A330 over the Atlantic. All plane crashes (accidents) of Air France aircraft. Discussion in the press

7.1. RAILWAY ACCIDENT Precautionary measures: - if possible, sit in the central carriages of electric trains (they will suffer the least damage in an accident); - place bulky and heavy things down, as with a strong push they can fall from the upper shelves and

This happened due to a lack of understanding by the crew of the situation and a violation of the aircraft’s operating conditions, said the director of the French Bureau of Air Accident Investigation (BEA), Jean-Paul Troadec, who announced the final report on the causes of the disaster on Thursday.

Air France flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. There were 228 people on board, all of them died. The French Bureau of Air Accident Investigation (BEA) reported in May 2011 that specialists were able to extract all the data from the plane’s flight recorders, which had lain on the ocean floor at a depth of 3.9 kilometers for about two years.

“This disaster was the result of a deviation from the operating mode of the aircraft by the crew, who lost their awareness of the situation. This category of accidents has been the deadliest in public transport for about 10 years. It affects both classic aircraft and modern models, both Boeing and Airbus,” Troadek told reporters.

He noted that the investigation into the cause of the crash had been completed.

"Starting tomorrow, the BEA will issue new recommendations (to airlines and aviation safety agencies), including eight on pilot training and five on aircraft certification. Some actions are already being taken; other recommendations may take years to implement. BEA will monitor implementation recommendations," said the director of the Bureau.

In turn, the head of the investigation, Alain Bouillard, said that the BEA had prepared 25 new recommendations.

"Pilots need to become more familiar with the design of aircraft and how performance changes when the situation deteriorates during flight. Practical and theoretical training, basic and technical knowledge of the aircraft and flight mechanics, as well as crew interaction in situations of high emotional stress need to be improved," Bouillard said.

According to the Bureau, problems during the flight from Rio de Janeiro began after ice crystals disrupted the Pitot's speed sensors. Due to a discrepancy between the measured speeds, the autopilot was disabled. At this moment, the commander of the ship was resting, the co-pilot took control, whose actions led the plane to a stall, from which no one recovered the aircraft.

"Twenty seconds after disabling the autopilot, the third pilot discovered that the aircraft was climbing. He asked the acting pilot to stabilize the trajectory, be attentive to the speed and descend back. Although no exact instructions were given, this would be enough to stabilize the situation in the short term," Bouillard said .

The plane rose to an altitude of 38 thousand feet (11.6 thousand meters) with a vertical speed of 6 thousand feet per minute (1.8 thousand meters). According to Brouillard, the co-pilot acted abruptly and without restraint, increasing the pitch angle from 0% to 10% in 10 seconds, whereas at such altitudes the maximum allowable angle is 6%.

“At that moment the maximum altitude was reached and a stall warning sounded,” the expert said.

According to the expert, after this the plane began to fall at a vertical speed of 10 - 11 thousand feet per minute (3 thousand meters), the angle of incidence before the crash was 35 - 45 degrees.

Soon the commander returned to the cockpit, but his presence did not change anything. The crew, according to Bouillard, until the moment of the crash did not pay attention to either the aircraft stall signal, which worked intermittently, or the corresponding shaking.

“The acceleration bar was exceeded, the plane went beyond the operational limits. The ship could have been returned to operational limits by lowering the control stick, but it remained in the climb position, which only aggravated the situation,” Bouillard noted.

According to him, the pilots completely lost control of the situation.

“At this stage, only an extremely determined and well-aware crew could return the aircraft to operational mode,” the expert said.

However, the head of the BEA Troadek noted that the Bureau does not establish the legal responsibility of those responsible for the crash of the airliner, which became the largest air disaster in the history of Air France. The perpetrators will be determined by the court, which is conducting its own investigation. On Wednesday, excerpts from a forensic report were released, which noted the loss of data due to frostbite in the Pitot sensors and the lack of response from the crew.

The final report on the disaster was released at a press conference on July 5, 2012. As the causes of the plane crash, it names freezing of the pitot tubes, the subsequent disconnection of the autopilot and uncoordinated actions of the crew, which led to a stall, from which the crew was unable to recover the plane.

