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.
"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.
Awful Disaster
Days after an Air France jet carrying 228 people on board disappeared, authorities said debris found in the Atlantic Ocean does not belong to the doomed flight. "Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing," said France's transportation minister. Here, loved ones pray for the missing at a mass in Rio de Janeiro Friday.
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.
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.
"My husband demanded that Air France put us on that flight," Benouargha-Jaffiol said. "But nothing doing, the flight was totally full."
She and her husband finally left the airport, returning Monday after the disaster.
"This type of tragedy should give us all a lesson in humility and humanism," she said. "No one lives forever. We often forget that."
iv been following the this on the news..it reminds me of a show i watch its called lost. they havent found the plane, they found some debris but it turned out it wasnt from the plane and the pilot who was flying another plane on the same route right behind the flight that went down said all he saw was a white flashing light. so if anyone watches lost here lol thats the same thing that happened in the show!!!!
And as for the onewho fears standing in front of His Lord and restrainsthe soul from impure evil desires and lusts, verily, Paradise will be his abode [79:40-41]
There is an amazing show on National Geographic Channel called "Air Crash Investigation". They look into lots of air crashes in history. I doubt we'll ever get a look at this crash, since it is such a mystery.
It is amazing how the smallest mistakes can bring such a plane down. In one case a maintenance engineer forgot to remove some tape from a sensor when he was cleaning the plane. The altitude sensors went haywire and the plane crashed because the pilots thought they were at thousands of feet altitude instead of the hundreds of feet it was in reality (it was night).
^ I know that program I watch it sometimes, yes it is scary how some of the reasons for the crashes are things you would deem insignificant if present elsewhere.
iv been following the this on the news..it reminds me of a show i watch its called lost. they havent found the plane, they found some debris but it turned out it wasnt from the plane and the pilot who was flying another plane on the same route right behind the flight that went down said all he saw was a white flashing light. so if anyone watches lost here lol thats the same thing that happened in the show!!!!
Wow, I watch it and with the crazy things that go on in the program I didn't think anything like it will ever happen for real.
Condolences to all the families who lost a loved one.
this reminds me of the film final destination - they just missed death
peace
Do you think the pious don't sin?
They merely:
Veiled themselves and didn't flaunt it
Sought forgiveness and didn't persist
Took ownership of it and don't justify it
And acted with excellence after they had erred - Ibn al-Qayyim
(June 6) — Searchers found two bodies and a briefcase containing a ticket for Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean close to where the jetliner is believed to have crashed, a Brazil military official said Saturday.
The French agency investigating the disaster, meanwhile, said airspeed instruments on the plane were not replaced as the maker recommended before it disappeared in turbulent weather nearly a week ago. Skip over this content'An Awful Tragedy'
Eraldo Peres, AP
13 photos
Brazilian authorities said they found two bodies and a briefcase containing a ticket for Air France Flight 447 Saturday near where the plane disappeared. Meanwhile, French officials said the jet's airspeed instruments were not replaced, as recommended by the plane's maker. Here, a Brazilian air force plane helps search for the missing aircraft.
The French accident investigation agency, BEA, found the plane received inconsistent airspeed readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm on its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard.
Airbus had recommended that all its airline customers replace speed-measuring instruments known as Pitot tubes on the A330, the model used for Flight 447, said Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the agency.
"They hadn't yet been replaced" on the plane that crashed, said Alain Bouillard, head of the French investigation. Air France declined immediate comment.
Arslanian of the BEA cautioned that it is too early to draw conclusions about the role of Pitot tubes in the crash, saying that "it does not mean that without replacing the Pitots that the A330 was dangerous." Skip over this content .art_toolbar {border:0.333em solid #EEEEEE; padding:8px;} .art_toolbar_logo {float:left;padding-right: 3px;} .art_toolbar_hdr {font-size:15px; font-weight:bold;border-bottom: solid 2px #EEEEEE; padding-bottom: 3px; margin-bottom: 6px;}
He told a news conference at the agency's headquarters near Paris that the crash of Flight 447 does not mean similar planes are unsafe, adding that he told family members not to worry about flying.
Airbus had made the recommendation for "a number of reasons," he said.
