An Airbus A330 from France Air with 228 passengers. It’s like the wierdest story ever. You almost cannot believe it. The plane just vanished from the radars. It appeared to be in a massive tropical storm. The plain flew from Rio de Janiero to Paris. The area where the plane crashed is known as the “horse latitudes,” where the tropics of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres mix, sometimes creating violent and unpredictable thunderstorms that can rise to 55,000 feet, higher than commercial jetliners can go.
Experts were at a loss to explain fatal damage from lightning or a tropical storm, both of which jetliners face routinely, despite efforts to avoid them — as much out of concern for passengers’ nerves as for the planes’ safety.
Pilots are trained to go over or around thunderstorms rather than through them. Brigitte Barrand, an Air France spokeswoman, said the highly experienced pilot, a 58-year-old Frenchman, had clocked 11,000 flying hours, including 1,100 hours on Airbus 330 jets.
The two co-pilots, also French, were 37 and 32 years old, and both had thousands of flight hours in Airbus A330s, the company said.
Air France and the transportdepartment of France allready revealed the passenger list. They say there where 73 Frenchmen, 57 Brazilian, 26 Germans, 9 Italian, 6 Swiss, 5 Englishmen 2 Belgians en 1 Dutchmen on board.
Brazil’s air force said the last contact they had with the jet was at 1.36am. Forty minutes later it sent a signal indicating severe storms. Air France said the message showed the jet “crossed through a thunderous zone with extreme turbulence”. Military aircraft and warships from France and Brazil were still combing large parts of the Atlantic ocean today in a desperate quest to find the wreckage of an Air France jet.
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