When I Was Young

Posted: 30 June 2009 1733 hrs

A man holds a relative of passengers of the Yemenia Airlines Airbus 310-300 that crashed near Comoros.

MORONI - A Yemeni Airbus A310 jet carrying 153 people crashed into rough seas as it came in to land in the Comoros islands early Tuesday but rescuers plucked a child survivor from the water, officials said.

It was the second time in less than a month that an Airbus has crashed into the ocean. This time French authorities said the Yemeni carrier had been under surveillance and that problems had been reported with the jet.

Bodies and wreckage from the Yemenia airline flight were spotted in the Indian Ocean near the island archipelago capital, Moroni, aviation officials said.

But a child among the 142 passengers and 11 crew on Flight IY 626 was rescued alive, a surgeon at the main Moroni hospital, Issa Ben Imani, told AFP.

Imani said the child was being taken to land where an ambulance waited to take the child to hospital.

Arfachad Salim, a rescue coordinator for the Comoros Red Crescent, confirmed that the child was alive and added that local fishermen had also found wreckage, passengers handbags and other effects.

In Sanaa, Yemenia's deputy managing director for operations Mohammed al-Sumairi said three bodies had also been recovered.

The long gruelling Flight IY 626 had started in Paris early Monday and made stops in Marseille, Sanaa and Djibouti before heading to Moroni.

Moroni international airport control tower lost contact with the jet just before it was due to land amid bad weather, airport director Hadji Mmadi Ali told AFP.

French civil aviation officials said 66 passengers were French. Three small babies were also among the passengers, officials said. France sent two navy ships and a plane from its nearby Indian Ocean territories to help the rescue.

"Bodies were seen floating on the surface of the water and a fuel slick was also spotted about 16 or 17 nautical miles from Moroni," senior Yemeni civil aviation official Mohammad Abdel Kader told reporters in Sanaa.

Kader said the wind was blowing in gusts of up to 115 kilometres an hour when the disaster happened.

"Weather conditions were bad," he said. "The sea was rough."

The Yemenia flight left Sanaa at 9:45pm (1845 GMT) on Monday and contact was lost at 1:51am on Tuesday (2251 GMT Monday), Kader said.

"Yemenia regrets to announce the missing of its flight No IY626 from Sanaa to Moroni with 142 passengers and 11 crew onboard Airbus 310-300," the airline announced on its website.

Airbus, which is still reeling from the crash of an Air France A330-320 into the Atlantic on June 1 with 228 people on board, set up a crisis cell straight away and sent investigators to the Comoros.

No cause has yet been announced for the Air France disaster. The black box flight recorders have yet to be found and their signal is due to stop emitting on July 2.

The European plane maker said the jet which crashed off Moroni was made in 1990 and had been operated by Yemenia since 1999.

France's Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said inspectors had noted numerous faults on the Yemenia jet and the airline was being closely monitored by EU authorities.

"The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC (French civil aviation authority) and a certain number of faults had been noted," Dominique Bussereau.

"The plane had not since then reappeared in our country," he told i-tele news.

Yemenia was not on an EU blacklist "but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to soon be heard by the security committee of the European Union," he said.

Airbus said in a statement the jet had accumulated approximately 51,900 hours in the air from some 17,300 flights.

Yemen Airways was founded in 1961 before the formation in 1978 of Yemenia, which is 51 percent owned by the Yemeni government and 49 percent by Saudi Arabia, according to its website.

The Yemenia flight started at Paris Charles de Gaulle on Monday morning, using a more modern Airbus A330-200 for the first legs of the journey.

The plane flew to Marseille in southern France, where there is a large Comoran community, and then went on to Sanaa. There were about 100 passengers on board when it left Marseille, Yemeni civil aviation official Kader said.

In the Yemen capital, people from various Arab states joined the flight and the passengers changed to the Airbus A310 which first flew to Djibouti.

A crisis task force was set up at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport while psychologists were on hand at Marseille's airport to comfort the families of passengers on the plane.

- AFP/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 26 June 2009 0357 hrs

Debris of the Air France aircraft lost in midflight over the Atlantic Ocean is seen on board a Brazilian Navy Corvette

PARIS - The French agency probing the mid-Atlantic crash of an Air France jet said Thursday it would release an initial report on its findings on July 2.

The Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) leading the technical inquiry into the June 1 crash said it would present the report at a press conference at its headquarters in the Paris suburbs.

Flight AF 447 went down around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) off Brazil's northeast coast as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board.