Airplane disappearance

Flight AF447 departed Rio de Janeiro for Paris at 23:29 UTC. After 2.5 hours, the pilots reported turbulence, and then the aircraft's on-board computer transmitted several service messages, after which contact with the aircraft was lost.

Air France representatives said during the day that there was practically no chance of finding the plane intact; by the end of the day it was announced that the plane had crashed. There were 228 people on board the liner (including 12 crew members). This is the worst air disaster in the history of Air France and the worst passenger plane crash since 2001 until the Boeing 777 crash in Ukraine (298 fatalities).

Flight progress data

Fourteen more bodies were found during the day, bringing the total to 16. Air France says it is replacing speed sensors on all Airbus planes on the assumption that faulty older type sensors may have caused the crash.

A Brazilian search team retrieves a large section of tail from the ocean, painted in Air France colors. The Navy says about a hundred objects were found in the crash area, including seats and oxygen masks with the Air France logo.

Brazilian officials say a total of 41 bodies have been found. The first 16 bodies found over the weekend will arrive at the rescue base in Fernando de Noronha, located off the coast of Brazil. The remaining 25 will be delivered later.

The French nuclear submarine Emeraude, equipped with high-precision sonar, reaches the disaster site to begin searching for the black boxes.

Search operation

The search operation was launched a few hours after the loss of contact with the aircraft on June 1, 2009. Bad weather at the supposed site of the disaster greatly hampered the search.

• On June 4, 2009, aircraft debris was found 340 miles (547 kilometers) off the coast of Brazil northwest of the Fernando de Noronha Islands. However, the next day it was announced that these fragments did not belong to the missing Flight 447.
• On June 6, a Brazilian search team discovered personal belongings of passengers and the bodies of two dead men 900 kilometers from the Fernando de Noronha archipelago. Among the personal belongings found were a leather suitcase with a flight ticket and a backpack with a laptop. A blue airplane seat and an oxygen mask were also found. Over the following days, a total of 50 bodies of dead passengers and numerous fragments of the liner were recovered from the water. A fragment of the plane's tail was found.
• On June 27, the Brazilian armed forces stopped the search operation, during which 51 bodies were found. The number of bodies found at the crash site of Flight 447 was subsequently reduced to 50, according to a joint statement by Brazil's Federal Police and the Institute of Forensic Medicine, which is responsible for identifying victims of the tragedy. According to forensic experts, DNA analysis revealed that one of the fragments found in the Atlantic belonged to a previously discovered body. Thus, the total number of victims of the plane crash found was reduced from 51 to 50, of which 43 people were identified. On July 13, the French side announced the completion of the operation to search for the “black boxes”. At the same time, the French side is not talking about a complete cessation of the search, but about the end of just the first phase and the imminent start of the second. " The second phase of the search will start after July 14, during which other methods and tools will be used"said BEA investigator Alain Bouillard. The second phase should last about a month. The search will be conducted by the vessel Pourquoi Pas, owned by the French Marine Research Institute (Ifremer). The ship is equipped with a mini-submarine "Nautile" and a deep-sea robot.

