When I Was Young

Posted: 02 June 2009 2044 hrs

A Brazilian couple, relatives of a passenger onboard the ill-fated Air France flight 447.

BRASILIA - Search aircraft on Tuesday found a seat and other debris from a plane in a remote stretch of the Atlantic where an Air France flight carrying 228 people disappeared, Brazil's air force said.

The "small remains" were discovered around 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) off northeastern Brazil, some 650 kilometres northeast of Brazil's Atlantic island of Fernando do Noronha.

The items included a seat from a plane, bits of white material, an orange buoy, a barrel and some oil and kerosene slicks, grouped in two floating patches 60 kilometers apart, according to an air force statement.

It could not immediately be confirmed that the debris was from Air France flight AF 447, the spokesman, Colonel Jorge Amaral, told reporters.

There were no signs of survivors, he said.

"The search is continuing because it's very little material in relation to the size" of the Air France Airbus A330, he said.

He added that officials needed "a piece that might have a serial number, some sort of identification" to be sure that it came from the missing airliner.

However the items were found near where the Air France plane sent its final message: an automatic data signal telling of multiple electric and pressurization failures.

Air France flight AF 447 disappeared mid-Atlantic on Monday, four hours into an 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

A Brazilian air force statement said the debris was discovered at 0300 GMT Tuesday by an Embraer R-99 AWAC plane fitted with onboard radar that detected metallic and non-metallic items floating in the ocean.

After homing in the search to that locale, other air force planes at 0949 GMT spotted the patches of floating debris.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

June 2, 2009 -- Updated 1229 GMT (2029 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Air France Airbus A330-200 encountered heavy turbulence
  
• CEO: "Several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down"
  
• Some experts have said that a lightning strike was a possible cause
  
• Flight 447, traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, was carrying 228 people
  

An airliner is struck by lightning strike at Washington's Dulles airport last year.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The mysterious disappearance of Flight AF 447 over the Atlantic Ocean has fueled speculation among aviation experts about what caused the state-of-the-art airliner to come down.

According to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the Airbus A330-200 encountered heavy turbulence about 02:15 a.m. local time Monday (10:15 p.m. ET Sunday), three hours after the jet carrying 228 people left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for Paris, France.

At that point, the plane's automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down."

The jet, which was flying at 35,000 feet and at 521 mph, also sent a warning that it had lost pressure, the Brazilian air force said. Its last known contact occurred at 02:33 a.m., the Brazilian air force spokesman added.

The assumption is that these electrical problems led to a catastrophic failure of the aircraft's controls.

Some experts have said that a lightning strike was a possibility, particularly since the plane disappeared in a storm-prone area along the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence zone (ITCZ). This is where the trade winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres converge. The intense sun and warm water of the equator heats the air in the ITCZ, raising its humidity and making it buoyant. Aided by the convergence of the trade winds, the buoyant air rises, releasing the accumulated moisture in an almost constant series of thunderstorms.

According to CNN's Mari Ramos, these storms can reach altitudes of 52,000 ft -- way beyond the capacity of commercial airliners to fly over.

Retired airline pilot John Cox told CNN that modern aircraft receive a constant stream of real time weather data which allows them to plot a course around storms. "Because safety is the paramount concern, airliners don't fly into storms. They fly around them," he said.

"The ITCZ is no different. Planes fly through it every day.

"At 8 miles per minute, modern jets can easily fly around storms. Even if they encounter turbulence, they're designed to absorb it."

When lightning strikes a plane, the bolt typically hits a sharp part of it, such as a wing tip. Huge amounts of energy surge through the aircraft before exiting out of another sharp point, such as the tail. But sometimes high voltages can cause electrical damage if components are not well-grounded.

Unlike other aircraft where the pilot's controls are manually attached to the flaps and rudders, Airbus 330 airliners are equipped with a "fly by wire" system that sends electronic signals from an onboard computer to move key control surfaces.

Experts say that it is possible for this system and its back-up computers to be disabled by lightning. "If you have a massive electrical problem it's possible that you could cut off all the commands out to the control surfaces," said aeronautics expert John Hansman.

However, Kieran Daly, from the online aviation news service Air Transport Intelligence, told CNN that this scenario, while not impossible, is inconceivable. "It's more likely that lightning would cause a fire or punch a hole through the aircraft structure," he said.

"It could be significant that the jet reported a loss of pressure."

He added that the aircraft would be able to continue without the fly-by-wire system. The "trim tab," which enables the pilot to manually manipulate controls such as the rudder, would allow the crew to fly the aircraft safely. "Pilots are routinely trained for these kinds of events in a simulator," he said.

