Word: air
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Unfortunately, as long as the plane or its black box are not recovered, it will be impossible to know what caused the disappearance of Air France Flight 447, says Gourguechon. "As frustrating as it is, we'll need more information before we can imagine any scenarios." But for Learmount, if a short-circuit fire is to blame, one thing is for sure. "We have to look here for the lessons we got from that [Swissair flight]," he says. "Airplanes should have heat and smoke detectors all over them ... so that if a fire started anywhere, you would know immediately...
...Air France Flight 447, a twin-engine A330, took off from Galeão International Airport in Rio de Janeiro at 7:30 p.m. local time and was last heard from three hours later, when the cockpit crew radioed to tell Brazilian air controllers that the plane would enter Senegalese airspace at 11:20 p.m., according to a statement from Aeronautica, the body in charge of Brazilian airspace. (No message from Senegalese airspace was ever received.) Speaking at a press conference, Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said the plane encountered stormy weather and strong turbulence...
...Clearly there has been a failure in the aircraft, and we can say without a doubt this is an air catastrophe," Gourgeon said, adding that he "shares in the mourning of passengers' relatives." On Monday afternoon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with families and friends of the missing passengers at Charles de Gaulle airport. "I told them the truth: that the chances of finding survivors are very small," he said. An Air France manager in Brazil said the passengers included 80 Brazilians, 73 French citizens, 18 Germans, nine Italians and six U.S. citizens as well as citizens of 17 other...
...With no physical evidence and no witnesses, identifying the circumstances of Flight 477's disappearance will take time. For Julien Gourguechon, international secretary-general of the SNPL French pilots' union, the current hypothesis of an electrical-systems failure leads to more questions than answers. "If Air France mentioned they received a message of short circuit, we can conclude it was a rather serious one," he says. "But in the case of an A330, even the most serious type of short circuit - known as an emergency electrical configuration - is something absolutely manageable for a trained team. So at this time...
...Given the stormy weather off the Brazilian coast, Air France said the plane may have been struck by lightning, but that alone wouldn't necessarily lead to catastrophe, Gourguechon says. "Lightning strikes happen every day and usually have no consequences. The airplane was built to survive that...