• On April 4, 2011, it was reported that fragments of the plane had been discovered by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The discovery was made by the research vessel Alusia, which left the Brazilian port of Suapi to take part in the fourth search operation. The ocean depth at the site where the fragments were discovered was 3.4-3.8 km.
• On April 4, during the Remora 6000's first dive, which lasted more than twelve hours, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) was found among the wreckage of other parts of the aircraft without the Crash Survivable Memory Unit (CSMU), which contains the data. A large fragment of the fuselage, a wing, landing gear and both engines were also found.
• On April 5, French Minister of Environment and Transport Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (French. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet) issued a statement: along with the wreckage of the liner, robots also found the bodies of dead passengers. According to Kosciusko-Morizet, specialists from Alusia were able to localize not only entire parts of the crashed plane, but also the remains of its dead passengers. The robots filmed bodies in the preserved plane cabin, lying on the bottom next to other debris. The minister emphasized that the data obtained make it possible to identify the victims whose bodies were found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, the French government announced a tender in the amount of 5,000,000 euros to carry out an operation to remove the bodies to the surface.
• On April 28, during a search operation in the Atlantic Ocean, a container of one of the “black boxes” was discovered. The storage device itself was not found in the container.
• On May 1, during a search operation in the Atlantic Ocean, a storage device for one of the airliner’s two “black boxes” was found. According to search engines, the device is in good condition.
• On May 3, the second flight recorder of the crashed plane was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The “black box” was discovered by the deep-sea submersible “Remora 6000” the evening of the previous day.
• On May 5, search team members brought to the surface the first body of one of the passengers who died in the crash.
• On May 30, the BEA reported that 75 bodies of those killed in the plane crash had been recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, taking into account the dead found in 2009 and the two bodies raised to the surface when the black boxes were discovered, the total number is 127.
• On June 3, the operation to raise the bodies of the dead and the wreckage of the plane from the bottom was completed in the Atlantic. A total of 104 bodies were recovered from the bottom during the operation. The remains of 50 people were found on the surface of the ocean immediately after the plane crashed. Thus, a total of 154 dead were found. A total of 228 people were on board the plane. The remaining 74 bodies were never found. Also on June 3, the recovery of the wreckage of the aircraft itself was completed. The ship Ile de Seine, on board which the wreckage of the airliner and human remains were loaded, headed for Toulouse, where specialists will take care of the finds.

Flight 447 Details

Flight AF447 was operated by an Airbus A330-203 (registration number F-GZCP, serial 660). The first flight took place on February 25, 2005, and on April 18 of the same year it was transferred to Air France. Equipped with two General Electric CF6-80-E1A3 turbofan engines. On December 27, 2008, February 21, 2009, and April 16, 2009, the aircraft underwent scheduled repairs, and no problems were found. On the day of the disaster, the airliner had completed 2,644 takeoff-landing cycles and had flown 18,870 hours.

Passengers and crew

The plane was flown by a French crew, whose composition was as follows:

• The pilot of the aircraft is 58-year-old Marc Dubois (Fr. Marc Dubois). Very experienced pilot, worked for Air France for 21 years (previously worked for Air Inter). As a PIC, he has flown Caravelle XII, Boeing 737, Airbus A320 and Airbus A340 aircraft. As commander of the Airbus A330 - since October 27, 2006. Flew 10,988 hours (6,258 of them as PIC), 1,700 of them on an Airbus A330.
• The co-pilot is 37-year-old David Robert (French). David Robert). Experienced pilot, worked for Air France for 11 years. As a co-pilot he flew Airbus A320 and Airbus A340 aircraft. As an Airbus A330 co-pilot since October 1, 2002. Flight time was 6,547, 4,479 of which were on Airbus A330.
• The second trainee pilot is 32-year-old Pierre-Cedric Bonin (Fr. Pierre-Cédric Bonin). Experienced pilot, worked for Air France for 7 years. He flew Airbus A320 and Airbus A340 aircraft. As an Airbus A330 trainee co-pilot since December 1, 2008. Flight time was 2,936, 807 of which were on Airbus A330. His wife Isabelle Bonin (French) Isabelle Bonin) was also on board as a passenger.

According to Air France, there were 228 people from 33 countries on board the plane. The crew (12 people) included 3 pilots, 3 chief stewards and 6 stewards and stewardesses. All crew members are French, except for one Brazilian flight attendant.

Among the 216 passengers were 126 men, 82 women, 7 children and one infant. They all died.

The plane was almost completely filled - 3 passenger seats out of 219 remained free.

Among the passengers were high-ranking officials: the general director of the Brazilian branch of Michelin, Luis Roberto Anastasiu, the president of the Brazilian division of the German concern ThyssenKrupp, and the representative of the Brazilian imperial dynasty of Orleans-Braganza, Prince Pedro Luis.

On board flight 447 was a Russian businessman, resident of the Moscow region, Andrei Kiselyov.

Investigation

Before the discovery and decryption of the “black boxes,” the only data about the state of the plane before the crash were automatic messages transmitted by the airliner. There is no objective monitoring data, since the airliner was outside the radar coverage area at the time of the disaster.