Former Airbus pilot John Wiley said on average every airliner is hit by a strike once a year. "They don't go down," he said.

According to Air France, the captain of Flight AF 447 had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340 aircraft. 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 had totaled 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.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 02 June 2009 1056 hrs

A Brazilian couple, relatives of a passenger onboard the ill-fated Air France flight 447.

PARIS - The search continued through the night for an Air France plane that disappeared over the Atlantic, but little hope remained Tuesday that any of 228 people on board would be found alive.

Air France flight AF 447 disappeared early Monday four hours into its 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after the Airbus A330 encountered severe turbulence over the Atlantic and reported technical failures.

A daytime search by eight Brazilian air force aircraft doing visual sweeps did not turn up anything in the area being searched: a zone 1,100 kilometres off its northeastern coast.

The search was being continued overnight with a Hercules C130 fitted with equipment to try to detect the plane's emergency beacon, with another aircraft with onboard radar, and if weather conditions permit, infrared gear that could detect bodies in the water.

Officials said there was little hope of survivors from what appears to be the worst air accident in over a decade.

"The prospects of finding any survivors are very slim," a grim-faced French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after talking to stunned relatives of missing passengers. "It's a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen."

Although the exact cause of the crash remained a mystery, Air France's chief executive said the aircraft 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.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he held out hope for survivors, but added that earlier he had spoken with French President Nicolas Sarkozy by telephone "and really it was an exchange of condolences."

If it is confirmed that all 228 people on Flight AF 447 are dead, it would mark the worst loss of life in Air France's history and civil aviation's worst accident for more than a decade.

Spanish and French air forces sent out search planes to scour a vast area of ocean between Brazil and Africa. The United States also sent a surveillance aircraft and an Air Force search and rescue team in response to a request for assistance from Paris.

At Charles de Gaulle airport, tearful relatives were ushered into a private area to await developments and get counselling from a team of psychologists.

At Rio's Tom Jobim International Airport stunned relatives were shown into a closed lounge, away from the news media and into the care of psychologists and doctors.

One woman, Vasti Ester van Sluijs, told AFP she had jumped into a taxi as soon as she heard the overnight Air France flight had disappeared.

"My daughter Adriana Francesca was on the plane," she said.

Air France said the 216 passengers included 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby. There were 12 French crew members.

The passengers hailed from 32 countries, including 61 from France, 58 from Brazil and 26 from Germany.

French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, whose portfolio includes transport, said hijacking had been ruled out.

Airbus said the A330 has a good safety record, with no fatalities ever on a commercial flight. One did crash in 1994 during a test flight in southern France, however, killing seven people on board.

Last week Air France announced its first net loss since it merged with Dutch airline KLM in 2003 to create Europe's biggest airline.

In July 2000, all 109 passengers and crew plus four people on the ground were killed when a supersonic Air France Concorde crashed during takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport. All Concordes were eventually taken out of service.

On August 3, 2005, an Air France A340 with 309 on board skidded off the runway after landing in a thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Fourteen people suffered minor injuries.

- AFP/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 02 June 2009 0758 hrs

Relatives of passengers of the Air France flight 447.

PARIS – An Air France plane with 228 people on board disappeared over the Atlantic on Monday after suffering multiple breakdowns in a fierce storm on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Spotter planes were dispatched in a bid to locate the jet in a vast area of ocean between Brazil and Africa, but officials said there was little hope of survivors from what appears to be the worst air accident in over a decade.

"The prospects of finding any survivors are very slim," a grim-faced French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after talking to stunned relatives of missing passengers. "It's a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen."

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.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he held out hope for survivors, but added that earlier he had spoken with French President Nicolas Sarkozy by telephone "and really it was an exchange of condolences."

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso sent a message of solidarity to both presidents, and expressed his "deepest sympathies" to the loved ones of those on board.

If it is confirmed that all 228 people on Flight AF 447 are dead, it would mark the worst loss of life in Air France's history and civil aviation's worst accident for more than a decade.

The Brazilian, Spanish and French air forces sent out search planes to scour a vast area of ocean between Brazil and Africa. Paris also asked Washington to use its spy satellites and listening posts to help.

At Charles de Gaulle airport, tearful relatives were ushered into a private area to await developments and get counselling from a team of psychologists.

At Rio's Tom Jobim International Airport stunned relatives were shown into a closed lounge, away from the news media and into the care of psychologists and doctors.

