Quote:Air France plane: was it a bomb?

An Air France pilot has suggested that a bomb could have been the cause of the crash which led to a plane go missing over the Atlantic this week. However most experts have dismissed the suggestion.

Published: 11:03AM BST 04 Jun 2009


Air France Airbus A330: Air France confirmed that 'it had no news' of flight
number AF 447 Photo: AFP

The Air France plane is likely to have broken up in mid-air, experts have said and the vast area over which debris has been found suggested there was an explosion while the aircraft was in flight.
One anonymous Air France pilot suggested that a bomb could "very well" be the cause of the crash. He said: "One can very well imagine that a bomb caused the aircraft's depressurisation and that the plane took time to break up. It could just as well have been a big bomb that blew up the entire plane, which would explain why the aircraft didn't have time to send an alert signal."
Unnamed experts quoted by the Le Monde newspaper said the "wide dispersion of wreckage discovered suggests that the Airbus (A330-200) exploded at high altitude".
However the involvement of a bomb has been dismissed by most and remains extremely unlikely.
Experts said the most likely scenario was that the break-up was caused by massive depressurisation inside the plane.
If such depressurisation had occurred at high altitude, passengers would have almost certainly fallen instantly unconscious and may have been unaware of their fate.
Jean-Louis Borloo, the ecology minister in charge of transport, said yesterday: "Terrorism cannot be ruled out at this stage. There is no indication it was a bomb for now. We cannot rule it out 100 per cent, but we have no indication it was," he said.
Professor Philippe Juvin, head of casualty at Beaujon hospital west of Paris, said: "It would have been as quick as the moment when one falls asleep."
Investigators will examine a bomb threat made against a flight from Buenos Aires to Paris just days before Flight 447 disappeared.
A total of 228 are thought to have died victims on board flight AF 447 from Rio to Paris.
British schoolboy Alexander Bjoroy, 11, was remembered on Wednesday as a keen sportsman with a "happy demeanour" He was returning with a chaperone to Clifton College preparatory school in Bristol, after spending half-term with his expatriate parents, Robin and Jane, and his younger sister, Charlotte, nine, in Brazil. He had been a pupil at the school since January this year.
Nicholas Reeves, head of the British School in Bogota, Colombia, where Alexander's parents had lived from 2005 to 2007, said: "In very little time people came to know him well for his happy demeanour, and charisma. He had a really good sense of humour. He was always laughing and making jokes."
Alexander's parents issued a statement in Brazil in which they said they were "deeply upset about the loss of our son under such tragic circumstances".
They added: "Our thoughts are also with the families and friends of all those who were on board."
Air accident investigators said they were "not optimistic" about retrieving the plane's black boxes despite confirmation that debris spotted 400 miles off Brazil's coast – including a piece of metal 23 feet in diameter – came from the missing plane.
Paul-Louis Arslanian, chief of the French civil aviation ministry's bureau of investigation, said it would be very difficult to recover the cockpit voice and flight data recorders depth of the ocean – up to 10,000 ft – and its rugged floor.
Investigators have around 30 days to find the boxes, which will give the clearest information about what happened, after which their homing devices will cease to function.
"Without them it will be very difficult to reach established fact, but we can reach a possible explanation," said Mr Arslanian. "The investigation will not be easy... but we are not giving up," he said.
Five navy vessels were converging on the area and a French mini-submarine will arrive next week.
The investigation's first findings should be released by the end of the month.
Most of those on-board the Airbus A330-200 were Brazilian or French but they included a total of 32 nationalities.

Quote:Debris 'not from Air France jet'



Debris recovered from the Atlantic by Brazilian search teams is "sea trash" and not from a lost Air France jet, a Brazilian air force official has said.

Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered".

Teams found buoys and a wooden pallet and spotted a fuel slick, and are now searching for an airline seat and a chunk of metal seen earlier this week.

Relatives have been told that there is no hope of survivors being found.

In Paris, Air France Chief Executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon and Chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta briefed passengers' relatives in a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport where they have been waiting for news.

Mr Gourgeon said the Airbus A330 jet, which was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, broke apart either in the air or when it hit the sea.

"What is clear is that there was no landing," said a support group representative who was at the meeting.

"There's no chance the escape slides came out," Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc said.

In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of people gathered at a memorial service attended by the French and Brazilian foreign ministers.

"Those who are missing are here in our hearts and in our memories," French minister Bernard Kouchner told mourners.

A memorial service was held in Paris on Wednesday.

Oil slick

Speaking in Recife, the north-eastern Brazilian city from where search operations are being co-ordinated, Brig Cardoso rowed back on earlier declarations that the wooden pallet and fuel slick had come from the Air France jet.