The first results of the investigation into the A330 crash in the Atlantic indicate that the airliner did not break up in the air, as previously thought, but only after hitting the water. This preliminary conclusion was made by experts from the French Bureau of Air Accident Investigation (BEA), which published a report on July 2, 2009. According to BEA, the plane fell into the water " with significant vertical acceleration».

On March 17, 2011, French authorities announced that they were opening an investigation into the European aviation concern Airbus Industrie on suspicion of manslaughter.

On May 16, 2011, information appeared that the commission to investigate the causes of the disaster managed to copy all the data from the on-board parametric recorder. Representatives of the BEA, which was investigating the cause of the crash, also managed to obtain recordings of the last two hours of the flight from the voice recorder. All collected data has been sent for thorough analysis, which is expected to be completed within a few weeks, the BEA said.

Parametric recorder data

On May 27, 2011, the BEA released an updated report on its investigation into the crash. The report provides flight data recorded by parametric and voice recorders. At 01:55 UTC, the crew chief woke up the co-pilot and said: " […] he will take my place" After the briefing, the commander left the cockpit and went to rest at 02:01:46. At 02:06, the pilot warned the flight attendant team that the plane was entering an area of ​​turbulence. After 4 minutes, the pilots performed a slight left turn and reduced speed from 0.82 Mach to 0.8 Mach due to increasing turbulence.

At 02:10:05 the autopilot and autothrottle switched off. The pilot moved the stick to the left and down, countering the right bank. The stall warning sounded twice. After 10 seconds, the aircraft's speed dropped sharply from 275 to 60 knots. The angle of attack of the aircraft increased and the altitude began to rise. The left side of the instrument panel displayed a sharp increase in indicated speed - up to 215 knots. The integrated backup instrumentation system did not display this change for a minute (the readings on the right side of the instrument panel are not recorded by the parametric recorder). The pilot continued to keep the nose of the plane up. The installation angle of the horizontal stabilizer increased from 3° to 13° within one minute and remained in this position until the end of the flight.

At approximately 02:11, the plane reached its maximum flight altitude of 11,600 meters. In this case, the angle of attack reached 16°, the engine control levers (EC) were moved to the “ Takeoff/Go-Around"(maximum thrust). At 02:11:40 the PIC returned to the cockpit. The angle of attack increased to 40°, the aircraft descended to an altitude of 10,675 m with almost 100% engine thrust (the revolutions of the front engine fan, which creates most of the thrust in turbofan engines, are recorded). The stall warning is disabled because the indicated airspeed is considered unreliable at this angle of attack. Approximately 20 seconds later, the pilot reduced the pitch angle slightly, the indicated airspeed became valid, and the stall alarm sounded again. From this moment until the end of the flight, the pitch angle was not less than 35°. In the last minutes of the flight, the throttles were in the “low throttle” position (minimum thrust). The engines continued to operate and remained completely under the control of the crew.

The recording ends at 02:14:28 UTC or 3 hours 45 minutes after takeoff. At this moment, the aircraft speed was 107 knots (198 km/h) with a vertical speed of about 3345 m/min, the engine thrust was 55% of the maximum. The pitch angle was 16.2° (nose up), with a left bank of 5.3°. During the descent, the plane turned almost 180° to the right on course 270. The plane was in a stall for 3 minutes 30 seconds, descending from an altitude of 11,600 m.

Incorrect airspeed readings are an obvious cause of autopilot disengagement, but why pilots lose control of the airplane remains a mystery, especially since the pilot typically tries to lower the nose of the airplane to prevent a stall. Multiple sensors show the pitch angle and there is no sign of any malfunction.

BEA Third Interim Report

On July 29, 2011, the BEA released its third interim report on safety issues discovered during the investigation into the disaster. Brief reports have also been published in several languages, including English.