One woman, Vasti Ester van Sluijs, told AFP she had jumped into a taxi as soon as she heard the overnight Air France flight had disappeared.

"My daughter Adriana Francesca was on the plane," she said.

Air France said the 216 passengers included 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby. There were 12 French crew members.

The passengers hailed from 32 countries, including 61 from France, 58 from Brazil and 26 from Germany.

"Air France addresses its sincere condolences to the families and friends of the passengers and crew members who were on board flight number AF 447," the airline said in a statement on its website.

None of the airliner's emergency beacons, which are trackable by satellite unless they sink deep into the ocean, have been detected, suggesting it crashed violently, said Philippe Hazanne of the French space studies agency.

French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, whose portfolio includes transport, said hijacking had been ruled out.

"There's nothing on Spanish radar, nothing on Moroccan radar, nothing on French radar. We can seriously envisage the worst," said Borloo.

Airbus said the A330 has a good safety record, with no fatalities ever on a commercial flight. One did crash in 1994 during a test flight in southern France, however, killing seven people on board.

Last week Air France announced its first net loss since it merged with Dutch airline KLM in 2003 to create Europe's biggest airline.

In July 2000 all 109 passengers and crew plus four people on the ground were killed when a supersonic Air France Concorde crashed during takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport. All Concordes were eventually taken out of service.

On August 3, 2005, an Air France A340 with 309 on board skidded off the runway after landing in a thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Fourteen people suffered minor injuries.

- AFP/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

June 2, 2009 -- Updated 1756 GMT (0156 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Search area was approximately 11.5 million acres, expert says
  
• Air France jet disappeared more than 200 miles from Brazilian coast Monday
  
• Expert: Plane sent 10 transmissions reporting problems just before vanishing
  
• Past investigations into ocean crashes have taken more than two years
  
  
  

  A Brazilian radar plane is fuelled up Monday at the Fernando de Noronha airport to search for Flight 447.
  

  (CNN) -- Though searchers believe that they have found debris from an Air France jet that disappeared off Brazil's coast Monday, finding the entire plane and learning exactly what downed it could be a tedious, years-long process.
  

  Many factors can complicate a search effort. Tradewinds and ocean currents can quickly scatter wreckage across several square miles, and the plane's altitude -- almost 7 miles, in the case of Flight 447 -- can make it difficult to pin down where the aircraft hit the water.
  

  "It's a big ocean," said John Hansman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's International Center for Air Transportation. "Once you're offshore, you're no longer in direct radar contact."
  

  It varies from airline to airline, but passenger jets generally send location reports every few hundred miles when they're over open water, Hansman said.
  

  They also send out maintenance reports via satellite that provide the plane's location at a specific time. Some maintenance reports are routine; others are sent when a problem or malfunction is detected, Hansman said.
  

  Flight 447 was carrying 228 passengers and crew members from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, France. About three hours into the journey, more than 200 miles off Brazil's coast, the jet transmitted 10 maintenance reports: one for each piece of malfunctioning equipment, the professor said.
  

  About 10 to 15 minutes later, when the Airbus A330 was scheduled to be over the Canary Islands -- where the radio would generally function better, because the plane is over land -- Flight 447 was expected to send a location report but didn't, Hansman said.
  

  "You don't know that you lost contact until it didn't make its position report," he said, but "missing one position report is not that big a concern. When it didn't check in over the Canary Islands ... that's when they realized something was seriously wrong."
  

  Darkness and severe weather complicated the immediate search effort. Further hampering the search was that Flight 447 vanished in what is known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a place where the Northern and Southern hemispheres -- and their tradewinds -- meet, spawning some of the world's most severe thunderstorms.
  

  Identifying the search area is also difficult. In the 10 to 15 minutes that passed between the maintenance reports and the missed location report, the plane could have covered about 150 miles, Hansman said.
  

  Searchers will generally designate an area covering about 60 miles on each side of the flight path, making the search area about 18,000 square miles, or 11.5 million acres, of open ocean.
  

  Rescuers will use aircraft, flying 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the water, to search the area on a grid. They look for an oil slick, life rafts or other evidence of the crash, Hansman said. Finding debris can be difficult because only small items such as seats, life vests, pillows and personal belongings will float.
  

  Once rescuers locate signs of the crash, they send the coordinates to watercraft assisting in the effort, but it doesn't necessarily mean they've found the crash site, Hansman said.
  

  "The components of the wreckage are going to spread out due to the currents below," he said, explaining that heavier parts such as the engine will sink more precipitously. "Lighter parts drift more with the current."
  

