Terror link to Air France crash

[WBU ALUM]

Two names on doomed Air France Flight 447's passenger list also appear on a list of radical Muslims considered a threat to France, according to French investigators.

French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.

Two Air France Passenger Names Probed for Terror Links

While it is certain that there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.

Soon after news of the fatal crash broke, agents working for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), were dispatched to Brazil.

It was there that they established that two names on the passenger list are also on highly classified documents listing the names of radical Muslims considered a threat to the French Republic.

A source working for the French security services told Paris weekly L’Express that the link was "highly significant."

[WBU ALUM]

After further investigation by French authorities, turns out the two guys who were terror suspects only shared the same names as the terrorists on the watch list.

[747man]

After further investigation by French authorities, turns out the two guys who were terror suspects only shared the same names as the terrorists on the watch list.

OOOOOOHHHHH !!! Spooky Coincidence THAT in'it ???

[izzix]

Air France plane broke up over 'number of minutes'

New evidence suggests the Air France jet which crashed into the Atlantic with 228 on-board broke up over a number of minutes, rather than in one catastrophic incident.

telegraph.co.uk

By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 1:03PM BST 11 Jun 2009

Members of the Brazilian Air Force carry the body of a victim of Air France flight 447: Air France plane broke up over 'number of minutes'
Members of the Brazilian Air Force carry the body of a victim of Air France flight 447 Photo: REUTERS
Brazil's Navy sailors recover debris of the missing Air France Flight 447 from the Atlantic Ocean: Air France plane broke up over 'number of minutes'
Brazil's Navy sailors recover debris of the missing Air France Flight 447 from the Atlantic Ocean Photo: AP
Air France plane broke up over 'number of minutes'
The Brazilian Air Force said bodies from flight AF 447 had been picked up from locations more than 50 miles apart Photo: AFP

The Brazilian Air Force said bodies from flight AF 447 had been picked up from locations more than 50 miles apart – supporting the theory that the plane did not simply plummet into the ocean.

A reanalysis of the plane's last automatic transmissions also indicates that many parts had malfunctioned before it disappeared, and that the first parts to show problems were those measuring air speed.



Four hours into the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, the Airbus A330-200s three speed sensors, or pitot tubes started providing "incoherent" readings.

A faulty air speed indicator could mislead pilots into flying faster than the aircraft could withstand, or faster than it should be flown into turbulence two circumstances that could lead to the craft coming apart in flight.

Air France has promised to replace all first-generation Thales sensors on its 34 long-haul A330 and A340 planes "within days", but the airline's director general, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, said today that he was "not convinced" that the sensors caused the crash.

"This (replacement) programme has been accelerated because we know that when the accident happened there were problems with the speed indicators," he said, before adding: "I am not convinced that the sensors were the cause." Air France launched a programme to replace its old probes on April 27, after recording several icing problems on the speed sensors in May 2008. "We did this because we thought it would reduce the number of non-catastrophic accidents," said Mr Gourgoeon.

It now transpires that the first batch of new probes arrived just three days before the crash of flight AF 447 on June 1.

Airbus today denied a French newspaper report that it was considering grounding its fleet of A330 and A340 planes in the wake of the disaster, reiterating a European Aviation Safety Agency statement that they were "safe to fly".

Meanwhile, two terror suspects who died alongside 226 other passengers on the stricken jet have been ruled out as a cause of the disaster.

The two individuals only "shared the same name" as known Islamic radicals, posthumous security checks found.

France's interior ministry confirmed that a "deep and wide-ranging investigation has allowed us to clear them", despite the fact that their bodies are yet to be recovered.

The announcement came as the race to locate the flight's black boxes was boosted by the arrival of a French nuclear attack submarine.

Emeraude, nicknamed "golden ears" due to its highly powerful sonar, will trawl 13 square miles a day, in an attempt to pick up the boxes' acoustic beacons – whose signal will fade in three weeks' time.

A tugboat fitted with underwater listening devices has also reached the crash site.

If they find a signal, a French mini-sub already used to search the Titanic will be deployed to recover the boxes with a robotic arm.

