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Breaking: Air France Airbus A330 disappears outside of Brazil
An Airbus A330-200 carrying over 200 passengers lost radar contact off the coast of Brazil late last night. The flight was apparently reporting electrical problems experienced during turbulence on its route between Rio de Janeiro and Charles de Gaulle Paris.Hope is still standing for some reemergence of the aircraft, although it has been several hours since contact was lost. In addition, the Brazilian Air Force has been deployed to the last sight of contact in order to search for any sings of the aircraft.
If AF447 did go down, this would be the first large jet crash in over seven years. We'll keep you updated on the story
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MF Jun 1st 2009 11:57AM
Question??
I hear on the news that in the middle of the ocean outside of radar, no one knows exactly where the plane was when it probably dissapeard, they only had a 20 or 30 minute old location radioed in.
I hear that the electrical fault signal was somehow transmited back to HQ. How come the plane just can't transmit coordinates of the location every 2 minutes or so? I would imagine that would require a faily simple transmission of basic GPS data. Very simple coordinates and flight # or whatever?
Joe Jun 2nd 2009 6:27AM
Thats a good questions. From what I understand, when doing transatlantic crossings airplanes fly along waypoints and on tracks. Think of 3D slot-cars, for planes. They are separated by a mile horizontally and 1000 ft vertically. The pilot is supposed to deliver a radio report every 30 minutes to ATC letting them know their position and inform them of any deviations. Since radar can't see that far they rely on onboard collision avoidance system (TCAS? i think).
They do have VHF radio where they can talk to their company (medical, technical, legal problems onboard). The band is quite narrow since their are military and rescue considerations above and below it. And really, it's not necessary to give a status report every 2 minutes. That's why the pilot is on the plane and not at a desk driving the plane.
Hans Jun 2nd 2009 6:46AM
??? And really, it's not necessary to give a status report every 2 minutes ???
Except in situations like this. A simple GPS locator chip found in consumer phones once connected to automatic data exchange systems could make difference between life and death for survivors.
IMHO, a huge engineering flaw if this doesn't exist.
Eddie Jun 1st 2009 11:27PM
Based on what I have been reading http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/01/air-france-plane-disappears-over-atlantic/ a Tam pilot saw the plane burning in the ocean at night....?