The cause of the disaster is not known. Speculation has swirled about whether the plane broke up in the air, perhaps from strong turbulence, or on hitting the water.

Air France said earlier that the plane's pilot and one of its stewards have been identified among the bodies pulled out of the sea.

Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau told the French Senate on Thursday that 51 bodies had been recovered so far.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 09 June 2009 1330 hrs

Brazilian Air Force officer shows a picture during a press conference to announce the recovery of more bodies.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil: Brazilian and French officials have been preparing to identify the first 16 bodies recovered from an area in the Atlantic where an Air France jet crashed over a week ago killing all 228 people aboard.

A Brazilian navy ship was to bring the bodies close to Brazil's Fernando de Noronha archipelago, where they were to be transferred by helicopter early Tuesday.

From there, they were to be flown by plane to Recife, a mainland coastal city where a morgue had been set up to identify the remains using DNA samples from relatives and dental records.

Brazilian officials said late Monday they had recovered 24 bodies since Saturday from the crash zone 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) off Brazil's northeast coast.

French officials later said at least another five bodies were on a French frigate helping the Brazilian navy recovery operation, bringing the total number of bodies so far recovered to 29.

A Brazilian navy ship recovered the tail fin of the Air France Airbus A330 on Monday and was bringing it to shore. That was seen as the most important piece yet recovered from the plane, which went down June 1 on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. No distress call was received from the pilots.

The plane's black boxes were mounted in the tail section, and the fin's location could narrow the underwater search for those devices by a French submarine expected to arrive in the zone on Wednesday.

The clock is ticking for finding the devices, believed to lie on the sea floor at a depth of up to 6,000 meters (19,700 feet). Their homing beacons will cease to operate in three weeks.

The US Navy said the first of two towable pinger locators would arrive Wednesday to try to locate the data and voice recorders.

A French nuclear submarine was due the same day to also conduct underwater sweeps for the beacons.

If the black boxes are found, a French research sub -- the same one that has explored the wreck of the Titanic -- will be deployed to recover them. That small sub, the Nautile, is also expected to arrive within days.

The disaster is the worst aviation accident since 2001, and unprecedented in Air France's 75-year history.

Early suspicions are focusing on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, which appear to have malfunctioned in the minutes before the catastrophe according to some of the 24 automatic data warnings sent by the plane.

Investigators are looking at whether the sensors, known as pitots, could have iced over, possibly leading the Air France pilots to fly into a storm in the zone that day without knowing their airspeed.

France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau has said that scenario could have led the pilots to set the plane at "too low a speed, which can cause it to stall, or too high a speed, which can lead to the plane ripping up as it approached the speed of sound, as the outer skin is not designed to resist such speed."

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 09 June 2009 0242 hrs

Handout picture released by the Brazilian Navy showing divers recovering a huge part of the rudder.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil: Brazil's navy on Monday recovered the tail fin from an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic a week ago, and was transporting 16 bodies to shore for identification.

The recovery of the fin was seen as important to the search for answers as to what knocked the Airbus A330, flight AF 447, out of the sky on June 1 as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board.

The plane's black boxes were mounted in the tail section, and the fin's location could narrow the underwater search for those devices by a French submarine expected to arrive in the zone on Wednesday.

Brazilian officials meanwhile were preparing to receive the 16 bodies plucked from amid the floating debris over the weekend.

Those remains, and dozens of the plane's structural components which have also been picked up, were expected to arrive in the Brazilian archipelago Fernando de Noronha early on Tuesday.

From there the bodies would be flown to the mainland coastal city of Recife, a navy spokesman in Recife, Captain Guicemar Tabosa told reporters.

Brazilian police forensic teams have been set up to identify the bodies using dental records and DNA from relatives.

Tabosa said navy crews had not yet confirmed information given by families on the doomed flight that it appeared two more bodies had been spotted on Monday.

Brazilian and French officials said there was no hope of finding survivors from the downed plane.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in his weekly radio address on Monday that "everything was being done... so that we can find, if possible, all the bodies, because we know how much it means for a family to receive their lost loved one."
Brazilian and French teams continued to scour the crash zone 1,100 kilometres off Brazil's northeast coast for more bodies and pieces of wreckage.

The clock is ticking for finding the black boxes, believed to lie on the sea floor at a depth of up to 6,000 metres. Their homing beacons will cease to operate in three weeks.

The US Navy said on Sunday it would send two towable pinger locators and a crew of around 20 to the scene later this week to join the hunt for the devices.

