4-16-09 - DREAM - I was in an airport waiting room, waiting to go somewhere on a plane.  Across from me, sitting on the window sill were 6 or 7 pilots, all dressed in black leather, snoozing before their flight took off.  I assumed they were sleeping now so they would be awake when they were actually flying. 

Then a good looking man came along, and I was attracted to him, however, his wife came along soon after and took him away again.

Then a tall Chinese guy came by, and he looked really familiar.  I asked him if he was from Milwaukee, and he said, "No!"  But then, I asked, "Are you from Wisconsin?"  Again he said , "No!" 

Then his wife came and led him away too, but before he left, he pasted a sticker on the wall behind where he had been standing.  The sticker said, "You snooze - you lose!"

NOTE:  The following day, on the news were two plane crashes with several deaths.  I don't know how may others didn't make it into the national newspaper.

Ohio Wesleyan University Online Dies in Plane Crash Ohio Wesleyan University Online - Delaware,OH,USA Larry Eberst, former assistant men's basketball coach at Ohio Wesleyan, died in a plane crash yesterday. Eberst joined the Ohio Wesleyan coaching staff ...

Alaska Plane Crash Kills Mustang Man
KOCO - Oklahoma City,OK,USA
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Troopers confirm a man from Mustang was killed in an Alaska plane crash. Robert Whitesell, 63, of Mustang was one of two people killed in ...
See all stories on this topic

Papa John's franchisee Daniel Dorsch, wife die in plane crash
Bizjournals.com - Charlotte,NC,USA
National Transportation Safety Board investigators are trying to determine the cause of an airplane crash that killed Tampa businessman Daniel Dorsch and ...
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BainbridgeGa.com Man Killed in Plane Crash BainbridgeGa.com - Bainbridge,GA,USA A pilot was killed in a plane crash around 1:00 pm today. The plane went down in a peanut field adjacent to Highway 310 and Carter Mill Road. ... See all stories on this topic

Yemen: 8 bodies in Tanzania may be from air crash
The Associated Press
... from a plane that plunged into the Indian Ocean with 153 people onboard, Yemeni authorities said Tuesday. Only one 12-year-old girl survived the crash. ...
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Plane crash kills former Checkers CEO
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com - Newark,NJ,USA
The former head of Checkers fast food restaurants and his wife are believed to have been killed Sunday -- possibly with two others -- in a plane crash in ...
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BREAKING NEWS: Plane Crash Reported in Wayne County
WSAZ-TV - Huntington,WV,USA
(WSAZ) -- 911 dispatchers in Wayne County are confirming that a small plane has reportedly crashed. Dispatchers say it was a plane from Tri-State Airport ...
See all stories on this topic

Feds investigate fatal plane crash in N. Iowa
KTIV - Sioux City,IA,USA
More>> Associated Press - July 4, 2009 11:24 AM ET LATIMER, Iowa (AP) - Federal agencies are investigating a small plane crash in northern Iowa that left ...
See all stories on this topic

Plane Crash Leaves Minister Dead
KGBT-TV Presents VALLEYCENTRAL.COM - Harlingen,TX,USA
AP Video By Ryan Wolf WESLACO -- The Federal Aviation Administration is in the Valley to investigate Friday's deadly plane crash at the Mid Valley Airport ...
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One dead in plane crash near Beaver Dam Wash
St. George Daily Spectrum - St. George,UT,USA
A plane piloted by the Civil Air patrol initially located the crash site and guided the recovery team using GPS coordinates. Tersigni said the Sheriff's ...
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BREAKING NEWS: Two dead in plane crash; coroner, NTSB headed to scene
Baxter Bulletin - Mountain Home,AR,USA
A law enforcement officials on scene at a plane crash near Gaston's Resort in Lakeview has confirmed there are two fatalities in the wreckage. ...
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BREAKING NEWS: Plane crash fatalities now number 3
Baxter Bulletin - Mountain Home,AR,USA
LAKEVIEW -- Lt. Terry Johnson of Baxter County Sheriff's Office confirmed to The Bulletin that the number of fatalities in today's plane crash now totals ...
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Woman, 70, killed in Lamu plane crash
Daily Nation - Nairobi,Kenya
By NATION Correspondent Posted Thursday, June 25 2009 at 21:43 A 70-year-old woman died and her husband sustained serious injuries when a private plane they ...
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Three area men killed in Iowa plane crash
Janesville Gazette - Janesville,WI,USA
By GAZETTE STAFF Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - 10:09 am The Milton owner of a small plane that crashed in Iowa on Tuesday said Milton businessman Malcolm ...
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FAA says 3 die in small plane crash in NW Iowa
Chicago Tribune - United States
AP DES MOINES, Iowa - The Federal Aviation Administration says three people have died in a single engine plane crash near the northwest Iowa town of Sheldon ...
See all stories on this topic

2 Dead After Small Kit-Built Plane Crashes in Arizona
FOXNews - USA
Both people on board died in the crash. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
See all stories on this topic
 

W. Texas plane crash kills Houston businessman, wife
Houston Chronicle - United States
AP DOUGHERTY — A Houston businessman and his wife died when their small plane crashed in a cotton field in Floyd County, about 50 miles northeast of Lubbock ...
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Pilot dies in small plane crash
WRAL.com - Raleigh,NC,USA
Shannon Lee Harrelson, 38, was the only person aboard the plane when it down off NC Highway 410 at 7:07 pm, troopers said. More details about the crash were ...
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6-12-09

Two men killed in plane crash

©The Daily Leader 2009

Telford Man Dies In Plane Crash

A Telford man died Friday, May 29, when his single-engine airplane crashed in Dickenson County, Va., near the Kentucky border.

The Associated Press reported that Victor Owens, Jr., 57, of Conklin Road, Telford, left the Elizabethton Airport about 3 p.m. Friday aboard his 1963 Mooney M20D airplane on a flight to Ashland, Ky.

But air-traffic controllers lost contact with Owens later Friday over the Tivis Ridge area of Pine Mountain in Dickenson County, Va.

The wreckage of his aircraft was sighted by Virginia Civil Air Patrol searchers about 3 p.m. Sunday.

Ground searchers confirmed Owens' death about 4:30 p.m. Sunday, according to the Virginia State Police.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is continuing to investigate the crash.

The plane had 216 passengers and 12 crew. members.  That is important to note.

I looked up the number 447 (the flight number) on our website, and on one of our 11:11 pages, a woman wrote to us and said that her special number was 447 and she noted a particular crop circle from 1998, which I looked up and to her it reminded her of an angel, and Joe connected it to Ascension, which, if those people died in a crash (which is apparent at this moment) ascension is exactly what they would do.

Big synchronicity there.

http://web.archive.org/web/19981205151329/http://www.greatdreams.com/ascend.htm

Air France AF 447 plane crash worst aviation disaster since 2001

This Airbus plane came down four hours into the flight

Air France said the plane had clocked 18,870 flight hours and went into service in April 2005. It last underwent maintenance in a hangar in April this year.

Related Stories: Air France plane crash: What could have caused the crash aviation experts debate

Air France plane crash: Airbus, GE Aviation rule out body, engine faults

Chances of finding survivors in Air France plane crash remote

The last major incident involving an Air France plane was in July 2000 when one of its Concorde supersonic airliners crashed just after taking off from Paris, bound for New York.

All 109 people on board were killed along with at least four on the ground.

Moreover, if all 228 people are declared dead, it would be the deadliest disaster to strike in the history of commercial airline since November. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines jetliner crashed in the New York City borough of Queens during a flight to the Dominican Republic, killing 265 people. On February 19, 2003, 275 people were killed in the crash of an Iranian military plane carrying members of the Revolutionary Guards as it prepared to land at Kerman airport in Iran.

The worst single-plane disaster was in 1985 when a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed into a mountainside after losing part of its tail fin, killing 520 people.

 READ THE FOLLOWING POSTING BY JAMES MCCANNEY BEFORE READING THE NEWS BELOW:

A helicopter has recovered the first wreckage from doomed Air France Flight 447, Brazil's air force has said.

A structural support piece of the jet, about 8ft long, was pulled from the Atlantic Ocean some 340 miles north-east of the Fernando de Noronha islands, off Brazil's northern coast.

Two buoys were also found but no bodies or human remains have been spotted.

The helicopter was working off one of the navy ships which arrived overnight at one of the crash debris fields.

The air force released the information in a statement on its website.

