http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31040692/?GT1=43001

I understand these planes can take a lightning hit or two, yet they're also designed, built, maintained and flown by humans, humans that make mistakes occasionally.
AF is a big player, so you'd think everything was checked before take off.

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83 SD

84 CD

AND computers that mal function after take off and during flight. I'll wait until WVO and Brian Carlton chime in. If weather is the main factor and this storm was bad enough then why didin't they re-route? Won't know until they find the black box.

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"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

Man that sucks. My mom was on an Air France flight 24 hours before this one flying to Paris.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Sounds like it was a mega-storm that couldn't be reasonably avoided and the pilot took a calculated chance. These storms tend to be a lot bigger and nastier in the tropics where this occurred. My condolences to the victims' families.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

If it’s weather related:

This guy either ran into something that he couldn’t see, with catastrophic (and near instantaneous) damage to the aircraft. i.e. Turbulence capable of breaking the aircraft.
Ref. The automatic report made from the aircraft and not the crew.
-or-
His ego got in the way of his common sense and he went where he knew he (probably) shouldn’t.
Ref. Same.
(I’d like to hear from some of the other aircraft that were in the area, for sure.)


Either way – Avery sad day for all on board and their families and friends on the ground.


Other thoughts:
1. Odds of a lightening strike bringing him down are pretty slim.

2. I’ve never heard of a storm of any size or intensity that could not be avoided. Especially in a commercial airliner with his fuel and electronics. If he had the fuel to make Paris, and he went in over the water. Then he had plenty of options available.

3. This about covers it for now: “…yet they're also designed, built, maintained and flown by humans, humans that make mistakes occasionally.”

4. “…an automatic message 14 minutes later reporting electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure.” This is not a good thing. Not good at all.
99.99% of the time - The only time the aircraft will speak for itself, is when the crew can’t speak for it.

5. If it wasn’t weather related. Then anyone’s guess is a good as the next.
A catastrophic airframe failure….
A terrorist bomb….
Fuel tank explosion…

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1980 300D - Veggie Burner !

WVO I'm kind of surprised he didn't try to go around it. When I flew up from FL the pilot mentioned that there were reports of turbulence and that he was heading out a bit further over the water to try and avoid the worst of it. Those big airliners have long legs I'm surprised he would fly through such a storm.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Me too.

I guess we still don't know for sure that it was the weather that brought him down.
But, I can't come up with a good reason why he didn't/couldn't go around anything out there if it was.

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1980 300D - Veggie Burner !

Is it a good chance we'll never know?

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

I’m not really sure what the chances of that are.

If it went into 15k feet of water, though... Any chance for black box recovery could be nil.

We did find the Titanic at ~13k though, so who knows?
Figuring out just where to look could be the hard part.

Not sure what any floating pieces could tell us.

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1980 300D - Veggie Burner !

That's very bad news. It just turned my stomach upside down reading about it.

Ironically, it was an Air France flight that took me through the worst thunderstorm I've ever been in while flying transatlantic. Paris-Miami.
The Pilot, stout, short sleeved, suntanned, mid-fifties experienced hard hitter, walked the aisles of that 747 before the shakin' started. With a big grin on his face nodding at the Passengers.

I didn't fly for years after this flight. Dropping out of the air in a 747, over and over, is no fun.

I always wonder, where is the determination and who makes it, to where the limits are.
Maybe it was one Pilot's bad decision, not to request another route.
Maybe it was an oversight during maintainance and the extreme conditions made the plan fail, one way or another.

A terrible day for aviation and a whole lot of people.

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Did they fly over the Bermuda Triangle by chance? It seems so strange to think that we'll never know what happened. If the plane broke up into a bunch of pieces, it doesn't seem like they would be able to find it like the Titanic.

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1985 500SL Euro w/ AMG bits 130k
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2001 CLK55 AMG 101k
2007 S600 Biturbo 149k Overheated Project, IT'S ALIVE!!!

Looking at the Meterological section of one of the news sites it looks like it was a particularly active region of the ITCZ, Inter Tropical Convergence Zone with a line of thunderstorms above the equator up to 55000 feet. Too wide and dense from the satellite view to be feasible to detour around.

- Peter.

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Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
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1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

And finally this image shows a zoomed image at 0215Z when AF447 made its last transmission:

Attached Thumbnails

 

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All of that information is available to the flight crew.

Nowhere does it say they have to “go around” anything.

It’s not a choice of which of 180 degrees of headings to take.

It’s a choice of 360 degrees of headings.

They had the fuel to miss that mess.

They had the ability to see/know/hear about that mess long before that got into it.

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1980 300D - Veggie Burner !