"The first ship should head to the scene on (June) 10th," Pentagon spokesman and US navy commander Jeffrey Gordon told AFP. "They can be used for locating submarines or anything under the water that can emit a sound."

If the voice and data recorders are found, a French research sub - the same one that has explored the wreck of the Titanic - will be deployed to recover them. That small sub, the Nautile, is also expected to arrive within days.

The disaster is the worst aviation accident since 2001, and unprecedented in Air France's 75-year history.

No distress call was received from the flight crew of the doomed plane.

Early suspicions are focusing on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, which appeared to have malfunctioned in the minutes before the catastrophe according to some of the 24 automatic data warnings sent by the plane.

Investigators are looking at whether the sensors, known as pitots, could have iced over, possibly leading the Air France pilots to fly into a storm in the zone that day without knowing their airspeed.

Such a scenario could have resulted in "two bad consequences for the survival of the plane," France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau told French radio on the weekend.

They were, he said: "Too low a speed, which can cause it to stall, or too high a speed, which can lead to the plane ripping up as it approached the speed of sound, as the outer skin is not designed to resist such speed." - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 07 June 2009 2253 hrs

Brazilian Air Force plane searching for debris of Air France flight 447.

RECIFE, Brazil: Seventeen bodies have now been recovered from the debris of an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic nearly a week ago, as investigators probe whether a defective speedometer caused the tragedy.

Four more bodies were snatched from the waves 1,000 kilometres off Brazil's northeastern coast on Sunday, when search teams battled "unfavourable" weather conditions to recover other bodies spotted floating among seats and other plane debris, Brazilian military officials said.

The latest finds followed the recovery on Saturday of the first two bodies from Air France flight AF 447, which came down early June 1 with 228 people on board. The plane left from Rio de Janeiro to Paris a week ago, on May 31.

The sex of three of the four recovered bodies could not be determined, Brazilian air force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz said, suggesting how bad a condition they were in after seven days in the water.

"Their state will not be revealed because it's not in the public interest," he said.

A navy frigate was to take the bodies and items recovered on Saturday, including an Air France seat, a briefcase with an Air France ticket and a backpack, to the nearest port of Fernando de Noronha, a Brazilian archipelago 400 kilometers offshore.

Three more police experts arrived on the island for preliminary identification work to collect basic information, such as the state of the bodies and any clothing, according to air force spokesman Jorge Amaral. Five other police experts arrived on Saturday.

The ship was expected to dock on Monday. From there, the remains were to be flown to the mainland city of Recife, where search operations were being coordinated and a morgue had been set up to identify the bodies through DNA tests.

Munhoz said "some 100 objects" had been spotted in the crash zone, including other seats emblazoned with the Air France logo and oxygen masks. But the priority was the recovery of the bodies.

The black boxes from the plane have not yet been found.

A French navy frigate on Sunday joined the search effort. Two French military aircraft were already flying with the 12 Brazilian air force planes at work in the area.

Two French submarines, including one that explored the wreck of the Titanic and another, nuclear powered warship, were also on their way to hunt for the devices, which will stop transmitting their location in three weeks.

With clues still being pieced together over the crash, speculation is focusing on its airspeed monitors.

The doomed jet broadcast a series of 24 automatic error messages as its systems shut down one after the other in its final minutes, and French accident investigators say the cockpit was receiving conflicting speed data.

Following the crash, plane manufacturer Airbus warned pilots to review their procedure to cope with this problem.

Air France said on Saturday it had accelerated plans begun April 27 to replace the monitoring units in its jets after noticing problems with airspeed information on its Airbus A330s and A340s since May last year.

It insisted in a statement that this should not be taken as prejudging the result of the crash investigation.

The device in question is the pitot probe, usually on the leading edge of a wing, which measures the force of the air through which an aircraft passes and thus calculates the speed of the plane.

France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau said it was too early for investigators to say what the most likely cause of the crash was, but confirmed that Airbus jets had experienced problems with speed monitors.

"There have been situations on Airbus planes, and perhaps on others, where these probes ice up in a very wet area, a deep depression, an area of storms, and no longer give the correct speed reading," Bussereau told France's RTL radio.

"It's obvious that if the pilots in the cockpit no longer have the correct speed ... that can lead to two bad consequences for the survival of the plane," he explained.

"Too low a speed, which can cause it to stall, or too high a speed, which can lead to the plane ripping up as it approached the speed of sound, as the outer skin is not designed to resist such speed." - AFP/so/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.