Meanwhile, the French agency investigating the crash said automatic messages received from the plane had failed to show exactly how fast the aircraft was flying.

The Accident Investigation Agency said only two findings have been established. One is that the series of automatic messages sent from Flight 447 were "incoherent" regarding the plane's speed. The other is that the plane's route on Sunday night was spotted with stormy, unstable weather.

The agency warned against any "hasty interpretation or speculation" about the crash.

The French newspaper Le Monde had reported, without naming sources, that the Air France plane was flying at the wrong speed.

Air France Flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro for Paris on Sunday night but disappeared over the Atlantic.

Copyright © 2009 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

6-5-09

6-6-09

Flight 447 crash could join list of mysteries

(CNN) -- As the possibility decreases that investigators will learn what happened to Air France Flight 447 on Monday over the Atlantic Ocean, the chances of it entering the folklore of mystery crashes grows.

Published: June 7, 2009 SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazilian ships picked three more corpses from the water on Sunday, bringing to five the number of bodies recovered from the area where an Air France Airbus disappeared over the Atlantic a week ago.

An unspecified number of other bodies have been spotted floating in the sea and “will be picked up in the coming hours,” the Brazilian Air Force said in a statement Sunday morning.

The three bodies were picked up Sunday morning by the Brazilian navy ship Caboclo. Two others had been pulled from the sea on Saturday.

All five corpses were transferred to another ship, the frigate Constituição, which is taking them to Fernando de Noronha, an archipelago roughly 45 miles away. The bodies will arrive there Monday before being transferred to Recife, the coastal city where the search and rescue operation is being run, the statement said.

Five Brazilian ships and a French frigate are involved in the search operation, along with 12 Brazilian and two French planes.

Although weather conditions were described as “unfavorable for air missions,” the search was continuing Sunday, the statement said.

Most of the focus is on the area where the bodies were found but Brazilian air force R-99 reconnaissance planes are also flying over adjacent areas.

6-9-09

Crews Find Key Part in Air France Crash

US Team to Search for Plane's Black Boxes

By BRADLEY BROOKS

RECIFE, Brazil (June 9) - The recovery of Air France Flight 447's tail section could provide key clues as to why the airliner with 228 people on board went down in the Atlantic and where best to search for the black boxes, experts said.
 

The tail section includes the vertical stabilizer — which keeps the plane's nose from swinging back and forth — and the rudder, which generates and controls the side-to-side motion of an aircraft.

Brazilian sailors on Monday secure a large section of the tail from Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atantic Ocean far off the coast of Brazil after flying into a storm on May 31. Later in the day, crews also recovered the jet's vertical stabilizer -- a key item in finding the cause of the tragedy. All 228 people aboard died, and it's not clear yet why the plane went down.

The data and voice recorders are located in the fuselage near the tail.
 

In a video posted Monday on a Web site, Brazil's air force revealed that search crews had recovered the vertical stabilizer from the tail section of the plane. Brazilian military officials have refused to detail the large pieces of the plane they have found.

Eight more bodies also were found, bringing the total recovered to 24, Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said. The plane disappeared during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on the night of May 31 with 228 people on board.

The Air Force video, titled "Vertical Stabilizer Found," shows the piece being located and tethered to a ship. The part had Air France's blue-and-red stripes, was still its original triangular shape and was not visibly burned.

William Waldock, who teaches air crash investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, examined the photos and video of the stabilizer and rudder and said the damage he saw looks like a lateral fracture.

Eithne Walls, a 28-year-old Irish doctor, joined the ophthalmic team at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin in January. Her family said she had dreamed of being an eye doctor since childhood. Before she began her medical studies, she was a performer with Riverdance, spending a year on Broadway.

"That would reinforce the idea that the plane broke up in flight," he said. "If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces."

That there were no signs of burn marks on the stabilizer is not necessarily significant, according to Waldock, who said that any explosion or fire in the fuselage would likely not make its way back to the tail section. Examining the fracture surfaces is important, since they will indicate from what direction the force came that snapped the piece, he said.

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said recovered passenger bodies also will play a role. If investigators can determine the identity of a body and know where that person was sitting in the plane, the types of injuries sustained could offer clues into the crash, he said.

The investigation into TWA Flight 800, which crashed off the coast of Long Island, New York, in 1996, found that victims sitting in front of row 30 sustained flash burns. Goelz said that helped investigators confirm that the nose broke off and fire blew back from the fuel tank onto those passengers.

The discoveries of debris and the bodies also are helping searchers narrow their hunt for the cockpit voice and data recorders, commonly known as the "black boxes," perhaps investigators' best hope of learning what happened to the flight.

Waldock said the black boxes won't necessarily be located near where the debris was recovered, "but finding the tail narrows down the area even further."

The wreckage and the bodies were found roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, and about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from where the jet was last heard from on May 31.

Searchers must move quickly to find the recorders because acoustic beacons, or "pingers" on the boxes begin to fade 30 days after crashes.

Some high-tech help is on the way for investigators: two U.S. Navy devices capable of picking up the pingers to a depth of 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).

The listening devices are 5 feet (1.5 meters) long and weigh 70 pounds (32 kilos). One will be towed by a Brazilian ship, the other by a French vessel, slowly trawling in a grid pattern across the search area. The devices will be dropped into the ocean near the debris field by Thursday, Berges said.

An Indonesian air force plane carrying soldiers and their families crashed in a residential neighborhood in Magetan, Indonesia, May 20, killing at least 98 people. Witnesses described seeing the right wing of the C-130 Hercules plane snap off while it was in flight. "I heard at least two big explosions and saw flashes of fire inside the plane," one witness said.

Cables attached to the devices lead to on-board computers, enabling a 10-person team that accompanies each device to listen for pings and to visually see them on a screen, like a radar spotting objects in the air.

The French nuclear attack submarine Emeraude, arriving later this week, also will try to find the acoustic pings, military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said.

If the pings are located, French deep-water unmanned subs aboard the oceanographic survey ship Pourquoi Pas will attempt to retrieve the boxes from the ocean floor.

Crash theories being considered by investigators include the possibility that external speed monitors — called Pitot tubes — iced over and gave dangerously false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm.

Goelz said the faulty airspeed readings and the fact the vertical stabilizer was sheared from the jet could be related.

The Airbus A330-200 has a "rudder limiter" which constricts how much the rudder — which is attached to the vertical stabilizer — can move at high speeds. If it were to move too far while traveling fast, it could shear off and take the vertical stabilizer with it.

"If you had a wrong speed being fed to the computer by the Pitot tube, it might allow the rudder to over travel," Goelz said. "The limiter limits the travel of the rudder at high speeds and prevents it from being torn off."

Asked if the rudder or stabilizer being sheared off could have brought the jet down, Goelz said: "Absolutely. You need a rudder. And you need the (rudder) limiter on there to make sure the rudder doesn't get torn off or cause havoc with the plane's aerodynamics."

The L-shaped metal Pitot tubes jut from the wing or fuselage of a plane, and are heated to prevent icing. The pressure of air entering the tubes lets sensors measure the speed and angle of flight. An iced-over, blocked or malfunctioning Pitot tube could cause an airspeed sensor to fail, and lead the computer controlling the plane to accelerate or decelerate in a potentially dangerous fashion.

A memo sent to Air France pilots by the Alter union Monday and obtained by The Associated Press urges them to refuse to fly unless at least two of the three Pitot sensors on each planes have been replaced.

An official with the Alter union, speaking on condition of anonymity because the memo was not publicly released, said there is a "strong presumption" among its pilot members that a Pitot problem precipitated the crash. The memo says the airline should have grounded all A330 and A340 jets pending the replacement, and warns of a "real risk of loss of control" due to Pitot problems.

Air France said it began replacing the Pitot tubes on the Airbus A330 model on April 27 after an improved version became available, and will finish the work in the "coming weeks." The monitors had not yet been replaced on the plane that crashed.

The leader of another pilots' union, however, said Monday that Pitot troubles probably didn't cause the Flight 447 disaster.

In addition to the vertical stabilizer and numerous bodies, searchers have spotted two airplane seats and debris with Air France's logo, and recovered dozens of structural components from the plane.

Brazil says the search area lies southeast of the jet's last transmission — automatic messages signaling catastrophic electrical failure and loss of cabin pressure. The messages mean Flight 447 likely broke apart in turbulent weather. The location of the wreckage could mean the pilot was trying to turn around in mid-flight.

