Why The Air France Plane Crashed

Having spent the better of 12-years, in a previous life, criss-crossing the country, hitting all four corners, and everything in between, traveling by air, I believe it was only once, or twice, where we encountered anything remotely close to rough turbulence.

There were some other comical, or eyebrow-raising, adventures.

Like the 400-lb-plus man, claiming he was sick, rushed out of the bathroom by the stewardesses, and plopped down in the nearest seat, as the plane was beginning its' take-off, only, due to the thrust of the plane, and this mans' weight, have the back of the chair slam back, all the way to the floor, leaving this 400-lb-plus man laying prone for more the 10-minutes.

Or, the landing in San Diego, where the pilot informs us, at the beginning of our descent, that a "training pilot" is doing the honors of landing the plane.

What the hell is this, barber school?

Patrick Smith, in Salon today, has a good read, on the terrible plane crash in Brasil the other day.

Why the Air France plane crashed ... Flight 447 shouldn't have gone down, but it did. Were normally non-dangerous phenomena the culprits?

Lightning and turbulence. Did one or a combination of these things cause the crash of Air France Flight 447 over the South Atlantic on Sunday evening? The evidence, scant as it is, suggests it might have.

I was asleep in my hotel room, here in the monstrous city of Sao Paulo, just south from Rio de Janeiro, when the phone rang early on Monday. It was a reporter from the Associated Press in Brussels, shooting off questions about Airbuses and electrical storms. I had no idea that anything had happened, but he quickly had my rapt attention with word of a Paris-bound A330 that had gone missing after takeoff from Rio. "They are saying it was lightning," he told me.

I flicked on the television and tried to makes sense of CNN and the BBC as they stumbled through their coverage. The jet had encountered a violent storm, they were saying, off Brazil's northeast coast as it set off across the ocean toward Europe. An automated status message, relayed to Air France's dispatch center in Paris, spoke of electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure. There was no mayday or distress call. The plane, and everybody on it, was missing.

Neither lightning nor turbulence is normally harmful to commercial aircraft. Let's take a minute to review each ...

Smith deals with known, and proven facts, and it is not an article rift with speculation.

Something went awfully wrong with Flight 447, and, as always in these situations, it will ride on the retrieval of the Black Boxes to get to the root cause of this crash.

Go over and read Patrick Smith's Why the Air France plane crashed ... Flight 447 shouldn't have gone down, but it did. Were normally non-dangerous phenomena the culprits?, especially if you are worried about flying, or have to fly for your work ... It should allay any fears you may have.

Late Breaking

From ABC News;

Searchers Find 23-Foot Piece of Airplane in Hunt for Missing Air France Flight ... Air France Received a Bomb Threat About a Paris-Bound Flight Days Before Flight 447 Crashed

Update

And, something creepy, from Kim Zetter, at Wired;

Air France Crash Raises Questions About Domain Name Registration