The third report stated that some new facts had been established, in particular:

• The pilots did not carry out the procedure provided for flying with unreliable speed readings (setting the engine thrust to 85% of the maximum, the elevator to an angle of 5°).
• The pilot flying Flight 447 pulled the control stick, thereby increasing the angle of attack, which led to a sharp climb.
• The pilots probably did not pay attention to the fact that the plane had risen above the maximum allowable altitude.
• The pilots did not read available flight data (vertical speed, altitude).
• The stall warning sounded continuously for 54 seconds, but the pilots did not respond to the stall warning and apparently did not realize that the aircraft was in a stall.
• Stall-induced buffeting occurred.
• The stall warning signal is deactivated by design when a certain angle of attack is exceeded and the airspeed decreases below a certain level.
• As a result, the stall signal was turned off and then turned on again several times during the stall; it turned on when the pilot pulled the sidestick away from him, and turned off when the pilot pulled it towards him. This could confuse pilots.
• The pilots understood that the plane was descending sharply, but did not know which instruments they could trust; it might seem to them that all the instrument readings were incorrect.

BEA organized a team of aviation specialists and doctors to analyze the pilots' response to the current situation.

Air France published a bulletin in which it stated that " misleading stall warning signals on and off, contradicting the actual attitude of the aircraft, could be factors that significantly complicate the crew's analysis of the situation».

BEA Final Report

On July 5, 2012, the BEA released the final report of its investigation into the crash of flight AF447. It confirmed the findings of previous reports, noted additional details and added recommendations to improve aviation security. According to the findings of the final report, the accident occurred as a result of the following main events:

• Temporary desynchronization of speed readings, most likely as a result of pitot tubes being clogged with ice crystals, which led to the autopilot being turned off and switching to an alternative piloting law.
• The crew made inappropriate control actions, which led to the departure from stable flight.
• The crew did not take the actions prescribed in the event of loss of current speed readings.
• The crew was late in determining and correcting the deviation from the specified flight mode.
• The crew did not have sufficient skills to determine when a stall was approaching.
• The crew was unable to determine the beginning of the stall and therefore did not take action to recover the aircraft from the stall.

These events were the result of a combination of the following main factors:

• Feedback mechanisms in the controls involved made it impossible to identify and correct repeated failures to follow procedures for loss of current speed readings and pitot tube icing and its consequences.
• The crew did not have practical skills in manually controlling the aircraft either at high flight altitudes or in the event of a discrepancy in the current speed readings.
• The joint performance of the duties of the two pilots was complicated both by a lack of understanding of the situation at the time the autopilot was turned off, and by an inappropriate reaction to the effect of surprise, which led them to a state of emotional stress.
• There was no clear indication in the cockpit of the discrepancy in the current speed readings recorded by the on-board computers.
• The crew did not respond to the stall warning due to the short duration of the stall warning, which may have appeared to be a false alarm; with a lack of visual information confirming that the aircraft is approaching a stall after losing speed; with readings from the main computer, which could confirm the crew’s erroneous understanding of the situation; not recognizing the sound signal; mistaking buffeting during a stall for buffeting associated with exceeding the maximum speed; or having difficulty identifying and understanding the features of the transition to an alternative aircraft control law that does not provide protection in the angle of attack channel.

Discussion in the press

On December 6, 2011, the French publication Popular Mechanics published its findings regarding the causes of the disaster. In their opinion, the main causes of the disaster were the following factors:

• Inconsistency of actions and poor training of the crew (co-pilots David Robert and Pierre-Cedric Bonin, who were in the cockpit). For three minutes, while the emergency situation was developing, the pilots could not come to a common opinion about the spatial position and direction of movement of the aircraft.
• Panic in the cockpit. More than a minute before the commander arrived, the two pilots took chaotic and uncoordinated actions, which transferred the situation from an emergency to an emergency. The required report to the commander about the situation in the cockpit was not made.
• Bonin, who was in the right seat, committed a gross violation of the crew resource management (CRM) procedure. At the first sign of a malfunction, he panicked and pulled the control stick towards himself, without informing either the commander, David Robert, who occupied the chair, or the commander, Mark Dubois, who arrived a minute later. He reported his actions only a few seconds before the plane collided with water. The crew commander immediately made the right decision and ordered to stop attempting to climb; the co-pilot demanded that control be transferred to him. At an altitude of about 600 meters, the plane began to pick up speed, but it was not possible to stop the stall in time.

According to the publication, the plane remained operational and under control the entire time before the collision with water. The authors of the article placed all the blame for the disaster on the inexperienced trainee co-pilot Pierre-Cedric Bonin.

