French airplane vanished over the Atlantic

An Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France has vanished over the Atlantic after flying into turbulence, airline officials say.

The Airbus sent an automatic message at 0214 GMT, four hours after leaving Rio de Janeiro, reporting a short circuit. It may have been damaged by lightning.

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

France's president said the chances of finding survivors were "very small".

"It is a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen," Nicolas Sarkozy said after meeting relatives and friends of passengers at a crisis centre at Charles de Gaulle airport.

Earlier, Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told reporters: "We are without a doubt faced with an air disaster."

He added: "The entire company is thinking of the families and shares their pain."

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. The passengers included one infant, seven children, 82 women and 126 men.

Air France confirmed that there had been 61 French and 58 Brazilians on board.

Among the other passengers were 26 Germans, nine Chinese, nine Italians, six Swiss, five Britons, five Lebanese, four Hungarians, three Irish, three Norwegians and three Slovaks.

Lightning theory doubts

The Airbus 330-200 had been expected to arrive in Paris at 1110 local time (0910 GMT).

It made its last radio contact with Brazilian air traffic controllers at 0133 GMT (2233 Brazilian time) when it was 565km (360m) off Brazil's north-eastern coast, Brazil's air force said.

The crew said they were planning to enter Senegalese airspace at 0220 GMT and that the plane was flying normally at an altitude of 10,670m (35,000ft).

At about 0200 GMT, the captain reported entering heavy turbulence caused by Atlantic storms, French media report.

At 0220, when Brazilian air traffic controllers saw the plane had not made its required radio call from Senegalese airspace, air traffic control in the Senegalese capital was contacted.

At 0530 GMT, Brazil's air force launched a search-and-rescue mission, sending out a coast guard patrol plane and a specialised air force rescue aircraft.

France is despatching three search planes based in Dakar, Senegal, and has asked the US to help with satellite technology.

"The plane might have been struck by lightning - it's a possibility," Francois Brousse, head of communications at Air France, told reporters in Paris.

David Gleave, from Aviation Safety Investigations, told the BBC that planes were routinely struck by lightning, and the cause of the crash remained a mystery.

Aeroplanes get hit by lightning on quite a routine basis without generally any problems occurring at all," he told BBC Radio Five Live.

"Whether it's related to this electrical storm and the electrical failure on the aeroplane, or whether it's another reason, we have to find the aeroplane first."

France's minister responsible for transportation, Jean-Louis Borloo, ruled out hijacking as a cause of the plane's loss.

'No information'

Mr Sarkozy said he had met "a mother who lost her son, a fiance who lost her future husband".

"I told them the truth," he said afterwards. "The prospects of finding survivors are very small."

Finding the plane would be "very difficult" because the search zone was "immense", he added.

About 20 relatives of passengers on board the flight arrived at Rio's Jobim international airport on Monday morning seeking information.

Bernardo Souza, who said his brother and sister-in-law were on the flight, complained he had received no details from Air France.

"I had to come to the airport but when I arrived I just found an empty counter," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

Air France has opened a telephone hotline for friends and relatives of people on the plane - 00 33 157021055 for callers outside France and 0800 800812 for inside France.

This is the first major incident in Brazilian air space since a Tam flight crashed in Sao Paulo in July 2007 killing 199 people.

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

http://english.cri.cn/6966/2009/06/02/1901s489369.htm

The mayor of Rio Eduardo Paes is at the airport. Marcelo Parente, Rio's government chief of staff, is reportedly among the likely victims. The local press also reports that Michelin's President for South America, Luis Roberto Anastacio, and a member of Brazil's former royal family, Pedro Luiz de Orleans e Braganca, were also flying the plane.

why do i suspect foul play?
am i THAT jaded and/or paranoid?

this just in, hmmmmmmmmm...

"PARIS – An Air France spokesman says the airline received a bomb threat for a flight from Buenos Aires to Paris on May 27, but that warning proved to be false.

Spokesman Nicolas Petteau said Wednesday that an Air France agency in Buenos Aires received an anonymous phone call threatening Flight 415. He said the plane, a Boeing 777, was checked by security services who found no explosive devices and the plane was allowed to leave the Argentine capital.

France's Defense Minister Herve Morin said "we have no signs so far" of terrorism regarding the Airbus A330 plane flown by Air France that disappeared Sunday night after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris.

He said all hypotheses must be studied. A Pentagon official also said there was no indication of terrorism."

ya, right

Quote :

He said all hypotheses must be studied. A Pentagon official also said there was no indication of terrorism."

Which brand of terrorism did he mean I wonder?