France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved in the crash.

Marco Sibaja reported from Recife and Bradley Brooks from Rio de Janeiro. AP Writers Alan Clendenning and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo; and Cecile Brisson, Angela Charlton, Emma Vandore and Greg Keller in Paris, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. 

4 PEOPLE MISSED THE DOOMED FLIGHT

By GREG KELLER

PARIS (June 5) -- A reservation mix-up, an overbooking and a Brazilian cabbie's passion for soccer are all that saved some would-be passengers on Air France flight 447 from the fate of 228 others who lost their lives in the mid-Atlantic.

The survivors say their relief is overshadowed by the immense sense of loss they feel for those who didn't make it.

"It feels miraculous and sad at the same time," said Amina Benouargha-Jaffiol, who tried to get on the flight Sunday night, even enlisting a diplomat friend to try to pressure Air France to let her and her husband on.

A French couple, Claude Jaffiol and Amina Benouargha-Jaffiol, hold the tickets they tried to change so they could get on Air France Flight 447.

"Of course, at some level we feel lucky, but we also feel an enormous sadness for all those who perished," she said.

For some it was a simple matter of arriving at Rio's airport late; for Andrej Aplinc, it was because he got there early.

The 39-year-old Slovenian sailor and father of two was spared because his cab driver was in a hurry to see a soccer match.

With time to spare at the airport, Aplinc, who was supposed to take Flight 447, learned there was no seat on the plane with enough legroom for him to stretch out his bum knee. But since he'd arrived early, he was able to board an earlier 4 p.m. Air France flight, which did have a roomy seat.

"It was such huge luck that I flew with that earlier plane," Aplinc said from his home in Radelj Ob Dravi in northeastern Slovenia.

Brazilian sailors on Monday secured a large section of the tail from Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atantic Ocean far off the coast of Brazil after flying into a storm on May 31. Later in the day, crews also recovered the jet's vertical stabilizer -- a key item in finding the cause of the tragedy. All 228 people aboard died, and it's not clear yet why the plane went down.

Gustavo Ciriaco was scheduled to be on that 4 p.m. flight. But he arrived late at the check-in and was told airline agents could not find his seat and the gate was about to close.

The 39-year-old Brazilian choreographer and dancer was on his way to Europe for two weeks of rehearsals for his next ballet, and had a connecting flight to catch in Paris.

Ciriaco pleaded to be let him on the plane, and finally the airline discovered the seating error and relented.

If the reservation mix-up hadn't been resolved, "I would have tried to take the following flight because I would have arrived in Paris with enough time to catch my connection," Ciriaco said.

The next flight? Air France 447.

"Survivors" like these often need psychological counseling, said Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, whose father was among the 170 people killed in 1989 when Libyan terrorists downed UTA Flight 772 with a suitcase bomb. He now heads an association that helps victims of airline disasters.

"They can have big psychological problems. We meet a lot of people like that," said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by French authorities to counsel relatives of the victims of Flight 447 at a crisis center at Paris' airport.

Eithne Walls, a 28-year-old Irish doctor, joined the ophthalmic team at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin in January. Her family said she had dreamed of being an eye doctor since childhood. Before she began her medical studies, she was a performer with Riverdance, spending a year on Broadway.

In the case of UTA flight 772, some of the pilots and cabin crew who had flown the French DC-10 jetliner before handing it over to the doomed crew "couldn't resume their careers," Denoix de Saint-Marc said.

"They lost their flying licenses because of big psychological problems or alcoholism," he said.

Such traumas have a name: "Survivors' syndrome," seen often in combat and other crisis situations in which those who make it feel as though they fled, deserted their buddies or were cowardly, said psychiatrist Ronan Orio.

But being saved by the ticket counter, traffic or other caprices of life should not be considered traumatic, said Orio, who has worked with victims of hostage situations, terror attacks and airline crashes.

Instead, near-miss situations should be viewed in a positive light, he said.

"People who take a plane and have a second chance win the lotto. They have the right to continue where the others died," he said.

Benouargha-Jaffiol and her husband Claude Jaffiol got a second chance last Sunday.

The couple, who live in Montpellier, France, had pulled strings to try to get on Flight 447, even drafting a family friend, a Dutch diplomat, to phone Air France and try to get them seats on the overcrowded plane.

Engineer decodes Air France Flight 447 emergency messages

I just finished listening to a podcast where an avionics engineer goes over the final messages sent by the Air France Flight 447 plane before it crashed.

The error messages sent by the plane show that multiple computer failures happened simultaneously, starting at 02:10 GMT, when a series of 14 warnings and failures emerged at once.

Addison Schonland, president of Innovation Analysis Group, and Michael Ciasullo, IAG's managing director of consulting services, led the podcast discussion. The engineer, who went only by Darryl, and his interviewers were careful not speculate.

Darryl is introduced as an engineer familiar with the the Honeywell ACARS system. His full name is not given because of the sensitivity over the crash, Schonland said. He does not work for Air France or Airbus.

He explains each ACARS message line by line. The ACARS is the aircraft's communications addressing and reporting system, which sends short pieces of data to other aircraft and satellites. When investigators talk of the "automatic messages" that give clues as to why the plane crashed, they are referring to the ACARS messages.

(You can see the ACARS for Flight 447 here. PDF.)

The cryptic lines contain chilling meaning.

First, the auto pilot system disengaged. Then came a basic auto flight message warning. Next, something within the flight control computer failed. Then, warning flags appeared on the personal flight displays of the captain and co-pilot. Then the rudder exceeds the limits of normal flight. And on it goes.

"With all of these failures, they don't have the information that they need to fly the aircraft in a safe environment," Darryl says. "If the pilot or first officer don't have any display functioning, then they're flying blind in the night. ... You're trying to fly the aircraft with no technology."

The last message received is a cryptic "213100206ADVISORY" warning at 02:14 GMT. It indicates loss of cabin pressure.

"There's so much going on, the pilots don't know what to do other than take a hold of the stick and fly the aircraft, because the airplane is not flying itself," Darryl said. "If this was happening in a clear day in the middle of the day, you'd still be in serious trouble, but at least you'd know if you were climbing or descending."

Update: 11:10 p.m.: Schonland says he's making the podcast available for free as a public service

6-10-09

Terror Names Linked To Doomed Flight AF 447

Wednesday June 10, 2009

Peter Allen, in Paris

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.

Debris from Air France flight AF 447 has been recovered from the Atlantic

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.

Flight AF 447 crashed in the mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.

While it is certain 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), the French equivalent of MI6, 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".

Agents are now trying to establish dates of birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections.

There is a possibility the name similarities are simply a "macabre coincidence", the source added, but the revelation is still being "taken very seriously".

France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan.

Security chiefs have been particularly worried about airborne suicide attacks similar to the ones on the US on September 11, 2001.

6-13-09

Bodies, debris provide vital clues about Flight 447 crash

 

By Staff Reporter
13 June 2009 @ 3:24 pm IST

Next World Article

 

Paris - The French and Brazilian governments said, Friday, they are yet to determine what caused Air France Flight 447 to crash, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1 with 228 people on board, but added that recovery of the bodies and debris from the ocean provide important clues that could help explain what happened during the final moments of the doomed flight.

 

Oxygen masks from the missing Air France flight 447 are seen at the Air Force base in Recife June 12, 2009. The French and Brazilian governments said, Friday, they are yet to determine what caused Air France Flight 447 to crash, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1 with 228 people on board, but added that recovery of the bodies and debris from the ocean provide important clues that could help explain what happened during the final mome...

 

 

 

Members of the Brazilian Air Force carry the body of a victim of the Air France Flight 447 that went missing en route from Rio to Paris at a base in Fernando de Noronha island June 9, 2009. (Reuters Photo)

 

 

 

Though crash investigators suspect that malfunctioning air speed sensors or Pitot tubes could have transmitted unreliable speed data to the main computer system of the plane, causing it to fly at wrong speed - a potentially deadly mistake in severe turbulence, as flying too quickly can damage a plane's airframe, while traveling too slowly can result in loss of lift, produce a stall and loss of control yet they are not willing to make any public announcement on the cause of the crash till the voice and data recorders, which could be thousands of feet below the ocean surface, are recovered, as they could explain how the giant aircraft fell out of the sky from an altitude of about 35,000 feet without any distress calls from pilots.

However, the investigators said the bodies, 50 found so far, and debris recovered from the ocean so far could provide important leads on the cause of the crash.