  Another factor muddling rescuers' efforts is the Atlantic Ocean's depth in the area where Flight 447 disappeared. It can reach up to 2 miles below sea level at some points, experts said.
  

  In the past, rescuers have experienced problems with recovery operations in shallower water and in operations in which they knew the exact location where the plane hit the water.
  

  Salvagers spent more than six months recovering plane parts and victims from the waters off Long Island, New York, after TWA Flight 800 crashed there July 17, 1996. The Paris-bound flight exploded about 13 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport.
  

  On October 31, 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed in water about 250 feet deep near Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. It took about five months before searchers pulled the plane's second engine from the ocean, and the National Transportation Safety Board did not release its final report on the crash until March 2002.
  

  There were also problems in the investigation into Swissair Flight 111, which crashed September 2, 1998, into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia. The water was only 180 feet deep, but it took searchers nine days to find the cockpit voice recorder.
  

  From CNN.com; see the source article here.
  

June 1, 2009 -- Updated 1639 GMT (0039 HKT)

Story Highlights

• The Airbus A330-200 was launched in 1995
  
• There are 600 currently in service with 82 airlines, including Air France
  
• Expert: A330-200 is reliable, ultra-modern, state-of-the-art airplane
  
• Air France said Flight AF 447 reported electrical problems
  

The incident involves an Air France Airbus A330-200.

(CNN) -- Launched in 1995, the Airbus A330-200 is the newest member of the European aircraft manufacturer's twinjet family.

With a range of 12,500 km (6,750 nautical miles) and the capacity to carry 253 passengers, the A330-200 is extremely well-regarded as a medium to long-range airliner.

There are 600 currently in service with 82 airlines, including Air France, worldwide.

Airbus has a further 300 orders for the aircraft.

According to aviation expert Kieran Daly, the A330-200 is a "reliable, ultra-modern, state-of-the-art airplane," with an impeccable safety record.

He told CNN that there has only been one reported incident when an aircraft of this type has crashed.

"The incident took place in 1994 before the aircraft came into service," he said. "It was being flown in test-mode by pilots who were putting it through some extreme maneuvers before it came down.

"Therefore the crash was not caused by the plane itself.

"It is very well-designed and well-equipped, with equally modern and reliable General Electric CF-6 engines."

Air France has said that Flight AF 447 sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence early in its 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

However, Daly said that it would take extremely violent weather conditions to cause the catastrophic failure of an aircraft of this size.

"These planes are extremely robust and widely used on transatlantic routes and across Asia," he said.

"They are equipped with an array of sophisticated communication equipment, so it must have been something extremely sudden to cause the loss of contact."

There has also been speculation that the Paris-bound flight was struck by lightning, but that should not bring down a modern airliner, former Airbus pilot John Wiley told CNN.

According to Air France, the captain of Flight AF 447 had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340 aircraft. 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 had totaled 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.

The larger A330-300 aircraft from Airbus entered service in 1993 and has a capacity of up to 335 passengers. It too has an impressive safety record, despite a couple of incidents in the last 10 years.

In August 2001, a Canadian airliner operated by Air Transat experienced double engine failure while traveling to Portugal. Miraculously the captain was able to perform an emergency landing in the Azores by gliding the powerless plane for almost 18 minutes.

Last year, an A330-303 was forced to make an emergency landing in Australia after a sudden change in altitude injured 74 passengers. Qantas Flight 72 was flying from Singapore to the western Australian city of Perth when a sudden change of altitude caused abrasions, contusions, fractures and other injuries. The cause of the sudden drop remains under investigation.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Crime, crime, crime… will it ever end? Or is it just waiting for the next form to take its shape – yet again?

----------

KUALA LUMPUR — Human trafficking and drug smuggling have replaced pirate attacks as the leading crime threat off Malaysia's long coastline, a top maritime official said yesterday.

"Piracy has been gradually reduced. But the main challenges (now) are smuggling of humans and there is also the smuggling of drugs," said Admiral Mohamad Amdan Kurish of the Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency.

"That needs to be checked. Last year we scored a major drug bust, there was an attempt to bring in 200kg of ganja (marijuana) from the Golden Triangle," he said.

The Golden Triangle, second to Afghanistan as Asia's top drug-producing region, straddles the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand.

Adm Mohamad Amdan attributed the problems to Malaysia's long coastline and extensive mangrove swamps which hamper security patrols and provide smugglers with hideouts to launch their operations.

More than 30 per cent of world trade and half the world's oil shipments pass through the Malacca Strait. AFP

From TODAYOnline.com; see the source article here.