It's being reported that an Air France flight carrying 216 pax &12 crew from Brazil to France has gone off the radar. More news as i find it...

 Reports from the BBC says that Air traffic control lost contact with the plane around 0600 GMT, moments after it took off from Rio bound for France.

 

Aircraft involved is F-GZCP according to ACARS reports.

 

Titch

 Image of an Air France A330/200

 

Lost off the Moroccan coast.

First loss of an A330 in commercial use, only 1 other A330 crash to date and this was an A330-300 Airbus test plane back in 1994

Our hearts and prayers go out to all aboard the flight, their families

 

Quoted from another site: 

"At 03.30am (French time), the pilot was in conversation with their company and was reporting hard turbulence and the conversation was cut off".

With respect to all those involved, it's already been reported by various sources that the weather was particularly bad in that area of the Atlantic.  Could we be looking at in-flight disintergration due to extreme weather?

 

Titch

Strange the BBC is reporting a search being launched around the Island of Ferrando De Noronha of the Brazilian coast , which is a long way from Moroccan coast!. Very worrying that the aircraft has been lost when in cruise , without any mayday messages being reported . Suggests whatever went wrong was very quick . I expect the next few hours things will become clearer.

With the conflicting times it now looks like the flight AF447 was lost just off the coast of Brazil around the island of Fernando de Noronha....see a map of the route here

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20090601-0

Wasn't there an incident with a TAM A330 last week? Flight 8095 hit severe turbulence in the same area, 21 people hurt. I recall passengers saying the aircraft twice went into a sharp dive

Airfrance said that received a message from the A330 at 23:14 (02:14 GMT) the message informed a short-curcuit after the turbulence. The last radar contact was at 23:22 (02:22 GMT) when the aircraft had already passed the Fernando De Noronha Island.

 

I'll inform any news.

odd that a plane just falls out of the sky? turbulance & lightning???  hurricane hunter c-130s do that all the time. had to have been something really bad & really quick.

Brasilian Airforce press release

The last radio contact with CINDACTA III was at the INTOL position (565Km from Natal), informing that they would reach the TASIL position at 23:20 (brasilian local time).

They left radar coverage at 22:48. Last info shows the flight at level 350 and 453kt. They did not report to CINDACTA III at TASIL as expected, and that info was relayed to DAKAR control.

Air France informed CINDACTA III that about 100Km from TASIL the aircraft reported loss of pressurisation and electrical problems.

The aircraft had ACARS onboard this relays info back to base so you would think this would help in tracking where the aircraft went down??

This scenario sends a shiver down my back. Only a few weeks ago I was onboard an A330 crossing the Indian Ocean thinking nothing could bring this magnificent bird down. New generation plane with a great safety record, world-class airline with very high standards of maintenance. My thoughts and prayers are with the poor relatives. Does anyone think there may be link to the Qantas A330-300 flight QF72? Unexpected control system behaviour due to a combination of flight computers that have not been fully validated when operating as a pair under extreme conditions? As flight computers evolve it becomes harder and harder to validate every single combination and scenario. I think we need to become a lot cleverer at testing and validating the interaction between all the flight control systems when working as a system rather than stand alone and at all extremes of the flight envelope and beyond.

Good point Alek

I remember the Qantas incident could this be the same..see below

In the October 7 incident, on Qantas flight QF72 from Singapore to Perth, passengers were hurled around the cabin after the Airbus A330 aircraft dropped with two plunges of 20 and 16 seconds 200 and 650 metres in a matter of seconds while flying over the Indian Ocean. The pilot was forced to make an emergency landing at Learmonth, 1200 kilometres north of Perth on the Western Australian coast, and 44 passengers required hospital treatment.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it believed a faulty component, called the air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU), caused the problem by feeding "erroneous and spike values'' about the angle at which the plane was flying to a flight control computer.

"This led to several consequences, including false stall and over speed warnings,'' and later generated very high and incorrect values for the aircraft's angle of attack. This led to the flight control computers commanding the aircraft to pitch down.

On this flight the plane acted of its own accord even after the pilot had taken manual control of the aircraft but minutes later, the plane made two downward plunges.

This was a situation which nobody have seen it before.

 

 

reading the news made my heart brake for all those people on board the A330...i used to travel with air france during my years at the space industry, back and forth in Kourou and i always thought as a young lad..money and adventure is good but what if the 767 (back in late 90s) hits a problem in the middle of the atlantic....and we did frequently hit some heavy turbulence 3-4 hours down the flight i remember...but nothing ever did happen and of course neither to thousands of other flights since...that is why we design these planes with almost everything that could go wrong in a system to be "extremely improbable" (at least if i remember from the system fault trees)...or as humanly possibly safe...but obviously that is not enough as it is proven once more here...what if we only made a fail safe system, something like a parachute recovery (it exists of course on small private planes as we know), after jettisoning everything apart from the cabin/flight deck so you are left with a semi-tube structure that weighs very little compared to the whole aircraft...i am sure the cost of implementation of such system would be possible if we really wanted to...imagine the crowds delight travelling in an aircraft that can have an ultimate chance in life...after all, aircraft safety experts will tell you that safety is all about...cost! but i believe from an aerodynamics/thermal/system/structural point of view it can happen. may god bless their lost souls