Related Story: French ship finds six more bodies of Flight 447 crash victims, search may end soon

For instance, they said the bodies recovered could provide important clues as to whether the plane broke up in mid-air or was intact when it crashed into the ocean.

Initial examination of the bodies, the investigators said, appear to suggest that a massive depressurization could have ripped the plane apart in mid-air. "Most bodies were found naked or with minimal clothing, suggesting the wind may have removed the garments. Multiple fractures on almost all the bodies also suggest that the plane encountered a violent turbulence before it crashed," a senior Brazilian military official said, on condition of anonymity, as he is not supposed to speak on the matter.

The huge distance over which the bodies were found also suggests that the plane broke up in mid-air," the official said.

According to the official, victims' lungs did not contain water "which rules out death due to drowning."

The official also said that absence of burn marks or bomb residues on the bodies also excludes the possibility of an explosion or fire in the aircraft.

Crash investigators said the debris recovered from the site of the crash also reveals clues about the plane crash. Till date, over 150 items of debris, including part of an internal wall with two flight attendants' seats attached, oxygen masks, vertical stabilizer of the tail fin, part of a wing and some personal belongings of the passengers of Flight 447, have been recovered, but not enough to help the investigators reconstruct the aircraft which would enable them to pinpoint the cause of the crash.

However, the most important piece recovered to date is the virtually intact vertical stabilizer, which could give the French Bureau of Accident Investigations (BEA), the French air safety investigation agency, which is leading the investigation, solid clues about what prompted the crash.

A BEA official said the final automated message transmitted by Flight 447 was "cabin in vertical speed," which suggests a sudden loss of cabin pressure, either the cause or the consequence of the plane breaking up in mid-air. "The wide area over which the debris was found also suggests that the plane broke up in mid-air and not as it hit the ocean," the official said.

Agrees William Waldock, who teaches air crash investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. According to Waldock, the lateral fracture on the vertical stabilizer of the tail fin of Flight 447 suggests that "the plane broke up in flight."

"If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces," Waldock said.

Examining the fracture surfaces will also be key, Waldock said, since it will indicate from what direction the force came that snapped the piece.

Absence of visible burn marks on the vertical stabilizer also suggests that the plane probably did not erupt in flames as it went down, Waldock said. However, "any explosion or fire in the fuselage would likely not make its way back to the tail section," he added.

Waldock also said the location where the vertical stabilizer was found could provide clues as to where the black boxes are.

"The data and voice recorders are located in the fuselage near the tail section of the jet. Though they may not necessarily be located near where the debris was recovered, yet finding the tail narrows down the area even further," he said.

This article is copyrighted by Ibtimes.co.in.

 

Two killed in crash of plane

The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 05/29/2009 10:23:45 PM MDT

The Boulder community is mourning the loss of one of its prominent citizens in a plane crash Friday morning.

John Austin, 64, was piloting the plane when it crashed into high-voltage power lines at 8:45 a.m. about three miles southwest of the Calf Creek Recreation Area along State Road 12, according to sheriff's spokeswoman Becki Bronson.

The plane then skidded along the road until it hit Calf Creek Bridge, she said.

Susan D. Jordan, a 67-year-old passenger in the plane, also died in the crash.

Several residents who live near the crash site, between Boulder and Escalante, had called into the Sheriff's Office to report a low-flying aircraft moments before the plane crashed, Bronson said. She said the plane "may have purposely been flying too low before it crashed."

Austin, a health care executive, also lived in Oakland, Calif., but had spent time in Boulder every year since he was 16, after his family bought a home in the town in the 1960s. He would ride, hunt, fish, hike and -- when he could -- work for local ranchers.

In 2007, when Austin learned that a longtime ranch in Boulder was in danger of being subdivided, he bought the ranch and, working with the Nature Conservancy, put it under the protection of a conservation easement. The contract bars development and ensures the property will remain a working ranch.

"The result is a permanent, protected ranch and a preservation of ranching in the valley," Austin

He said Austin had been in town since Memorial Day weekend and last Saturday participated in a community cleanup.

"He was really upbeat because he had just sold some horses," said Muse. "He was a personal friend and I'm really saddened."

Boulder resident, Mark Austin, no relation, also said John Austin was well liked by everyone and will be missed.

"Its beyond tragic and a great loss to the community," he said. "It's a sad situation. He did a lot for [Boulder]."

Mark Austin said John Austin and wife, Jacqui Smalley, had just finished a house at their ranch where they planned to retire.

He described John Austin as a superb pilot who liked to fly over the neighboring Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to sight-see.

According to her Web site, Jordan was a defense attorney with offices in Ukiah, Calif. She was well-known for her work with defending women charged with violent crimes and is credited with the creation of the battered spouse defense.

The plane, an SS-MK4 manufactured by Storch Aviation Australia, is a home-built fixed-wing single-engine aircraft built in 2000, said Mike Fergus, a spokesman with the Federal Aviation Administration.

It was recertified by the FAA in 2006, which usually indicates a title transfer, said Fergus.

The crash will be investigated by the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Salt Lake Tribune reporter Melinda Rogers contributed to this story.

mhavnes@sltrib.com

Three people were killed and two are still missing after a U.S. Navy helicopter crashed Tuesday night in the water off the San Diego coast.

Rescue crews from the Coast Guard and other agencies have recovered the bodies of three of the five people on board, and are continuing to search for the other two.

The cause of the helicopter crash is not yet known, nor are the names of the people on board.

The night before, a pilot reported seeing two small planes crash mid-air off the coast of Southern California. The Coast Guard announced today that it has suspended its search for survivors.

Rescue efforts had been focused around a 160-square-mile area off Long Beach Harbor, where the planes were spotted after taking off from Long Beach Airport.

One plane has been identified as a single-engine Cessna 172, flown by a student pilot and a flight instructor. Some debris from the wreck has been recovered and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department will continue to search for more wreckage.

Meanwhile, investigators are trying to determine the cause of a home-built plane crash in San Diego County on Saturday, which killed the two people on board.

According to Ian Gregor of the FAA, the experimental plane’s wing fell came off around 2:35 p.m. after the pilot was performing stunts mid-air.

The plane was a Bakeng Deuce, an open-cockpit, single-wing plane that can be assembled from a kit.

The pilot and passenger killed were local residents and had taken off from the nearby Ramona Airport.

By Sarika Chawla for PeterGreenberg.com.

WSFA 12 News will have more information as it becomes available.

Fulton Judge, Teen Die In Plane Crash

Fulton County Judge Sanford Jones Was Crash Victim

RENO, Nev. (AP) Five people are dead after a small plane crashed this afternoon in a pasture in northern Nevada. The sheriff of Douglas County says the twin-engine Beechcraft BE95 went down near the town of Gardnerville, about 10 minutes after taking off from Minden Tahoe Airport.

Deceased:  (names withheld by editor of this page)
Ted Scouten
E-mail LANTANA (CBS4) ―

Two people were killed after a single engine plane crashed into an unoccupied plane at Palm Beach County Airport in Lantana Wednesday morning.

"I saw him come over the top of this hangar here, probably 50 feet off the ground banking really hard," said chopper pilot Brad Coulson. "He banked it a little harder and then just dropped out of the sky."

People on the ground say they heard the engine sputter and then quit just moments after the plane lifted off. Coulson says it looks like it only gained 70 feet before the pilot tried to make a u-turn. That's when it plowed into that other plane, ripping a wing off. That sent the V 35 Bonanza spinning out of control, wedging itself under a tractor-trailer, tearing the whole thing apart.

According to officials, 68-year-old Jack Howard Henderson and 78-year-old James Donald Breazeal worked for months on the 1959 Beechcraft before taking it out on its test run Thursday. Both died in the accident.

Chopper mechanic John Evans ran to help seconds after it crashed. "I went right over and I stood right over the two guys like this trying to pull one out," said Evans. "They were already dead, I just stepped back and started crying man."

Experienced pilots say if the pilot tried turning around, that could have been the fatal mistake. If a plane is low, a sharp bank can cause it to go into a stall. "Most people would have gone straight and found another place to land where it's safe," said pilot Carl Holme. "Most likely if he would have taken off straight and landed in Lake Osburne, he would have walked away and been fine. "

No one on the ground was injured. The National Transportation Safety Board has investigators on the scene as well as the FAA. The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

CBS4.COM's John MacLauchlan contributed to this report.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

---

 

CHINO--Pilot error and fog combined to cause a twin-engine plane to crash near the Chino Airport killing the two men aboard.

