possibility," Sarkozy said.

The jet had also sent out a warning that it had lost pressure, the Brazilian air force said.

It lost contact with air traffic control between Galeao International Airport in Rio de Janeiro and Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, the airline said Monday.

The Airbus A330 sent out an automatic signal warning of the electrical problems just after 2 a.m. GMT Monday as it flew "far from the coast," said an Air France spokeswoman who declined to be identified. It had just entered a stormy area with strong turbulence, she said.

The jet was flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet and a speed of 521 mph, the air force said.

If they lost pressure at 35,000 unconsciousness might have come quickly for those aboard, which may account for the lack of message from people. Yes, there are supposed to be emergency masks for the passengers and certainly for the crew, but there have been other pressure-loss accidents where everyone aboard an airplane was overcome quickly.

Among the passengers were 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby, in addition to the 12 crew members, Air France officials in Brazil said.

Much of the route is out of radar contact, Brazilian air force Col. Henry Munhoz told TV Globo.

Brazil's air force launched a search near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean, 365 km (226 miles) from Brazil's coast, a spokesman for the air force said.
Time line
2230 GMT Sunday Flight AF447 takes off from Rio's Airport do Galeao
0133 GMT Monday Plane makes last contact with Brazilian air traffic control
0148 GMT Plane disappears from radar
0320 GMT Plane fails to make scheduled radio contact
0530 GMT Brazilian Air Force launches search
0910 GMT Plane fails to make scheduled landing in Paris
Source: Brazilian Air Force

Two Brazilian squadrons are searching for the plane, although it disappeared after it left the country's radar space, said the officer, who declined to be identified.

The flight, AF 447, took off from Galeao International Airport at 11:30 p.m. Sunday GMT. It was scheduled to land in Paris at 9:10 a.m. GMT.

Its last known contact occurred at 2:33 a.m. GMT, the Brazilian air force spokesman said.

It was expected to check in with air traffic controllers at 3:20 a.m. GMT but did not do so, the Brazilian air force said in a statement.

Brazilian authorities asked the air force to launch a search mission just over three hours later, at 6:30 a.m. GMT, the statement said.

The plane reported no problems before takeoff, Joao Assuncao, Air France's manager in Brazil, told the country's Record TV.

The French ambassador to Senegal told BFMTV that French military aircraft had been dispatched to search around Cape Vert, or Green Cape, off the coast of the west African country.

The airline set up a crisis center at the Paris airport. It listed numbers for families to call: 0 800 800 812 for people in France and 00 33 1 57 02 10 55 for families outside France.

At a crisis center at the airport in Rio, relatives of the missing complained of a dearth of information from Air France, the Brazilian state news agency reported.

One man, who identified himself as Bernardo, said his brother, Romeo Amorim Souza, and his wife were on the missing flight.

"I came to the airport because I wasn't finding information, and my parents are very nervous," he told Agencia Brasil.

The missing A330 last underwent a maintenance check on April 16, the airline said.

CNN air travel expert Richard Quest said the twin-engine plane, a stalwart of transatlantic routes, had an impeccable safety record, with only one fatal incident involving a training flight in 1994.

"It has very good range and is extremely popular with airlines because of its versatility," he said.

Its crew was composed of three pilots and nine cabin crew members, including a captain who has logged 11,000 hours in flight. About 1,700 of those hours were on the A330 and A340. Of the two co-pilots, one has 3,000 hours of flying experience and the other 6,600 hours. The aircraft has flown 18,870 hours.

The model is "capable of communicating in several different ways over quite long distances even if they are out of radar coverage," said Kieran Daly of the online aviation news service Air Transport Intelligence.

The French Accident Investigation Bureau for civil aviation is investigating, the company said in a statement.

Well, it could have been weather, fire, all sorts of things... I'm still holding out for "multiple causes". Very mysterious in many ways, and, as I said, unless we find the airplane/black boxes the odds of every really knowing what the hell happened are pretty low.

Also pretty certain no one survived, although there is certainly merit to a search and rescue effort as people have unexpectedly survived bad accidents before. Keep hoping they find some folks in a life raft or clinging to something floating.

[Broomstick]

Since this is the first plane of this type to ever (presumably) crash besides one that crashed during a test flight back when the plane was in development, I really wonder what happened there. I mean, are planes normally that reliable? I guess not, since this type's reliability is emphasized in every article I've read so far.

Modern passenger airliners made by the likes of Airbus and Boeing really are extremely reliable machines, much more so than people realize.

(A bit offtopic - but again, media are stressing that there have been so-and-so many German passengers on board. I'm always a bit bothered by how the point of exactly how many countrymen are amongst the victims is emphasized, as if the catastrophe got worse with every German added and as if the other 200 people on board just weren't as important.)

The media in every country seem to do that, I think to generate more viewing interest or something. I thought what President Sarkozy said summed up the real truth with some classs:

Asked the nationalities of those aboard, he said most of them were Brazilians but added, "that changes nothing, of course. They're victims. It doesn't matter about their nationality."

[tim31]

Just realized that by coincidence, my father will be on an Air France 777 from Singapore to Paris right now...