Just a quick note to readers who are not familiar with what are sometimes termed Intertropical Convergence Zones (ITCZ). These equatorial regions of very high buildups of Cumulo Nimbus are quite normal and, using onboard weather radar, an aircraft can readily be steered around the more intense areas of heavy precipitation and turbulence, including hail. But it does take patience and may involve quite large diversions off planned track. I spent many years traversing/penetrating ITCZs in the Papua New Guinea region at Flight Levels of about 16 - 20,000 feet, and can recall no serious problems as long as one did not try to "rush" the process. Lightning is common and frequent with lightning strikes being a fairly regular occurrence world-wide. I write this item only to stress to the public and non-aviation media, that such weather is absolutely normal and as long as pilots follow long-established procedures, there is no reason for an aircraft to be placed in danger.

Latest new from Air France

Although the exact cause of the crash remained a mystery, Air France's chief executive said the Airbus A330 had sent a series of error messages shortly after crossing an area of major turbulence.

"A succession of a dozen technical messages" sent by the aircraft around 0215 GMT showed that "several electrical systems had broken down" which caused a "totally unprecedented situation in the plane," said Pierre-Henry Gourgeon.

"It is probable that it was shortly after these messages that the impact in the Atlantic came," he told reporters at Charles de Gaulle airport where the flight was meant to have landed on Monday morning.

Airline officials had earlier said the plane was probably hit by lightning, but Gourgeon declined to make a direct link between weather conditions and the error messages.

As someone who isn't an aerospace professional, one thing that puzzles me about this tragic incident is that the search area seems to be very vague. The plane systems reported problems and I would have expected that the data transmitted would have included GPS coordinates, giving an accurate plot, at least at that moment. Is it the case that positional data isn't transmitted in such problem reports or is it rather that, if the aircraft did break up (or flew on for a while after reporting the problems), then it is still difficult to localise the point where it ditched?

It would be a major issue for the A330 series if the technical issues that caused the Qantas in flight incidents was partly the cause of this. Seeing as the absolute reason for the Qantas incidents has not been finalised - only narrowed down at this point - the question of recurring failures leaves the A330 fleet exposed to some serious concerns.

Let's hope that the investigators can narrow down the cause quickly and take any doubt away from the operation of the type.

 

jackal9999:

It would be a major issue for the A330 series if the technical issues that caused the Qantas in flight incidents was partly the cause of this. Seeing as the absolute reason for the Qantas incidents has not been finalised - only narrowed down at this point - the question of recurring failures leaves the A330 fleet exposed to some serious concerns.

Let's hope that the investigators can narrow down the cause quickly and take any doubt away from the operation of the type.

 

Was there not a second A330 that had a similar problem last year in southeast Asia some where?

You're right. I am not sure but think it was an Singapore Airlines A330-300 that had the same type of incident. If this type of electronic malfunction happened coincident with lighting strike (or result of) plus decompression (as rumoured), then it would set the aircraft up for a set of non-recoverable consequences. Very messy considering the issue is still vague.

No-one has even hinted at terrorism in this thread. I wonder why. Remember Air India off the Irish coast? 

 

Pilots flying a commercial jet from Paris to Rio de Janeiro for Brazil's largest airline, TAM, spotted what they thought was fire in the ocean along the Air France jet's route early Monday, the airline said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.

"There is information that the pilot of a TAM aircraft saw several orange points on the ocean while flying over the region ... where the Air France plane disappeared," Amaral said.

jackal9999:

You're right. I am not sure but think it was an Singapore Airlines A330-300 that had the same type of incident. If this type of electronic malfunction happened coincident with lighting strike (or result of) plus decompression (as rumoured), then it would set the aircraft up for a set of non-recoverable consequences. Very messy considering the issue is still vague.

No-one has even hinted at terrorism in this thread. I wonder why. Remember Air India off the Irish coast? 

 

no one has ever hinted at terrorism because it evidently isn't, not least because no groups have claimed responsibility for it.

BBC now reporting some 'wreckage' found.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8079122.stm

 

Titch

Brazilian Air Force found debris at 650KM Northeast of Fernando de Noronha but said it needs to identify any serial number before definetly linking it to Air France AF 447.

The debris were first located by the Air Force Airplane R-99 6751 whose radar detected metallic and non metallic parts. This position would indicate (if confirmed) a route change for the Air France flight and the  Brazilian Air Force said it would concentrate efforets around the new location in order to try to confirm it.

Hopefully the reasons for this tragedy will be clarified. 

I wopuld like to offer my condolences and prayers to the relatives and friends of all affected by this tragedy.