That’s the cause of the November, 2007 accident issued Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Pilot Robert Lewis of Chino was using instruments to guide the plane’s take-off, but failed to maintain a positive climb rate. It made a slight turn before hitting some 25-foot-high trees. A wingtip struck the ground causing the plane to cartwheel and burst into flames.

Lewis and his passenger, Roland Barthelemy, 76, of Orange, perished
 

BY AMY SHERMAN AND JULIE KNIPE BROWN

jbrown@MiamiHerald.com
 

11 feared dead in Indonesia plane crash

Rescue teams said they would be unable to search for the wreckage until Saturday because of bad weather in the isolated Mount Gergaji area near Mimika in the Papua province.

Officials told CNN they still were getting a signal from the plane, which was reported chartered by the local government.

Carrying three election officials with documents from the April 9 legislative polls, the plane took off from Ilaga for the remote highlands on what was expected to be a half-hour flight. But, officials said air traffic control lost contact and later confirmed there had been a crash.

The Jakarta Post said those aboard included nine passengers, including two children, plus the pilot and co-pilot.

Posted By: Jason Kobely

EL DORADO HILLS, CA - Authorities confirmed one person died after a small plane crashed between two homes in an El Dorado Hills neighborhood Friday afternoon.

The small two-seater Sportsman aircraft went down at 5:11 p.m. Friday near Queen Anne Court and Crown Drive.

El Dorado County sheriff's Sgt. Phil Chovanec said the plane went down between two houses late Friday afternoon.

HOME VIDEO: See the crash's fiery wreckage; 4/17/09, 5:15 p.m.

Cal Fire confirmed one person died in the crash, although it was not immediately clear if the person who died was the pilot.

Chovanec said the plane caught fire, but there was no damage to either house and no injuries on the ground.

Home video taken by nearby resident Dirk Comstock-Ervin showed the plane's wreckage fully engulfed in flames as the first fire crews arrived on scene.

The National Transportation Safety Board was contacted and would conduct an investigation to try to determine the cause of the crash.

News10/KXTV
Copyright 2009 / All Rights Reserved

Airport officials closed down the runway for about 4 hours until the plane Becker was in could be removed. Right now investigators are still looking into what caused the plane to go down.

Crash at Caldwell, Idaho Airport

4-17-09

A plane crash today at the Caldwell airport. It happened just after 1pm when the  small plane was attempting to land. Police say the pilot was the only person on board.  He was taken to the hospital, and was treated and released. The airport runway was shut down for a while, but has since re-opened.
 

California plane crash victim identified by Medical Examiner’s Office.

San Diego, CA(JusticeNewsFlash.com)–The second body recovered from a single-engine Piper Comanche plane crash near Marine Air Station Miramar, California was identified today by the Medical Examiner’s Office. The fatal two person aviation accident which occurred Saturday morning remains under investigation by aviation accident authorities as reported by San Diego News10.

Mary Weber, 58, of Burbank died of severe traumatic injuries in the plane crash along with her husband, 51 year-old Friedrich Leo Weber, who owned the airplane. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) www.faa.gov and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) www.ntsb.gov investigators have not determined who was piloting the plane when it went down. The single-engine airplane took off from Whiteman Airpark in San Fernando Valley and was en route to Brown Field when it crashed at about 11 a.m. Saturday. The cause of the fatal aviation accident is unknown at this time.

JusticeNewsFlash.com news for California aviation accident claims.

Flight school plane crash lands at west Phoenix school field

There were no injuries and no damage at Villa de Paz Elementary School, located near Camelback Road and Loop 101. The school is about 1 mile southeast of the Glendale airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. It’s also just south of the University of Phoenix Stadium and near the new spring training homes of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox.

The FAA said the instructor reported engine trouble and was trying to return to the Glendale air field at about 9:30 a.m., but opted to land in the school’s field. A school official said the plane was damaged but the school was not impacted and remains open.

The plane is used by the Air Safety Flight Academy, a flight school based out of the Glendale airport. The company confirmed there were no injuries and that the Cessna 152 was one of its instruction plan

Posted: April 14, 2009 09:15 AM PST

Plane crash: 2 died when Chicago-area plane crashes

Pilot had taken up 2 friends and crashed with a 3rd friend

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

Plane crash dead named in England

4-10-09

By Emilie Ritter

BUTTE, Montana (Reuters) - The plane that crashed in Montana and killed all seven children and seven adults aboard had more passengers than seats, a federal official said on Monday.

National Transportation Safety Board Acting Chairman Mark Rosenker said his team is investigating whether the 10-seat plane was carrying too much weight and why it nose-dived short of the runway in mountainous Butte, Montana. The single-engine plane had no "black box" flight data recorder and the investigation could take months.

All the children were under age 10. Only one, a 1-year-old, by regulation could have been seated on an adult's lap for the flight. That left 13 people and 10 seats.

"We are going to have to try and understand how, and why, there were three additional people on board the aircraft." Rosenker told reporters.

He stopped short of saying the plane was overcrowded. Officials changed the number of passengers and seats aboard the plane as the investigation progressed.

Rosenker said three families were in the Pilatus PC-12 turboprop plane heading from California to a ski vacation near Bozeman, Montana. Bozeman and Butte are towns of about 30,000 each in the mountainous western part of the state.

The pilot, a 65-year-old man with years of flying experience, requested twice to divert to Butte from Bozeman, without giving a reason, and both times the Salt Lake City flight controller approved the change, Rosenker said.

Rosenker said the plane appeared to have enough fuel. Witnesses, including Harley Howard, described the plane flying low and suddenly diving.

"All of a sudden, the airplane tail lifted up and as it lifted, it spun around and was at a 90 degree angle to the ground, and the top of the airplane was facing us and just looked like someone took a hold of the plane and it just drove into the ground," he said. "There was a ball of fire when it crashed."

(Reporting by Emilie Ritter, writing by Peter Henderson, editing by Bill Trott)

 *****

14 People killed in plane crash
The plane was only designed for 11 people.
May 22, 2009

Was Ice a Factor in Montana Plane Crash?

By STEPHEN SPLANE, MATT HOSFORD and HUMA KHAN
March 24, 2009

Flight safety experts say icing could emerge as a contributing factor to the plane crash in Montana that left 14 people dead.

Investigators say Montana-bound plane may have been bogged down with passengers.

Conditions at the time were ideal for ice, meteorologists say, just like last month's crash of a Continental Airlines commuter plane near Buffalo, that killed 50.

The cause of Sunday's crash in Montana is still under investigation, but ice may certainly been a factor investigators have said.

"It's Buffalo all over again, or it could be," former National Transportation Safety Board official John Goglia told The Associated Press.

Unlike the Buffalo crash, there were no flight data or voice recorders on board the Pilatus PC-12, a high-end, single-engine turbo prop, that could help pinpoint a cause.

The Pilatus Sunday was overloaded officials confirmed Monday. It was carrying three more passengers than it is supposed to when it crashed.

However seven of the 14 passengers were children varying in age from 1 to 9, so weight may not have been a factor. Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the NTSB, said Monday they will be calculating the weights of the luggage, fuel and passengers.

ABC News' aviation consultant John Nance said the Pilatus PC-12 is a good, resilient aircraft but that extra people on this type of a plane creates not only a possible weight problem but a balance problem as well.

 

Related

WATCH: 14 Dead in Montana Plane Crash

fatal crash.

The plane, was flying from Oroville, Calif., Sunday morning on a 2½-hour flight to Bozeman, Mont. But instead of reaching its final destination, the plane diverted to Butte -- about 85 miles northwest of Bozeman -- where it slammed into a cemetery 500 feet short of the runway at the Bert Mooney Airport, killing all 14 people on board.

There was no emergency radio call made by the pilot, identified as Buddy Summerfield, 65, of Redlands, Calif. Summerfield was a former military flyer who had logged 2,000 hours flying the Pilatus PC-12, according to federal officials.

And it remains unclear whether an emergency situation, or just a last minute change of plans, prompted the pilot to divert to Butte.

Nance said the decision to head to Butte could very well have been made to refuel or to give passengers a bathroom break.

Witnesses who saw the plane overhead immediately knew something was terribly wrong.