The voice and data recorders could provide vital information to help unravel the cause of the worst aviation accident since 2001.

Brazilian searchers in charge of recovering floating bodies and debris say strong ocean currents have led them to widen the surface search area into Senegalese waters.

The number of bodies recovered has reached 41.

[WBU ALUM]

After further investigation by French authorities, turns out the two guys who were terror suspects only shared the same names as the terrorists on the watch list.

OOOOOOHHHHH !!! Spooky Coincidence THAT in'it ???

I've heard of that happening before with names being similar. Used to happen to my cousin every time he traveled to Singapore. He had the same name of some guy wanted for tax evasion and some other white collar crimes.

Not spooky to me, although there might be a need for some to have another conspiracy investigation.

[izzix]

[quote

The Sunday Times
June 14, 2009

Crash jet ‘split in two at high altitude’
Separate trails of bodies offer clues in the Air France investigation
Matthew Campbell and Richard Woods

THE Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic with 228 people on board broke apart before it hit the water, throwing out some passengers at high altitude, investigators believe.

Their conclusion is based on the discovery of two trails of bodies more than 50 miles apart, suggesting that the Airbus split in two after going out of control in bad weather and turbulence during its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1.

Examination of bodies discovered off the northeastern Brazilian coast suggested that they were dead by the time they hit the water. They were stripped of clothes, apparently in the rush of air as they fell from as high as 35,000ft. Multiple fractures were most likely to have been caused by hitting the water at about 120mph.

The absence of any traces of an explosion, such as burn marks or inhaled smoke, supports the view of investigators that the disaster was caused by a combination of factors, possibly beginning with the blockage of speed sensors.

The sensors, called pitot tubes, are prone to getting clogged with ice and insects. One theory is that the “inconsistent” speed readings caused the automatic pilot to disengage, leaving the crew trying to fly manually – a difficult task at high altitude without knowing the plane’s speed.

It has emerged that the same sequence of events occurred in six cockpit emergencies reported by Airbus pilots over a year beginning in February 2008. According to internal Air France documents leaked to the press, the incidents involved “a rather incoherent cocktail of alarms” and “severe breakdowns”. These appear to have originated with malfunctioning pitot tubes in stormy weather.

In one incident, an Air France pilot issued a mayday call between Paris and Tokyo in turbulent weather after the loss of speed indication resulted in the disengagement of the automatic pilot and set off other alarms. In all six incidents, however, the pilots regained control of the aircraft.

Air France advised pilots on November 6 last year about the “significant number of incidents” in which false speed readings had confused the automated flight system.

The company rushed to replace speed sensors on its aircraft last week after a pilots’ union threatened to boycott long-range jets. Even so, questions were raised over why Air France had taken so long to act on advice from Airbus to upgrade pitot tubes in 2007. As early as 2001 an airworthiness directive from the US Federal Aviation Administration noted problems with pitot tubes on the Airbus A330 that could cause “inadvertent excursions outside the normal flight envelope”.

Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, Air France’s chief executive, last week acknowledged that malfunctioning speed sensors could have been “a contributing element” in the accident.

“We do not deny that there is a problem with the sensors,” he said. “But we cannot say that this is the cause of the accident. We do not know.” With no indication of how fast the plane is flying the pilot risks applying too much jet thrust or too little. At high altitude – in circumstances known as “coffin corner” – too much thrust will put a plane into a nosedive and too little will make it stall.

Among the sophisticated electronics on an Airbus A330 is a system that automatically pumps fuel aft when the plane climbs above 25,000ft. This alters the trim of the aircraft to improve fuel economy. It also alters the aircraft’s centre of gravity, making it harder to fly when in manual mode rather than autopilot.

Without the ability to read their speed, the crew of Flight 447 may have mistakenly believed there was a danger of stalling. If they applied extra thrust it could have tipped the plane out of control, tearing it apart in the turbulence.

The recovery of the “vertical stabiliser” from the tail of the aircraft has strengthened suspicions among experts that the plane went out of control and broke up as a result of flying either too slowly or too quickly in turbulence. Strong up or down draughts can exert extreme pressures on planes.