<fknnews style="on">A leading pentagon official was definately not heard to say, whilst on his knees begging through tears of panic: "Please don't stop getting on planes and wasting jetfuel and increasing carbon emmissions so our airline companies dont go broke" </fknnews>

now "they" are saying it could be computer malfunction....

from zeta talk:

"The sequence of events is clear. The pilot announced air turbulence. Then 15 minutes later an automatic message from the plane's computer announced that several electrical systems had failed. Thereafter, no more messages were received, so the pilots were either too busy or unable to transmit. On the face of it, a massive failure in the electrical systems caused the plane to go down, and prevented a last minute transmission from the pilot as to their likely location. What would cause such a failure?

We have repeatedly warned that electromagnetic disturbances could be anticipated as the charged tail of Planet X turned toward the Earth. There is increasing evidence of this, ...."

http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/shownews.php4?getnews=m2009-06-14-1916&pc=s01

Air France flight 447 hit by ground-to-air missile?

Lightning, turbulence, an explosion - the list of causes for the mysterious crash of Air France flight 447 contains many variations, but one detail is missing: Did secret military exercises in the Atlantic Ocean lead to an accidental shooting of the passenger aircraft? At least that fast, but very unlikely location of the crash site by the Brazilian Air Force is raising discussions on the theory that the military could know more than admitted. A look back reveals: Full scale military exercises to defend Brazil’s offshore oil have been held in 2008 and seem to be usual. "As part of Operation Atlantic exercise on September 12-26, the Brazilian armed forces will simulate an attack by a fictitious enemy on oil drilling facilities such as platforms and pipelines in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Espirito Santos states and off shore", the South Atlantic News Agency MercoPress reported last year.


Such an accident would not be unusual: In 2001 a Tupolev Tu-154 of Sibir Air on the scheduled flight from Israel to Ukraine has been shut down during a military exercise on the Black Sea. All 78 people aboard died. In July 1988 the U.S. missile cruiser USS Vincennes CG-49 hit an Airbus A 300 of Iran Air accidentally. Leaving 290 passengers and all crew members dead. In 1983 the shooting of Korean Airlines Flight 007 (KAL 007) ignited a political crisis between the major powers USA and USSR. The civilian Boeing 747 of Korean Air Lines had been destroyed by a Soviet air-to-air missile of the type Kaliningrad K-8 (NATO codename: AA-3 ANAB). 269 people on board died.

A similar accident concerning Air France Flight 447 would at least explain why the pilots didn’t send an emergency signal - but even this variant of the accident remains speculation until the flight recorder is found.

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(2009-06-15)

and the guessing continues...

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/107390/Did-electronic-pulse-bomb-down-jet-

DID ELECTRONIC PULSE BOMB DOWN JET?



POSSIBILITY: A pulse of energy could have doomed flight 447
Sunday June 14,2009

By James Murray CRASH investigators are trying to discover whether terrorists used an electronic bomb to bring down the Air France jet, killing 228 people.


Al Qaeda has been working on a device which knocks out the sophisticated electronics on passenger jets with an electromagnetic pulse.


It can be as small as an orange but needs a small explosive to be detonated.

The device sends a high-powered pulse through electronic equipment strong enough to overpower an aircraft’s cockpit and black box, making them impossible to trace because they will not emit a signal.

Fears that terrorists are behind the disaster come as a French submarine has so far failed to locate the black box where the Airbus 330 came down in a storm 700 miles off Brazil.

The Sunday Express can reveal that in April jihadi websites were running stories on the effectiveness of EMPs or electromagnetic pulse devices.


One article said: “Allah has answered prayers and helped his soldiers with EMP grenades. The EMP is broadband, high-intensity, short-duration burst of electromagnetic energy which burns out all electrical components it reaches.”

It claimed mujahideen warriors have built EMPs into rocket-propelled grenades and use them to knock out communication centres in Afghanistan.


“This is no longer a fiction story like that which we see in movies like Star Wars or games like Crysis,” said the article.


“It is a reality which is daunting the American ­military.”

Islamic terrorists have issued many threats to the French government in recent months since it sent troops to fight in Afghanistan.



SEARCH UK NEWS for:

French secret service agents have scrutinised passenger lists on the Air France flight which fell from the skies en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31.

Yael Shahar, director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, in Israel, said low-cost equipment was available online which could be just as deadly as electromagnetic weapons.


“These will become more of a threat as the electromagnetic weapons technology matures,” she told New Scientist earlier this year.

“Once it is known that aircraft are vulnerable to particular types of disruption, it isn’t too much of a leap to build a device that can produce that sort of disruption,” she added.

“Much of this could be built from off-the-shelf components or dual-use technologies.”

Composites now being used in aircraft construction provide poor shielding against electromagnetic radiation compared with metal.

“What is needed is extensive shielding of electronic components and the vast amount of cables running down the length of the aircraft,” Ms Shahar warned.

Five Britons were on the Air France flight, including oil executive Arthur Coakley, 61, of Whitby, North Yorkshire, 11-year-old Bristol schoolboy Alexander Bjoroy, oil worker Graham Gardner, 52, of Inverclyde, and PR executive Neil Warrior.