"I heard the engine, and I look up to see it spinning and going into a nose dive," Kenny Gulick, who witnessed the crash, told "Good Morning America." "It was spinning. Normally, it would be at 90 degrees. It was at 180 degrees. ... The pitch of the nose tried to move up slowly, but it was too close to the ground."

 

Emergency personnel work at the scene of Wednesday's plane crash near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. The Turkish Airlines plane crashed into a field while trying to land, and it broke into three pieces. Nine people are confirmed dead in the crash.

Five killed in Iranian plane crash

From correspondents in Tehran

February 16, 2009 04:55am

A TRAINING plane crashed in central Iran overnight killing five people on board.

The crash happened when the plane was approaching an airport near the city of Isfahan during training overnight, the state news agency IRNA reported.

Its crew of a pilot and four co-pilots were all killed, the report said, without specifying whether the aircraft was military or civilian.

It said the cause of the accident was under investigation.

Most of the Iranian military's aircraft were supplied by the United States in the days of the US-backed shah and the regime has struggled to maintain them in the face of US sanctions adopted since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Horror end to dad's 'surprise'
15/02/2009 22:59  - (SA)  

Ingrid Oellermann

Pietermaritzburg - Eighty-four-year-old Harold Braatvedt who piloted dive bombers during World War II was killed at the weekend doing what he loved most - flying.

Braatvedt was the only fatality on board a Cessna 182 light aircraft which crashed in the rural Qwaximba area not far from Cato Ridge Airfield.

The plane was reportedly taking up a group of skydivers in "perfect" flying weather. It was speculated that engine failure caused the crash which is currently still under investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority.

Unbeknown to his family, Braatvedt - who had always "lived life to the fullest" and "adored" flying - had arranged to undertake a tandem parachute jump for the first time. "I think he wanted to surprise us after he had already done it. It was typical of him," his son, Gray Braatvedt of Durban said on Sunday.

Two professional skydivers - Michael Nyman and Andrew MacMillan, jumped out of the plane apparently in a bid to lighten its load - and managed to parachute to safety moments before the crash.

Nyman declined to be interviewed after the accident. He said the skydiving fraternity would issue a written statement but by late Sunday it had not been received.

A shock

A stepfather - whose nine-year-old stepson was on board - refused to leave the boy behind even though he was equipped with a parachute. "He stayed with our son and held him while the plane went down," the boy's mother told The Witness.

She requested the newspaper not to publish the names of her son or husband before the boy's biological father had been told about the accident. He was travelling and could not be reached at the weekend.

The pilot, Ernest Hulley, 33, was among the survivors in hospital along with Scott MacMillan, 25.

The injured - who all sustained serious or critical injuries -were all reportedly in a stable condition on Sunday, SAPS spokesperson, Senior Superintendent Henry Budhram confirmed.

Braatvedtís son, Gray, told The Witness that when he visited the crash site and viewed the wreckage of the aircraft he was "amazed" that anyone had survived. Though deeply saddened by the death of his father he said it was a comfort to the family that he had died doing what he loved.

Braatvedt said his father had never before spoken about doing a parachute jump and it came as a shock to him when police notified him of his father's death.

'I really want to just see him open his eyes'

"He'd just arranged to do it all on his own and none of us knew," he said.

The mother of the nine-year-old boy injured in the crash told The Witness on Sunday she has nothing but praise for the care shown by paramedics and members of the SA Police Services.

She said she was constantly at the side of her son and husband, who were recovering alongside each other in the Intensive Care Unit at Medi-Clinic hospital. Both were said to be out of danger.

The mother said her son had not yet regained consciousness, but had been taken off a ventilator. Apart from having suffered bleeding on the brain he had also broken his leg.

"They say he will be okay but I really want to just see him open his eyes," she said.

She said her husband is in deep pain from injuries including a punctured lung and rib fractures. "I am just glad they are both alive," she said.

Civil Aviation Authority spokesperson, Phindiwe Gwebu said the CAA investigation team had collected all the data they required from the crash site. The investigation into the cause of the accident is likely to take up to three months to conclude, she said.

- The Witness

Report issued on SC crash that killed NC pilot

Posted: Feb. 13, 2009

Bryan Rupp

New York state police say a 50-seat commuter plane has crashed into a home in suburban Buffalo. Fire officials say there were no survivors.

CLARENCE, N.Y. (AP) - A commuter plane crashed into a suburban Buffalo home and erupted in flames late Thursday, killing all 48 people aboard and one person on the ground, authorities said. Witnesses heard the twin turboprop aircraft sputtering before it went down in light snow and fog. Flames silhouetted the shattered home after Continental Connection Flight 3407 plummeted into it around 10:20 p.m. The 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft, operated by Colgan Air, was flying from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey to Buffalo Niagara International Airport in light snow, fog and 17 mph winds.

It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner took off from a Lexington, Ky., runway that was too short.

"The whole sky was lit up orange," Bob Dworak, who lives less than a mile from the crash site, told The Associated Press. He said that residents of the neighborhood, about 10 miles from the Buffalo airport, were used to planes rumbling overhead, but he took note Thursday night when one sounded louder than usual and made some odd noises. "We were thinking it was just another plane," he said. "It kind of made some sputtering noises but they lower the landing gear over our house a lot so the noise from the planes a lot of time will change kind of drastically as they go over." "All the sudden, there was a big bang, and the house shook," he said. He drove over to take a look, and "all we were seeing was 50-to-100-foot flames and a pile of rubble on the ground. It looked like the house just got destroyed the instant it got hit," he said.

Doug Hartmayer, a spokesman for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority that operates the airport, said it was unknown if the airport reported any trouble. "There is an extensive investigation as we speak," Hartmayer said. "There was very little or any communication before the crash." "The plane simply dropped off the radar screen," he said.

Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington said there was no indication terrorism was involved. "All indications are that this was an air-safety event," she said. Kudwa referred all other questions to the FAA.

The National Transportation Safety Board planned a 4 a.m. news conference in Clarence; Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency would join a team investigating the scene at sunrise.

 Witness Tony Tatro said he saw the plane flying low and knew it was in trouble. "It was not spiraling at all. The left wing was a little low," he told WGRZ-TV.

Before the crash, the voice of a female pilot on Flight 3407 can be heard communicating with air traffic controllers, according to a recording of the Buffalo air traffic control's radio messages shortly before the crash captured by the Web site www.liveatc.net.

Neither the controller nor the pilot exchanges any concerns that anything is out of the ordinary as the airplane is asked to fly at 2,300 feet. A minute later, the controller tries to contact the plane but hears no response. After a pause, he tries to contact the plane again. Then the controller asks the pilot of a nearby Delta Air Lines plane to see whether he can see the Continental flight. The Delta pilot says no.

About three to four minutes after that, he tells an unidentified listener to contact authorities on the ground in the Clarence area. "You need to find if anything is on the ground," the controller says. "All I can tell you is the aircraft is over the marker (landing beacon), and we're not talking to them now." Later, he tells all aircraft monitoring the same frequency: "We did have a Dash 8 over the marker that didn't make the airport. He appears to be about five miles away from the airport."

The newest member of Bombardier's Dash-8 class aircraft, the Q400 had its first flight in 1998 and entered commercial service in February 2000. Houston-based Continental Airlines issued a statement saying that preliminary information showed the plane carried 44 passengers and a crew of four.

"At this time, the full resources of Colgan Air's accident response team are being mobilized and will be devoted to cooperating with all authorities responding to the accident and to contacting family members and providing assistance to them," the statement said. Chris Kausner of Clarence, believing his sister was on the plane, rushed to a hastily established command center after calling his vacationing mother in Florida to break the news. "To tell you the truth, I heard my mother make a noise on the phone that I've never heard before. So not good, not good," he told reporters. He told The Buffalo News his sister, Ellyce, was a law student at Florida Coastal University in Jacksonville and on her way home for a visit.

Sue Bourque told the newspaper her sister, Beverly Eckert, was aboard the plane. Eckert is the widow of Sean Rooney, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Bourque said that while the family had not yet received official confirmation of her sister's fate, the reality was settling in. "We know she was on that plane," she told the newspaper, "and now she's with him."

Clarence emergency control director Dave Bissonette says the crash also killed one person on the ground. Clarence is a growing eastern suburb of Buffalo, largely residential but with rural stretches.

The crash site is a street of older, single-family homes which apparently back up to wooded area. Manassas, Va.-based Colgan Air said in a statement that airline personnel and local authorities were working to confirm the number of people on board and their identities.