So far 50 bodies have been found out of the 228 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft. Passengers spanned 32 nationalities and included five Britons and three Irish women. Search teams say that after almost two weeks floating in waters rich in marine life the bodies are not in a state to be recognised by relatives and DNA testing is helping with identification.

Postmortem examinations on 16 of the bodies suggest they were dead when they hit the sea. No water was found in lungs, which would have indicated drowning. Passengers would have almost instantly fallen into a coma and died if there was a sudden depressurisation of the cabin at high altitude, say experts. Despite the length of time the bodies were in the water, it seems unlikely that wind or currents separated them into two distinct groups 50 miles apart.

The Emeraude, a French nuclear submarine, is combing the ocean depths in search of an audio beep from the plane’s “black boxes”. The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder ought to contain sufficient information to determine what caused the crash. However, officials are cautious about the chances of finding them in 12,000ft of water. No flight recorders have been retrieved from such a depth. A rugged, undersea terrain will not help.

“We are going to need a lot of luck,” said Patrick Prazuck, a military spokesman.



[/quote]

[izzix]

UK NEWS
DID ELECTRONIC PULSE BOMB DOWN JET?
Story Image

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/107 ... -down-jet-

POSSIBILITY: A pulse of energy could have doomed flight 447

Sunday June 14,2009
By James Murray

CRASH investigators are trying to discover whether terrorists used an electronic bomb to bring down the Air France jet, killing 228 people.

Al Qaeda has been working on a device which knocks out the sophisticated electronics on passenger jets with an electromagnetic pulse.

It can be as small as an orange but needs a small explosive to be detonated.

The device sends a high-powered pulse through electronic equipment strong enough to overpower an aircraft’s cockpit and black box, making them impossible to trace because they will not emit a signal.

Fears that terrorists are behind the disaster come as a French submarine has so far failed to locate the black box where the Airbus 330 came down in a storm 700 miles off Brazil.

The Sunday Express can reveal that in April jihadi websites were running stories on the effectiveness of EMPs or electromagnetic pulse devices.

One article said: “Allah has answered prayers and helped his soldiers with EMP grenades. The EMP is broadband, high-intensity, short-duration burst of electromagnetic energy which burns out all electrical components it reaches.”

It claimed mujahideen warriors have built EMPs into rocket-propelled grenades and use them to knock out communication centres in Afghanistan.

“This is no longer a fiction story like that which we see in movies like Star Wars or games like Crysis,” said the article.

“It is a reality which is daunting the American ­military.”

Islamic terrorists have issued many threats to the French government in recent months since it sent troops to fight in Afghanistan.

SEARCH UK NEWS for:


French secret service agents have scrutinised passenger lists on the Air France flight which fell from the skies en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31.

Yael Shahar, director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, in Israel, said low-cost equipment was available online which could be just as deadly as electromagnetic weapons.

“These will become more of a threat as the electromagnetic weapons technology matures,” she told New Scientist earlier this year.

“Once it is known that aircraft are vulnerable to particular types of disruption, it isn’t too much of a leap to build a device that can produce that sort of disruption,” she added.

“Much of this could be built from off-the-shelf components or dual-use technologies.”

Composites now being used in aircraft construction provide poor shielding against electromagnetic radiation compared with metal.

“What is needed is extensive shielding of electronic components and the vast amount of cables running down the length of the aircraft,” Ms Shahar warned.

Five Britons were on the Air France flight, including oil executive Arthur Coakley, 61, of Whitby, North Yorkshire, 11-year-old Bristol schoolboy Alexander Bjoroy, oil worker Graham Gardner, 52, of Inverclyde, and PR executive Neil Warrior.

[BobHelm]

Latest from BBC today...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8112081.stm

Still seems to be very much an ongoing investigation. I guess only the finding of the black boxes will confirm exactly what happened.....

[izzix]

New Airbus plunge leaves seven injured as Qantas passengers smash into ceiling

By Richard Shears
Last updated at 12:21 PM on 22nd June 2009

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... iling.html

A Qantas Airbus A330-300 - the same class of jet as the Air France plane which plunged into the Atlantic three weeks ago - dived dramatically over Asia today, injuring at least seven passengers.

