Air France Aircraft Disappears off Radar

[amt]

The Airbus A330-200, registration F-GZCP, left Rio on 31 May at 730pm local time (1230am in Paris).

The aircraft hit a zone of stormy weather with strong turbulence at 2am this morning (universal time), i.e. 4am in Paris. An automatic message was received from the aircraft at 2:14am (4 :14am in Paris) indicating a failure in the electric circuit a long way from the coast.

The Brazilian, African, Spanish and French air traffic control centres all tried to make contact with flight AF 447 but to no avail. The French military air traffic control centre tried to detect the aircraft but did not succeed.

216 passengers were on board: 126 men, 82 women, 7 children and one infant.

There were 12 flight crew members: 3 pilots and 9 flight attendants.

The flight captain had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340s.

Of the two first officers, one had flown 3,000 flight hours (800 of which on the Airbus A330/A340) and the other 6,600 (2,600 on the Airbus A330/A340).

The aircraft was powered by General Electric CF6-80E engines.

The aircraft had totalled 18,870 flight hours and went into service on 18 April 2005.
Its last maintenance check in the hangar took place on 16 April 2009.

 

[amt]

Brazilian aircraft searching for an Air France jet which went missing with 228 people aboard in an Atlantic storm have spotted debris on the ocean. Some oil, a plane seat and other items were sighted 650km (400 miles) north-east of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha island, the Brazilian air force said.
The find can only be confirmed once the items are retrieved and the first boat is not due to arrive until Wednesday.

Col Jorge Amaral Brazilian air force spokesman said the debris had been spotted by search planes early on Tuesday.
"At approximately 0530 Brazilian time [0830 GMT], a C-130 military aircraft spotted some debris in two locations approximately 60km apart from each other," he said.
"In this area, they saw an orange buoy, an airplane seat, small white pieces, an airplane turbine as well as oil and kerosene.
"The search is continuing because it's very little material in relation to the size [of the Airbus A330]."
Officials, he said, needed "a piece that might have a serial number, some sort of identification" to be sure it came from the missing jet.
Two Lufthansa jets, which were in the same area as the Air France plane half an hour before it vanished, may provide clues as to what happened, the UN weather agency says.

Brazilian air force's Col Jorge Amaral confirming the sighting - translated

Plane crews from Brazil, France and other countries had narrowed their search to a zone half-way between Brazil and west Africa, hoping to pick up signals from the Airbus's beacons.
Col Amaral was also quoted by the Associated Press as saying a life jacket had been spotted amid the debris.
"The locations where the objects were found are towards the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted," he told reporters in Rio.
"That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis."
Searchers now planned to focus their efforts on collecting the debris and trying to identify it, he said.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that if the Brazilian reports were confirmed, they would help narrow the search area.

"This is a race against time which has begun in extremely difficult meteorological conditions and in a zone where the sea bed is up to 7,000m deep," he told the French parliament.
He added that the cause of the plane's loss had still to be established.
"Our only certainty is that the plane did not send out any distress call but regular automatic alerts for three minutes indicating the failure of all systems," he said.
A French search plane flying out of Senegal on Monday was hindered by stormy conditions over the ocean.
Spanish and Senegalese aircraft have also been involved in the search effort.

Electrical failures
The two Lufthansa aircraft recorded data on prevailing temperatures and winds, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said.

Because the exact accident site was unknown, it was "extremely difficult to say how close they were", WMO official Herbert Puempel told Reuters news agency in Geneva.
"But the observations will certainly be used by the investigating group," he added.
In his last radio message, at about 0200 GMT on Monday, the captain of Flight AF 447 reported entering turbulence, French media say.
Up to a dozen reports of electrical failures were sent automatically from the plane before it vanished over the ocean just after.
Most of the missing people are Brazilian or French but they include a total of 32 nationalities. Five Britons and three Irish citizens are among them.
Crisis centres have been set up at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and Rio's Tom Jobim international airport.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend a religious service for the families and friends of the missing passengers and crew at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, on Wednesday.
One of the Brazilians on board was Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, a direct descendent of the last Brazilian emperor, Dom Pedro II, a spokesman for the family said.

 

[Dumb Pilot]

CNN international just reported that the Brazilian air force found two debris fields with recognizable signs of aircraft components (a seat, some life preservers) but no signs of survivors

God Bless

 

[Erlanger]

Here's the weather data for the time of the Air France flight.

http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/