The two male bodies were recovered Saturday morning about 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of where Air France Flight 447 emitted its last signals — roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.
Brazilian air force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said an Air France ticket was found inside a leather briefcase.
"It was confirmed with Air France that the ticket number corresponds to a passenger on the flight," he said.
Admiral Edison Lawrence said the bodies were being transported to the Fernando de Noronha islands for identification. A backpack with a vaccination card also was recovered. Skip over this contentPassenger Profiles
Riverdance / PA / AP
15 photos
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.
The finds could potentially establish a more precise search area for the crucial black box flight recorders that could tell investigators why the jet crashed, although Brazilian authorities refused to comment on implications for the search.
Investigators have been searching a zone of several hundred square miles (square kilometers) for debris. A blue plane seat with a serial number on it has been recovered — but officials were still trying to confirm with Air France that it was a seat belonging to Flight 477.
The investigation is increasingly focused on whether external instruments may have iced over, confusing speed sensors and leading computers to set the plane's speed too fast or slow — a potentially deadly mistake in severe turbulence.
Pitot tubes, protruding from the wing or fuselage of a plane, feed airspeed sensors and are heated to prevent icing. A blocked or malfunctioning Pitot tube could cause an airspeed sensor to malfunction and cause the computer controlling the plane to accelerate or decelerate in a potentially dangerous way.
Air France has already replaced the Pitots on another Airbus model, the 320, after its pilots reported similar problems with the instrument, according to an Air France air safety report filed by pilots in January and obtained by The Associated Press.
The report followed an incident in which an Air France flight from Tokyo to Paris reported problems with its airspeed indicators similar to those believed to have been encountered by Flight 447. In that case, the Pitot tubes were found to have been blocked by ice.
"Following similar problems frequently encountered on the A320 fleet, preventative actions have already been decided and applied," the safety report says. The Pitots on all Air France's A320s were retrofitted with new Pitots "less susceptible to these weather conditions."
The same report says Air France decided to increase the inspection frequency for its A330 and A340 jets' Pitot tubes, but that it had been waiting for a recommendation from Airbus before installing new Pitots.
As they try to locate the wreckage, investigators are relying on 24 messages the plane sent automatically during the last minutes of the flight.
The signals show the plane's autopilot was not on, officials said, but it was not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings.
The flight disappeared nearly four hours after takeoff, killing all on board. It was Air France's deadliest plane crash and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001.
The head of France's weather forecasting agency, Alain Ratier, said weather conditions at the time of the flight were not exceptional for the time of the year and region, which is known for violent stormy weather. Skip over this contentRecent Air Accidents
Mark Randall, South Florida Sun-Sentinel / MCT
33 photos
A small plane slammed into a home after taking off from the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in Florida on April 17. The pilot had reported a problem and was on his way back to the airport when he crashed. The accident killed the 80-year-old pilot and destroyed the house, but no one on the ground was hurt.
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On Thursday, European plane maker Airbus sent an advisory to all operators of the A330 reminding them of how to handle the plane in conditions similar to those experienced by Flight 447.
Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that advisory and the Air France memo about replacing flight-speed instruments "certainly raises questions about whether the Pitot tubes, which are critical to the pilot's understanding of what's going on, were operating effectively."
Arslanian said it is vital to locate a small beacon called a "pinger" that should be attached to the cockpit voice and data recorders, now presumed to be deep in the Atlantic.
"We have no guarantee that the pinger is attached to the recorders," he said.
Holding up a pinger in the palm of his hand, he said: "This is what we are looking for in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."
Currents could have scattered debris far along the ocean floor, he said.
President Barack Obama said at a news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy Saturday that the United States had authorized all of the U.S. government's resources to help investigate the crash.
BEA head Arslanian said U.S. forces have lent the agency acoustic systems that will be fitted to two naval vessels. France's Emeraude submarine and other high-tech equipment from French marine research institute Ifremer are also being sent to the region.
The submarine, to arrive next week, will try to detect signals from the black boxes, said military spokesman Christophe Prazuck. Marco Sibja reported from Recife and Emma Vandore from Paris. AP Writers Patrick McGroarty in Berlin, Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
There is an amazing show on National Geographic Channel called "Air Crash Investigation". They look into lots of air crashes in history. I doubt we'll ever get a look at this crash, since it is such a mystery.
