Air France Plane Found

New York City, N.Y.- Search teams from the Brazilian Air Force have confirmed yesterday that the debris fields found 220 miles north-east from Brazil are in fact from the missing Air France flight 447. Eleven aircrafts and five ships, some American and French have been helping the Brazilians in their investigation and search for the plane and positively identified two debris fields off Brazil as to Flight 447.

            The Airbus A330 left from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil heading to Paris, France and it is estimated that it crashed about three hours after takeoff. There has been speculation that the plane was flying through a severe thunder and lightning storm which may have contributed to the crash. Although there has been no confirmed cause of the crash, “The aircraft’s (Flight 447’s) computer system did send about four minutes of automated messages indicating a loss of cabin pressure and an electrical failure.

            There is another suggestion from a French report that the pilots were flying at the “wrong speed” during a thunderstorm and that this could have been the cause or a contributing factor to the crash.

Luckily, there were credible witnesses to the mystery of Flight 447; two pilots of an Air Comet flight from Lima, Peru to Lisbon, Portugal recall seeing a bright flash. The captain of the Air Comet flight said, “Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds.” Robert Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said that determining where the plane broke up is a very difficult problem to solve.

The two debris fields of flight 447 were found 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago of islands 220 miles off the northeast coast of Brazil. Helicopters are now beginning to bring floating debris onto three naval vessels. Some of the debris found include an airplane seat, metal fragments, and an orange float.

While it seems all is lost for flight 447, the search crews are still hopeful that they will find the black boxes, and flight and voice recorders of the plane which will provide a detailed history of the plane’s flight path and the pilot’s conversations, but we may never find these recorders. French officials are worried that they may never find the recorders because experts say, where the plane crashed, the ocean is up to 24,600 feet deep. Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France’s accident investigation bureau claims, “Recorders from time to time were found… but I’m not so optimistic… It’s not only deep; it’s also very mountainous at that place of the ocean.”

However, there is hope of finding the two black boxes. The recorders give off a radio “ping” or signal that can be used by search crews to zero in on the location, but the ping only lasts for 30 days so crews need to mobilize fast and put submarines in to find them.

            Even though weather and the currents of the ocean are going to slow the search crew down, once the French officials find the flight data recorders, they will be able to uncover the details of what happened early Monday morning and finally put the mystery of Air France Flight 447 to rest.