Debris was Not From Air France Flight

The reason why we are often hesitant to comment on investigations in progress is that the information changes from day to day. The Brazilian air force has said that the debris they initially reported as being from missing Air France Flight 447 is in fact…not.

It has been verified that the debris, including a wood pallet, which is used on planes, but was not on the plane in question. Nor was the oil slick from it, as it exceeded the quantity the amount the plane would have. We’re not exactly sure why large unreported oil slicks are floating around the ocean, or how it took this long for the Brazilian military to figure out it wasn’t the wreckage of a commercial aircraft. We look forward to hearing more.

The NTSB has accepted an invitation from the French accident investigation authority to aid in the investigation. The plane was in international airspace, and the plane had a French registry, but investigators often reach out to other agencies for assistance. Also, the flight data recorders were made by Honeywell, an American company based in Morristown, NJ. The devices have a water-activated beacon that runs for thirty days, will remain intact as deep as 3.8 miles, and are designed to withstand 3,400 times the force of gravity on impact. The NTSB says that it has located all the recorders from airliners that crashed into the sea in the last decade.

The latest information indicates that Flight 447 encountered severe turbulence in explosive thunderstorms. The flight encountered two thunderstorms prior to the crash. The first would have produced moderate to severe turbulence. A few minutes later, entering the main cluster of storms, it would have been hit by severe turbulence. At this point, the updrafts and downdrafts would have been hitting the airplane from below and above. The severe turbulence may have contributed to the loss of the plane.

As for why they did not simply go around it….the storms stretched for over 400 miles and were developing along the flight path. The airplane was flying at cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. With the updrafts pushing the storms up to 50,000 feet, the plane could not fly over the storms and had to fly through them. Airbus, as a precaution, has sent a warning to airlines operating Airbus 330 aircraft with new advice on flying in storms.