Twelve homes were evacuated near the crash site, about 10 miles from the airport. The tail or part of a wing was visible through flames and thick smoke that engulfed the scene. While the fire was contained, smoke still billowed over the scene about four hours later. Houses in the neighborhood are only about 20-25 feet apart. The house that was demolished was a two-story, wood-frame house that backed up to a large open field.

"The fact that the damage is limited to the one residence is really amazing," said state police spokeswoman Rebecca Gibbons. As family members of the victims trickled in to the airport in the overnight hours, they were escorted by airport personnel to a private area. Erie County Executive Chris Collins described the crash site as "surreal," with the tail of the plane sticking out of the ground.

The aircraft, carrying 5,000 pounds of fuel, apparently exploded on impact, he said. He said it hit only one home that happened to be next to a firehouse, allowing rescuers to arrive in seconds. "The firefighters were on that scene immediately, attempting to rescue anyone who could have been rescued," Collins said. "What I've been told is that they got as close to the plane as they could. They were shouting out to see if there were any survivors on the plane. Truly a very heroic effort, but there were no survivors."

Two women believed to be residents of the neighborhood were being treated at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital for what were described as non-life-threatening injuries, hospital spokesman Michael Hughes said. They were transported by ambulance at approximately 11:35 p.m.

The crash came less than a month after a US Airways pilot guided his crippled plane to a landing in the Hudson River off Manhattan, saving the lives of all 155 people aboard. Birds had apparently disabled both its engines.

On Dec. 20, a Continental Airlines plane veered off a runway and slid into a snowy field at the Denver airport, injuring 38 people. Continental's release said relatives and friends of those on Flight 3407 who wanted to give or receive information about those on board could telephone a special family assistance number, 1-800-621-3263.

Feb. 15, 2009  (Bloomberg) -- The Continental Connection plane that crashed three days ago had its stall-protection measures engaged as it approached Buffalo’s Niagara International Airport, an investigator said.

The Bombardier Inc. Dash 8 Q400, operated under contract by Pinnacle Airlines Corp.’s Colgan Air unit for Continental Airlines Inc., was equipped with “sophisticated anti-stall equipment,” according to Steve Chealander, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The plane crashed around 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) northeast of the airport at about 10 p.m. local time on Feb. 12. The flight originated in Newark, New Jersey.

Last Updated: February 15, 2009 17:48 EST

Passengers tell of ordeal as airline crash-landed at London airport

Passengers have described the panic on board a British Airways jet when it crash landed at London City airport.

By Sean Rayment and David Harrison
Last Updated: 1:02PM GMT 15 Feb 2009

 

 

The second incident at the airport in under a week: British Airways flight from Amsterdam Photo: JEFF MOORE

Smoke filled the cabin when BA flight 8456 lost its front wheels as it landed after a flight from Amsterdam with 71 people on board.

Ray Hamblin, who was travelling to the United States via London, said: "The front wheel collapsed, the cabin filled with smoke and everyone had to vacate from the rear of the plane.

"It seemed like a late landing as though the plane had passed the point where it should have landed. There was a lot of noise.

Mr Hamblin, who was sitting in seat 3D towards the front of the aircraft, added: "People were pretty calm at first but when the plane started to fill up with smoke, people were not moving fast enough and they got pretty fractious.

"As I came off the emergency slide I hit my wrist on the runway. I think there are a couple of people with cuts and scrapes."

Another passenger, Justin Fletcher, described a "loud bang" as the plane landed, adding that "the stewards and stewardesses were quick to evacuate everyone off". A few people suffered "scrapes and cuts" as the plane hit the runway, he said.

Six ambulance crews and medical staff in cars were sent to the scene after the London Ambulance Service was alerted to the incident shortly before 7.45pm on Friday.

By the time they arrived, the passengers and five crew members on board the plane had been evacuated using the aircraft's inflatable slides, but four people were taken to hospital with minor injuries and one was kept in overnight.

The Avro RJ100 was the second airliner to be damaged on landing at the airport in the last 10 days. A similar plane crash landed on February 5 because of a bent nose wheel.

An Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) spokesman said that an inquiry had already started to find out the cause of the latest crash landing.

A British Airways spokesman said: "The nose wheel of a British Airways aircraft suffered a failure on landing at London City Airport.

"The BA 8456 from Amsterdam had 67 passengers and four crew on board. As a precaution the emergency slides were deployed and the passengers were evacuated down the slides onto the runway."

The airport was closed and 11 flights diverted to nearby airports while the situation was brought under control. Fire crews and air accident investigators were called to the scene.

A spokeswoman for the airport said it had reopened as normal on Saturday morning and that the stricken aircraft would remain in a secure area on the site until it could be repaired or removed.

The Avro RJ-100 is a medium-sized commercial aircraft with room for four crew, including two flight attendants, and between 85 and 100 passengers.

It has been manufactured by BAE Systems since 1992 and around 152 are in service around the world.

British Airways has 10, although the current CityFlyer fleet is being replaced with a mix of Embraer +170 and 190 aircraft, produced in Brazil.

 

Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash

Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash

This extraordinary escape captured the imaginations of people around the world. Two minutes after US Airways flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport, it was hit by a flock of birds. The left engine just blew,” said one passenger. “Fire, flames were coming out of it. Everyone started to say prayers.” With both engines out of commission and no power, Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed the plane in the Hudson River and all 155 people on board, including a baby, were rescued.

This film gives a minute-by-minute account of what happened, with first-hand testimonies from passengers, eyewitnesses and rescuers. It also uses a flight simulator and computer graphics to recreate the flight and show how Sullenberger executed a textbook emergency landing. According to an eyewitness on the ground: “It could not have been more controlled or smooth.”

Air traffic tapes of Hudson plane crash released CNN - Feb 5, 2009 iReport.com: Passenger's perspective moments after crash The plane's flight data recorder "revealed no anomalies or malfunctions in either engine up to the ... Video: An Emotional Reunion CBS   Recordings Of 'Miraculous' Hudson Plane Crash Released AHN Audio Released from Hudson River Plane Crash WIFR KGMB9 - Telegraph.co.uk all 2,844 news articles »

Hudson River Hero Pilot Offers First TV Story of Plane Crash EfluxMedia News, New York - Feb 9, 2009 However, on CBS’ "60 Minutes" he told Katie Couric all there was to know about the Hudson River plane crash. The talk show was broadcasted Sunday and also ... Video: Keeping Friendly Skies Safe CBS   New York honours river crash crew BBC News Pilot of downed plane says "It was a crew effort" Newsday News14.com - Telegraph.co.uk all 1,334 news articles »  LCC

One dead in KZN plane crash
14/02/2009 11:57  - (SA)  

Durban - One person died and two others were critically injured on Saturday when a plane crashed onto a slope at the Cato Ridge airfield in KwaZulu-Natal, paramedics said.

ER24 spokesperson Derrick Banks said five people, including a nine-year-old boy, had been on the plane at the time.

"One adult was declared dead at the scene. The boy and another adult were airlifted by a Netcare helicopter to St Annes hospital in a critical condition," he said.

Two others, who were initially thought to have parachuted to safety, were in fact still in the plane when it crashed.

They were taken to the Pietermaritzburg Medi Clinic with minor injuries.

Police at the scene said they suspected the cause may have been a mechanical failure but it has not been confirmed.

- SAPA

24 bodies recovered from Brazil plane crash

Feb 8, 2009

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian authorities say they have recovered the bodies of 24 people who were aboard a small plane that crashed in the Amazon jungle after an apparent engine malfunction.

Firefighter Maj. Jair Ruas Braga says the bodies were found inside the twin turboprop plane which crashed in a river about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the jungle town of Manaus.

Braga says seven children were among the dead, which also included nine women and eight men. A 9-year-old child was among four people who survived the Saturday afternoon crash.

Relatives of the survivors say an engine apparently malfunctioned just before the plane went down.

Braga said Sunday the cause of the accident was under investigation

    The Brazilian Air Force's Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) is investigating the circumstances of the accident

    Police find survivors of Brazil plane crash www.chinaview.cn 2009-02-11 08:55:18

 RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- The three occupants of a twin-engine plane that crashed in Para de Minas, Minas Gerais state, late Monday have been found alive, Brazilian authorities said Tuesday.

    On Saturday, a twin-turboprop plane crashed into in an Amazon jungle river, killing at least 24 people.

