Air France Flight 447
Details suggest that Air France Flight 447 struggled for 15 minutes before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean. Electronic data sent from the plane’s automatic system indicate that pilots fought with difficult weather trying to keep the doomed plane in the air. It also now appears that strange debris found in the crash zone is not from flight 447 at all.
The news of the heroic efforts of the Air France pilots and crew was released just one day after a memorial was held at Notre Dame in Paris to honor the dead. Air France confirmed that electronic data sent by the Airbus A330′s computer showed that the plane was flying too slow and that two major computer’s were malfunctioning in the moments before the crash.
These indicate that the pilot reported hitting tropical turbulence at 3am (BST), shortly before reaching Senegalese airspace. It said the plane had passed through tall, dense cumulonimbus thunderclouds.
At this stage, according to a source close to the investigation cited by Le Monde, the Airbus A330-200′s speed was “erroneous” – either too fast or too slow. Each plane has an optimal speed when passing through difficult weather conditions, which for unknown reasons, had not been reached by Flight AF 447.
Airbus is expected to issue recommendations today to all operators of the A330 model to maintain appropriate thrust levels to steady the plane’s flight path in storms.
This information from Air France came as Brazilian officials announced that the debris recovered from the crash zone is not from Flight 447. So far only strange debris, sea trash and other difficult to identify items have been pulled from the ocean. The debris originally believed to be from Flight 447 now appears to be from a sunken ship or different craft.
A total of 41 bodies have been recovered so far from the scene of the crash, about 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast. The remains are being flown daily to Recife, where investigators hope to identify them and uncover clues into the crash based on the victims’ injuries.
Rescuers, who said that only family members will be informed of the identity of the corpses, believe many bodies could have sunk or been devoured by sharks.
The crash of the flight was the world’s deadliest air disaster since 2001 and the worst in Air FranceΓÇÖs 75-year history.