The drama on board QF68, en route from Hong Kong to Perth in Western Australia, terrified passengers as the plane suddenly plunged, resulting in several passengers hitting the ceiling.

None of the injuries was said to be serious, but passengers were shaken by the experience as the jet was flying over Borneo.
Qantas Airbus A330-300

Plunge: The Qantas jet dived as it crossed Asia, injuring seven passengers. It was the same class of jet as the Air France plane which crashed three weeks ago. File picture of Airbus model A330-300

Passengers, crew and loose articles were thrown towards the ceiling as the aircraft suddenly dropped, an experience that some likened to 'falling into a hole'.

One of the people to hit the ceiling was mother Vicky Richards, from Rockingham, south of Perth, who was with a group of family and friends returning from a holiday in Hong Kong.

Miss Elsie Hudson, who was part of the group, said Vicky was not wearing a seat belt when the aircraft ran into heavy turbulence.


More...

* Air France crash families get first compensation as investigators continue to sift wreckage for clues
* BA launches business-only London City to Wall Street flight - with tickets costing £5,000 each

'There was this massive drop and Vicky who was with us, didn't have a seat belt on, hit the roof, the console, and she actually cracked it and took one of the light covers off,' said Miss Hudson.

'She was in a lot of pain in the end,' Miss Hudson told The Australian when the plane landed. 'Her headache progressed worse and worse and her neck got worse and worse and by the end she couldn't move.'

Miss Richards was taken to hospital with suspected head and neck injuries.

Miss Hudson said the captain, Paul Flack, informed passengers as they were landing in Perth that the Airbus had run into a storm which the radars had not picked up.

Air France wreckage

Workers unload debris of the crashed Air France Flight 447 from the Brazilian Navy's Constitution Frigate, northeast of Brazil last week

'He said because of the temperature issue, crystals sometimes form on the instruments that pick up the radars, that pick up the clouds.

'Apparently it didn't pick it up until they were in it.'

Another man received a cut on his head when he hit the ceiling. Other passengers not wearing seat belts were also thrown from their seats.

Although a storm is being blamed for the sudden plunge, air safety investigators have begun a thorough inquiry, aware that the aircraft is the same type as the doomed Air France jet.

'It was a severe meteorological incident,' said Mr David Epstein, Qantas' corporate affairs manager.

[immortal1977]

Salvage crews locate faint signals from doomed Air France jet 'black box' deep under Atlantic

By Mail Foreign Service

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... odies.html

Faint signals from flight recorders of the Air France jet which crashed with the loss of 228 lives have been heard deep below the Atlantic.

The signals were picked up by the French Navy and a mini submarine is now headed towards the emission site.

Black boxes from the doomed Airbus will hold the vital clues as to how the plane met its end on June 1st as it travelled from Rio de Janeiro to Paris
French naval vessels picked up the ‘very weak’ signal using state-of-the-art search technology.

It is not known whether the signal came from the flight's data recorder or the voice recorder.

Locator beacons known as 'pingers' send an electronic signal every second for at least 30 days, and it can be heard up to 1.5 miles away.

French ships involved in the search operation include a nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment and a research ship equipped with the mini subs.

All are methodically scanning the surface and depths of the Atlantic for signs of the plane, over a 50 mile search radius.

An Air France spokeswoman said she could not confirm the report.
Medical examiners have since identified the first 11 of 50 bodies recovered from the flight that plunged into the Atlantic, officials said Sunday.

Five bodies were identified as Brazilian men, five as Brazilian women and one as a 'foreigner of the male sex,' the Public Safety Department of the northeastern state of Pernambuco said in a statement.

The department did not reveal the nationality of the non-Brazilian victim.

Dental records, fingerprints and DNA samples were used to identify the bodies, the statement said.

Investigators are reviewing all remains, debris and baggage at a base set up in Recife, capital of Pernambuco.