Chesley Sullenberger, Chairman of the International Civil Airline Pilots Association, believes that in this case there is a systemic flaw in the design of modern aircraft and the crew training system. In his opinion, modern computer systems control the aircraft 99% of the time, which deprives pilots of direct piloting experience and reduces their preparedness for emergency situations.

In addition, several documentaries and programs were broadcast, putting forward various versions of the disaster, but they all lost relevance after the discovery of the “black boxes”.

The Air France pilots' union said pitot tubes played a decisive role in the crash. Union president Gérer Arnoux confirmed that “the disaster could have been avoided” if they had been replaced in time.

Disaster in popular culture

The crash of Air France Flight 447 is featured in the 12th season of the Canadian documentary series Air Crash Investigations in the episode "Air France 447: The Missing Flight".

On June 1, an Air France plane flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. According to experts, the causes of the worst plane crash in the history of Air France, which claimed 228 lives—neither the French nor the Brazilian authorities expect to find anyone alive—will remain unsolved.

“I dial his mobile number, and I get long beeps in response. Only then the connection is cut off. But the phone cannot receive signals under water. Therefore, I still hope that he is somewhere on some raft in the middle of the ocean, that his "They just haven't found it yet. But deep down I know he won't come back." Patricia Coakley talks about her husband Arthur, one of the 216 passengers on Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Like the vast majority of relatives of those on board, she knows she will likely never know how her husband died.

It is assumed that modern planes do not fall for nothing. And the ultra-reliable Airbus A330-203 of Air France, where plane crashes occur extremely rarely, certainly does not crash. Yet that's exactly what happened with Flight 447.

Disappearance

Brazilian air traffic controllers learned that something had happened to the plane a quarter of an hour after its mark left their radar. “At 1.48 am GMT, the plane left the coverage area of ​​our radars. Shortly before this, the commander reported that the plane was on a given course at an altitude of 10,670 m at a speed of 840 km/h and that it was preparing to enter the area of ​​​​responsibility of Senegalese air traffic controllers in 50 minutes. This "was the last voice contact with the aircraft," says one of the Brazilian Air Force officers. malfunction. There was no voice communication."

According to representatives of the Brazilian Air Force, the first signal arrived at 2.10 and indicated that the autopilot had been turned off. Then, within three minutes, 11 more messages were received about the failure of various monitoring and control systems, including two of the three on-board computers, as well as a decrease in pressure on board. The last such message was received at 2.14. “When at 2.20 the crew did not show up for the scheduled communication session, and a few minutes later did not report, as they should have, that they had entered Senegal’s area of ​​responsibility, we contacted Dakar and found out that the plane did not communicate with them either. and then did not appear on their radar. After this, a search operation for the aircraft began."

Several countries took part in the operation, organized long before the sign “Delayed” appeared on the board at Charles de Gaulle airport opposite flight 447. The Brazilian Air Force scrambled planes from its base in the Fernando de Noronha archipelago. A French reconnaissance plane flew from Dakar towards Brazil. Soon the Americans joined in with data from satellites. "The search was made more difficult by the fact that we didn't really know where to look. At the time of the last signal, the plane was about 100 km south of the Cape Verde Islands, but even this did not help us much. The search area was huge."

Air France officially announced the loss of the plane only six hours later, when the plane failed to land at the Paris airport. The passengers' relatives were not told anything definite, but they were prepared for the worst. In the afternoon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived at the airport to meet them. He announced that there was virtually no hope of saving anyone on board.

Following the French president, the head of Air France made a statement in which he admitted that the airline was faced with “the biggest disaster yet.” Airline representatives suggested that the cause of the tragedy was lightning striking the plane as it flew through a thunderstorm zone. Experts immediately refuted this theory. "On average, every aircraft is struck by lightning once a year. Modern aircraft are adapted to this. A lightning strike simply cannot lead to the destruction of the aircraft," says British expert David Gleave.