Authorities have identified two of the three people killed in a plane crash Thursday on Catalina Island.

Marshall D. Goldberg, 39, of Florida and Amy Marie Judd, 25, of Idaho, are believed to be the two passengers who died in the plane crash on a remote hilltop area on the western side of the island, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said today.

A search-and-rescue team found three burned bodies in a downed plane near Mt. Orizaba on Friday, a day after the aircraft took off in the rain from the island's Airport in the Sky bound for John Wayne Airport.

Goldberg and Judd were tourists who had been traveling together and were staying at the Ritz-Carlton resort in Dana Point, said Orange County Sheriff's Department Spokesman Jim Amormino.
 

Making sense of plane crash that killed 6 from Chicago area

American Polish Aero Club of Chicago mourns the loss of 4 members, 2 passengers

By Emily S. Achenbaum and Jeff Long | Tribune reporters

February 2, 2009

A day after the crash that killed six, wreckage of the Piper PA-34 sits twisted in the woods Saturday near the Huntington Tri-State Airport in Kenova, W.Va. Members of a Polish aviation club from Chicago were on a trip to buy another plane. (AP photo by Randy Snyder / January 31, 2009)

Dozens of members of a Chicago aviation club for Polish-Americans gathered in their meeting quarters above a storefront on Sunday to remember the four friends and two guests who died on a snowy West Virginia mountainside in a twin-engine plane crash.

Flying in heavy snow on a mission to buy a new plane for the club, the six died Friday in a crash near Huntington, W.Va., said Chester Wojnicki, president of the American Polish Aero Club, 6615 W. Irving Park Rd.

Four of the dead were pilots in the 17-year-old club, which its brochure says is the largest Polish flying club outside Poland. A 26-year-old reporter for a Chicago-based Polish radio station who was covering the trip, and her father, who was along for the ride, also died, Wojnicki said.

Amid photo albums filled with pictures of happier club outings at picnics and banquets, members sipped coffee and nibbled desserts as they spoke quietly about their friends and members of Chicago's tight-knit Polish community. Earlier, about a thousand people attended a memorial service in St. Constance Catholic Church.
 

"Too many [killed] for one time," said club member Maryla Hawekotte of Chicago, who canceled plans to take the trip at the last minute.

She said one of the victims had taught her to fly ultralight planes.

The plane crashed at 1:37 p.m. Friday in a mountainous, wooded area about 2.5 miles from the Tri-State Airport near Kenova, W.Va., National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson said.

"The weather was heavy snow at the time," Knudson said. "There were six people on board, all fatally injured."

Although West Virginia authorities had still not officially identified the victims by Sunday, the friends and family members gathered at the Aero Club confirmed the names of those aboard the Piper PA-34.

Wojnicki identified the members killed as Kazimierz Adamski of Morton Grove, Wieslaw Dobrzanski of Niles, Irenevsz Michalowski of Des Plaines and Stanislaw Matras of Chicago. Wojnicki did not know their ages.

Also aboard the plane were reporter Monika Niemiec, 26, and her father, Stanley Niemiec, Wojnicki said. Both were from Harwood Heights.

The group left from Lake in the Hills in northwest suburban McHenry County and was headed first to Charlotte, N.C., and then to Clearwater, Fla., to look at two planes for sale, Wojnicki said.

The crash happened en route to Charlotte, Wojnicki said. It remains unclear who was piloting, he added.

The group was looking to buy a plane to pull glider planes into the air, he said. The club, which has about 60 members, flies both regular planes, and in the warmer months, gliders.

Bogumil Adamski, 29, lost his uncle, Kazimierz Adamski, in the crash.

He said his uncle was born in Poland and always wanted to come to the U.S. and learn to fly. He had his pilot's license for more than 14 years, his nephew said.

"It was his dream," Bogumil Adamski said.

Beata Zajkowska said she lost her husband of two years in the crash, Irenevsz Michalowski. She says she's still awaiting official confirmation, but she knows her husband was on the plane.

"I am realistic," she said. "But I have to keep hope. I keep trying to call" his cell phone, she said through tears.

But her husband, who flew for 23 years, doesn't answer.
 

"I love him, I will miss him," she said. "He loved to fly."

Kasey Giera said she knew victim Monika Niemiec from when they lived in Poland, and she taught Monika in preschool.

They both came to the United States for better opportunities, she said, and stayed in touch as Niemiec grew up. A bright, outgoing young woman, Niemiec loved politics, Giera said, and became a reporter for the Polish radio station.

She was covering the club's trip as a news reporter, and her father came along for the adventure.

Club members said the idea was to buy the new plane on this trip and announce it as a surprise at the club's annual February banquet.

"Every day on my way to work, I heard her voice on the radio," Giera said. "I will miss her."

The American Polish Aero Club meets in office space on the second floor of a small shopping mall, where all the stores sell Polish-made goods and all signs are in Polish.

The NTSB is investigating reports that the aircraft was low on fuel and having difficulty locating the airport, which is about 13 miles west of Huntington.

But an initial review of the crash indicates that the plane had not yet run out of fuel, because both engines were still operating at the time of impact, according to spokesman Knudson.

The plane hit high tension wires, Knudson said, but it remains unclear if that caused the crash.

Rev. Ted Dzieszko, pastor of St. Constance, said about 1,000 mourners attended a memorial service for the victims Sunday afternoon. Because the victims had not yet been officially identified, their names were not used during the service, the pastor said.

"Many members of the club were here," he said. "They're devastated."

eachenbaum@tribune.com

jjlong@tribune.com

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

 

Local Pilot Paulo Emanuele Killed in SM Plane Crash

February 05, 2009

Sue Pascoe , Staff Writer

Paulo Emanuele, general manager of Airliners.net, died in a plane crash on Wednesday, January 28 at 5 p.m. as he attempted a takeoff from the Santa Monica Airport.

The Pacific Palisades resident and father of a teenage daughter was piloting a red, two-seat Marchetti F260 when he lost power and then attempted to return to the airport. According to media reports, the plane went down at the west end of the runway and burst into flames, killing Emanuele, 46, and his passenger Martin Schaedel, 23, a Swedish business development consultant for the Web company www.farecompare.com.

No one on the ground was hurt. Eyewitness reports say that the plane may have encountered engine failure before crashing nose first into the runway. Following the crash, the airport was closed for takeoffs and landings. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident.

A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was registered to Malibu-based Wingspan. The Web site that Emanuele managed, www.Airliners.net, has more than a million photographs of every type of airplane, including pictures of airplanes used by airlines that are no longer in business.

There's a dedication page on that site, with the following tribute to Emanuele: 'He will be remembered for his passion, his kindness, and his love for life. Paulo was an amazing pilot, an amazing photographer, an amazing friend, and an amazing father.'

A memorial for Emanuele was held at Corpus Christi Church on Tuesday this week.

Paulo Emanuele Of Airliners.Net Killed In Calif.

Paulo Emanuele, the new owner of Airliners.net, and another person died when his Marchetti F260 acrobatic plane lost power and crashed while attempting to return to the Santa Monica airport at about 5 p.m.

Victims of plane crash identified

 ED BALDRIDGE

ed.baldridge@newssun.com

SEBRING -- The Highlands County Sheriff Office responded to a fatal plane crash early Sunday morning at the Sebring Regional Airport.

According to Lt. Tim Lethbridge, officers were dispatched at 7:45 a.m. to investigate the crash of a single engine Remos Light Sport plane which came down during takeoff.

Witnesses reported that the plane, flown by Mike Kostelac of Virginia, left the ground, immediately turned up on its side, and hit the tarmac area at the south end of the airfield.

Kostelac was airlifted to Tampa General Hospital in critical condition, and the passenger Steven Fletcher, a citizen of the United Kingdom according to Lt. Lethbridge, was killed in the crash.

The cause of the crash is not known, and is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration, which was on the scene Sunday.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board will also be looking into the cause of the crash, Lethbridge said.

The Remos plane was part of the fifth annual U.S. Sport Aviation Expo at the airport, which hosted over 175 spaces were rented to vendors who were to open at 9 a.m., just minutes after the crash happened.

Remos' main office is located just outside of Berlin in Germany, but lists a couple of dealers from the Sarasota and Tallahassee areas.

Exhibits highlight aircraft operating under the Light Sports Aircraft rule and include fixed-wing, trikes, powered parachutes, motor-gliders and gyroplanes in addition to electronics and related products.

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