The families of the Brazilian victims and the embassy in Brazil representing the foreigner's home country have been notified, but the identities will not be publicized in keeping with the families' wishes, the statement said.

Flight 447 fell into the ocean off the northeast coast of Brazil on the night of May 31, killing all passengers aboard.
A total of 50 bodies have been retrieved from the ocean.

[izzix]

Air France plane crashed vertically into ocean

Flight 447 went down so quickly that passengers had no time to react, says French head investigator


* Matthew Weaver and agencies
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 July 2009 15.12 BST
*
An Air France Airbus A330-200

Time is running out to find the Air France plane's black box flight recorder. Photograph: AP

Air France flight 447 did not break up in the air but plunged vertically into the Atlantic Ocean, according to the French head investigator of last month's crash, which killed all 228 people on board.

Alain Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, indicating the accident happened so quickly that the passengers had no time to react.

Speed sensors on the Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were not to blame, he said, though "we are far from understanding the cause of the crash".

"The plane seems to have hit the surface of the water on its flight trajectory with a strong vertical acceleration," he said, adding that investigators have found "neither traces of fire nor traces of explosives."

One of the automatic messages emitted by the plane indicates it was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilise the control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over.

No information was being given out from autopsies of the bodies found, Bouillard told a news conference at the headquarters of the French air accident agency BEA in Le Bourget, outside Paris.

The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the accident may never be known. The automated messages sent by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search. Bouillard said the search for the plane's black boxes has been extended by 10 days and would continue untill 10 July.

Families of the victims had been briefed before the media on the findings so far of the BEA investigation.

Earlier, Christophe Guillot-Noel, head of an association for the crash victims' families said they wanted all the facts, "above all to be able to avoid this eventually happening again".

"We have just one demand: transparency. We have just one expectation: the truth," he said.

[captainahab]

Hopefully the authorities will soon be able to give a better idea of what actually happened

BEA Says Data From Air France 447 Recorders Is Readable
Mon, 16 May '11

Both Flight Data And Cockpit Voice Recorders Will Yield Data From The Flight
BEA Safety Investigators say they were able to download data from both the Flight Data and Cockpit Voice recorders from Air France Flight 447 over the weekend.

The operations to open, extract, clean and dry the memory cards from the flight recorders were filmed and recorded in their entirety in the presence of two German investigators from BFU, an American investigator from NTSB, two British investigators from AAIB and two Brazilian investigators from CENIPA, as well as an officer from the French judicial police and a court expert.

The downloads reportedly yielded all of the data from the Flight Data recorder (FDR), as well as the entire recording of the last two hours of the flight from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR).

In the framework of the safety investigation directed by the BEA, all of this data will now be subjected to detailed in-depth analysis. This work will take several weeks, after which a further interim report will be written and then published during the summer.

[url]http://www.bea.aero/en/[url]

[merchant seaman]

Surely another conspiracy by the yanks

[GT93]

Not terrorists but pilots sleeping after a night out partying and yahooing on the piss:

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-up ... 7089475088

Air France pilot: "Fxxx, we're dead."

I lack the imagination to make this crap up even if I was a novelist. I can't believe pilots are paid a small fortune just to sleep. But it seems that is what was or is happening on Air France.

[pomps]

Air France pilot: "Fxxx, we're dead."

Was it said in French ie 'baise nous sommes morts' or just a simple 'sacre bleu'
Taken long enough to get the info from the yellow box

[GT93]

Yes, hopelessly slow for this to surface (sorry).

Perhaps parrot or one of our other Thai linguist friends might advise us what a pilot on Thai Air might say for "Fxxx, we're dead".

[JoeThrows]

I read up quite a bit on this one and it was pretty clearly pilot error/total mismanagement of the cockpit. On top of that, both pilots being able to use separate controls at the same time without feeling or being warned of the others input was a big factor.

[GT93]

Oh gosh it gets even worse. I hope Air France has got its act together far better now.

[leterry60614]

This info becomes public two weeks after the nastiest strike in years by Air France pilots. Without a doubt this is to expose them to public shame for low professionalism and too high compensations. That will give management the new low cost company they want!