The fact that the plane collapsed very quickly is evidenced by signals received from the board. “The signals were sent automatically. This suggests that there was no sudden and complete power outage on board the plane,” says American expert John Cox. “However, if the plane did not break up in the air, the crew had time to send a distress signal. Airbus has a spare one.” power supply system, which is designed almost exclusively to give this signal. However, it was not there."

At present, no expert dares to say with confidence what happened to the plane. "It could be anything. Even a collision with another plane - a military one or, for example, a small plane that drug traffickers like to use. Naturally, they will not report the plane missing," says former Air France pilot Cédric Magnez. The possibility of a terrorist attack is also being considered, although this version is not considered the main one. “We cannot, naturally, exclude the version of a terrorist attack, because terrorism is the main threat to all Western democracies,” said French Defense Minister Hervé Morin, who noted, however, that the French authorities do not yet have any reason to consider the disaster the result of a terrorist attack and that no organization has taken responsibility for it.

Soon after the plane's wreckage was found - this happened on the afternoon of June 2 - experts had reason to believe that the crew was trying to either turn the plane around, or at least get around some obstacle. “We found debris much south of where the plane was when the last signal was received. Perhaps the plane was trying to turn or turn around to go towards the Fernando de Noronha islands. But this, of course, is only a hypothesis,” said a representative of the Brazilian Air Force.

The story was made even more mysterious by a statement from the Brazilian airline TAM. It said that the crew of a plane flying from Paris to Rio de Janeiro noticed flames approximately in the place where the French plane was routed. However, a little later, a French search vessel set off to the place indicated by the pilots, which did not find any traces of the disaster there.

The unattainable truth

The only thing that can shed light on the disaster is data from the so-called black boxes. However, according to one expert, it's easier to find a needle in a haystack. “Most likely, the “black boxes” have been preserved. The whole problem is to find them. The search for the Titanic took decades. And we are talking about wreckage that is several times smaller,” says British expert Derek Clark, who runs the company that manufactures diving equipment for British naval sailors.

According to another expert, Nigel Dee, there is only a month to search for the “black boxes”: “Usually such systems are equipped with beacons that emit signals. They can also be heard in the water. If the beacons are not damaged, they will emit signals for 30 days.” France has already sent perhaps the most modern research ship of the Navy, Pourquoi Pas ("Why not"), built in 2005, to the site where the wreckage was discovered. On board there are two mini-submarines capable of conducting search operations at a depth of up to 4.5 km. However, experts say the problem is not just one of depth. “In the place where the plane supposedly fell, the topography of the ocean floor is monstrous. Any researcher will tell you this. There are real mountains down there. The depth difference can be a kilometer. And a huge number of places that are simply impossible to reach,” says one of the researchers. Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borlot also expresses doubts that the “black boxes” will ever be discovered. He recalled that even after the crash of a French plane in the Red Sea in 2004, when the crash site was determined very precisely, the “black boxes” were lifted from a depth of 1000 m only after 15 days. “What can we say about a place where depths range from 3,000 to 6,000 m, the search area is a huge area, and underwater currents are unusually strong?” - says the minister.

Relatives of the victims are also getting used to the idea that the mystery of the plane’s death will not be revealed. According to psychologists now working at Charles de Gaulle airport, this is “one of the two topics that cause people the most suffering.” The second is the thought of how the passengers felt in the last minutes and seconds of the flight.

“It happened at night, when the plane had already been in flight for long hours. I hope that he was sleeping, that it all happened quickly and he didn’t have time to get scared. If I can find consolation, it’s only in this,” says the wife of one of the passengers.

ALEXANDER IZYUMOV

Airplane: Airbus A330-203, registration number F-GZCP. General Electric CF6-80E engines. Began flights on April 18, 2005, total flight time is 18,870 hours. The last scheduled inspection was carried out on April 16, 2009.

Crew: 3 pilots, a crew of 9 flight attendants.

Passengers: 216 people, including 126 men, 82 women, 8 children from 32 countries.

Departure time and place: 19.03 (22.03 GMT) May 31, Galean International Airport.

Expected time and place of arrival: Estimated arrival at Charles de Gaulle International Airport is 11.15 (9.15 GMT) on June 1.