SEARCH FOR FLIGHT AF 447
1 June: Contact lost with plane over mid-Atlantic
2 June: First debris spotted from the air includes an airline seat. Brazilian defence minister says debris is from missing plane
3 June: More debris spotted, including a 7m-wide chunk of metal. Fuel slick seen on ocean surface
4 June: Buoys and pallet recovered from ocean said to be from plane. Officials later retract statement
The Airbus A330 was not carrying wooden pallets, it was reported, while a large slick spotted in the area most likely spilled from a ship rather than from a downed plane.

Other fuel found in the sea probably did come from the Airbus, he said.

"It has been verified that the material did not belong to the plane, they were wood pallets that were used by ships and sometimes planes, but in this flight to Paris, there were no wood pallets," Brig Cardoso said.

Navy ships are now reported to be scouring the surface of the ocean, about 1,100km (690 miles) north-east of Brazil's coast, in an effort to locate other debris spotted from the air during the first sweeps of the area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Rescuers hold out more hope that what was reported to be a seat and a large chunk of metal could have come from the plane, reports say.

Three more Brazilian boats and a French ship equipped with small submarines are expected to arrive in the area in the next few days.

He said the search effort would continue, with the main focus on finding bodies, but bad weather is forecast for the region on Friday.

'Clock ticking'

French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said the priority was looking for wreckage from the plane, before turning the search to flight data recorders.

"The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear," he said.

French officials have said the recorders, which could be deep under water, may never be found.

Officials have warned that they are far from working out the cause of the crash.

Investigators are reported to be relying on a stream of automated messages sent out just before the crash, which suggested the plane's systems shut down as it flew through high thunderstorms.

Investigators have suggested that speed sensors failed or iced over, causing erroneous data to be fed to onboard computers. This might have caused the plane to fly too fast or too slowly through the storm, leading it either to break apart or stall and fall out of the sky.

A Spanish pilot flying in the area at the time of the crash was quoted by his airline, Air Comet, as saying he had seen an "intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds".

The paper said Airbus, the maker of the plane, would issue A330 jets with new advice on flying in storms.

Airbus declined to comment on the report, though an unnamed official told AFP news agency that it was normal to update airlines following an accident.

David Guyatt Wrote:As I said Pete, strange goings on...

Quote:Nuclear sub to join hunt for jet



A French nuclear submarine is being sent to help find an Air France plane which disappeared over the Atlantic.

French Defence Minister Herve Morin said the submarine had sonar equipment that could help locate the airliner's flight data recorders.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that debris salvaged from the sea was not from the Airbus jet that went missing on Monday.

Airbus has reissued guidelines to pilots after experts said the plane may have had false speed measurements.

A spokesman for the company said that a notice had been sent reminding Airbus crews worldwide what to do when speed indicators give conflicting read-outs.

Spokesman Justin Dubon said the readings meant that "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear".

He said that in such circumstances, flight crews should - if necessary - level off the plane and start troubleshooting procedures as detailed in operating manuals.

SEARCH FOR FLIGHT AF 447
1 June: Contact lost with plane over mid-Atlantic
2 June: First debris spotted from the air includes an airline seat. Brazilian defence minister says debris is from missing plane
3 June: More debris spotted, including a 7m-wide chunk of metal. Fuel slick seen on ocean surface
4 June: Buoys and pallet recovered from ocean said to be from plane. Officials later retract statement
The BBC's Tom Symonds says erratic speed readings could have been the result of heavy turbulence and might have caused the plane's automatic throttle to power up or down as it passed through heavy storms.

Meteorologists say the Air France Flight 447 had entered an unusual storm with 100mph (160km/h) updrafts that sucked water up from the ocean.

As the moisture reached the plane's high altitude it quickly froze in -40C temperatures. The updrafts would also have created dangerous turbulence, they say.

The Airbus A330 jet vanished over the Atlantic en-route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Monday with 228 people on board.

A small group of relatives of those on board the plane has gone to the north-eastern Brazilian city of Recife where the rescue operation is based. They are to be given a chance to tour the facility and to ask questions.

As the search continued on Friday, it was revealed that a wooden pallet and a fuel slick in the vicinity of the plane's last known position were not from the jet.

Brazilian air force official Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered".

The slick was most likely from a passing ship, he said.

Navy ships are reported to be scouring the ocean, about 1,100km (690 miles) north-east of Brazil's coast, in an effort to locate other debris spotted from the air on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Manslaughter inquiry

In addition to the nuclear submarine, a French ship equipped with two deep-sea research mini-submarines is on its way to the area.

The mini-submarines will be looking for the plane's flight data recorders, which are believed to be sitting on the ocean floor up to 6,000m (19,685ft) underwater.

Three more Brazilian boats are expected to arrive in the area in the next few days.

French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said the priority was looking for wreckage from the plane before it sinks or disappears.

French officials have said the flight data recorders, which could be deep under water, may never be found.

In another development on Friday, the Paris prosecutor's office opened a manslaughter investigation into the air crash.

It is a routine step taken by authorities in connection with the deaths of French citizens overseas.

Magda Hassan Wrote:Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade lost in Air France crash
ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug traffickingFrom Andrew McLeod
AMID THE media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.