Today, the world's media are commenting on the mysterious disappearance of an Air France plane over the Atlantic with 228 people on board. The Airbus A-330 was caught in a severe thunderstorm with thunder, lightning and turbulence, but its design was considered very reliable. The first interviews are given by the lucky ones who were not allowed on the fateful flight.

Watching in horror the search for the missing Air France plane over the Atlantic, Dane Stefan van Oss thanks God for saving him from death. The fact is that Stefan was also supposed to fly on this plane.

Three weeks ago he decided to go on vacation to Brazil. He really liked the country, and really wanted to extend this vacation, but he had to return. On Monday Stefan had to fly back to Europe and he bought tickets for flight AF 447.

As van Oss said in an interview with the Danish TV show Hart van Nederland, he was saved by a miracle - a very good friend called and said that something bad would happen and Stefan should not fly on this flight. He obeyed and did not board the plane, which he did not regret later.

Let us remind you that the search continues in the Atlantic Ocean for the Airbus 330-200 airliner that disappeared from radar screens during the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, the Washington Post reports. “On board were 12 crew members and 216 passengers - citizens of 32 countries,” write correspondents Edward Cody and Sholnn Freeman.

At 4:00 am Paris time, the aircraft encountered a severe thunderstorm with thunder, lightning and turbulence. From 4:14 a.m., the airliner sent several automatic signals about a power outage and a drop in air pressure in the cabin, after which the connection was lost.

“If a plane sank in the middle of the Atlantic, finding material traces of the disaster will not be easy. The central regions of the oceans are one of the most remote corners of the world from civilization,” an expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explained to the publication.

Modern airliners typically avoid the front of a thunderstorm, even though they are designed to withstand lightning strikes. The Airbus 330-200 is famous for its reliability, and yet the plane, flying at an altitude of 35 thousand feet, could have landed directly in the most dangerous part of the thunderstorm front, which in this area stretched up to an altitude of 50 thousand meters, the publication cites the explanation of a meteorologist.

It is unclear how long the plane remained in the air after the last automatic message or why the crew did not issue an SOS signal. The "black boxes" are equipped with radio beacons that operate for 30 days, but it will be difficult to detect them in the water, the newspaper adds.

According to The Times, the most likely cause of the A-330 crash appears to be turbulence. For 40 years, there has not been a case where lightning was the main cause of a plane crash, writes the author of the article, Charles Bremner.

Lightning strikes airliners with some regularity, but this does not pose a significant danger. According to recent American statistics, each commercial aircraft is struck by lightning once on average every year.

On the other hand, severe turbulence poses a threat even to large aircraft, the correspondent points out. Small planes caught in a storm periodically find themselves broken into pieces and crashed to the ground. The most famous case of such a disaster occurred in 1966 in Japan, near Mount Fuji: then 124 people died.

The German Der Tagesspiegel, reporting on the plane crash, quotes the words of the head of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon: rescuers “localized the search area” for the airliner flying across the Atlantic. "The disaster occurred halfway between the coast of Brazil and the African coast."

Gurzhon named a lightning strike as one of the possible versions of the crash. However, the publication comments, experts refute this version, pointing out that modern airliners are equipped with special devices that protect against lightning strikes.

This is the worst and by far the most mysterious disaster in the history of French aviation, writes Le Temps. So far, Air France is putting forward a hypothesis that explains the incident by meteorological conditions. As Météo France meteorologist Etienne Kapikian notes, “this is one of the areas where the most thunderstorms occur in the world.”

According to Francois Grangier of the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis, Flight 447 appears to have been the victim of "something extremely sudden and powerful", so the pilots did not have time to report the problem. The emergency beacons did not signal, which means they were damaged before they could send a signal.

Another mystery is that Briton Patricia Coakley, whose husband was on board the Airbus A330-200 that disappeared on June 1 during a flight over the Atlantic, believes that the plane did not sink. The woman motivates this by the fact that when she calls her husband on her mobile phone, she hears beeps. Thus, the phone is still working and within reach, the British woman says, writes NEWSru.com with reference to The Sun.

Coakley's husband, Arthur, 58, last called his wife to say he had boarded a plane from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Before this, two flights that the Briton was planning to take were cancelled.