It is amazing how the smallest mistakes can bring such a plane down. In one case a maintenance engineer forgot to remove some tape from a sensor when he was cleaning the plane. The altitude sensors went haywire and the plane crashed because the pilots thought they were at thousands of feet altitude instead of the hundreds of feet it was in reality (it was night).
i watch that show too, i was hooked on it for a while, i watched a whole series of it a week before i had to fly, and also on the same day i was flying, it made me feel safer actually. the show could provide some clues as this crash looks quite similar to the few investigations that have been done. if you remember the air swiss crash, all systems fell apart as well, and the plane just fell from the sky, perhaps an internal fire happened to air france just like air swiss, that took everything down, and maybe caused a small explosion which is why another plane saw a bright flash.
also it was a small spiders web that caused the crash your talking about.
maybe he flies as a passenger the steward guy, or the guy that shaves everybody.. nonetheless it is indeed prudent to carry ammo, unless of course it catches on fire midair ey?
this is precisely way I always sedate myself when flying..
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
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.
Yes it truly is a big disaster for the air industry..
That air investigation show is pretty nice, i am related to aviation so i used to love watching it, its been quite a while though .
I wonder what could have went wrong , the pilots did not even get a chance to send a mayday call, not even a word?! and like its said when a plane crashes its usually a sequence of events , but this is just strange , i have been following it and cant figure how come it just vanished n all they got was some messages transmitted to the air france computers telling them the multiple failures through out the plane.
I am a flight dispatcher n we plan the flight , like which route n which altitude will th eplane fly, n weather is the first thing that we look at , weather at home , en-route n on destination n if its unfavorable flights get delayed n even cancelled ! n we are supposed to follow the fligh n the weather on its route n advise the captain n let them know whats going onaround them n what they might end up in, Wonder who made the flight plans n who was following this flight coz the details i have so far show that emergency was not declared immediately , and its the dispatcher who has to declare emergency when he cannot contact the flight. Oh well InshahAllah we will see what went wrong n where were the dispatchers/flight followers n if they did their job properly.
And at the end it was decreed, Qadar Allah wa maa Shaa'a Fa'al.
Did u guys hear , teh couple saved had an accident and the lady died just days after they "escaped" death by missing the flight.
SubhanAllah
Verily, Allâh! With Him (Alone) is the knowledge of the Hour, He sends down the rain, and knows that which is in the wombs. No person knows what he will earn tomorrow, and no person knows in what land he will die. Verily, Allâh is All*Knower, All*Aware (of things
^Now that definitely sounds like "Final Destination"!
subhanAllah
And as for the onewho fears standing in front of His Lord and restrainsthe soul from impure evil desires and lusts, verily, Paradise will be his abode [79:40-41]
SAO PAULO (June 16) - Autopsies have revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, injuries that — coupled with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic — strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air, experts said Wednesday.
With more than 400 bits of debris recovered from the ocean's surface, the top French investigator expressed optimism about discovering what brought down Flight 447, but he also called the conditions — far from land in very deep waters — "one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation."
French investigators are beginning to form "an image that is progressively less fuzzy," Paul-Louis Arslanian, who runs the French air accident investigation agency BEA, told a news conference outside Paris.
"We are in a situation that is a bit more favorable than the first days," Arslanian said. "We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism. ... (but) it is premature for the time being to say what happened."
A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press on Wednesday that fractures were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.
"Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures — arm, leg, hip fractures — it's a good indicator of a midflight break up," said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. "Especially if you're seeing large pieces of aircraft as well."
The pattern of fractures was first reported Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, which cited unnamed investigators. The paper also reported that some victims were found with little or no clothing, and had no signs of burns.
That lack of clothing could be significant, said Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, D.C., who is a former accident investigator. "In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away."
Casey also said multiple fractures are consistent with a midair breakup of the plane, which was cruising at about 34,500 feet when it went down.
"Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall — even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect," Casey said. "Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess."
When a jet crashes into water mostly intact — such as the Egypt Air plane that hit the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from New York in 1999 — debris and bodies are generally broken into small pieces, Ciacco said. "When you've had impact in the water, there is a lot more fragmentation of the bodies. They hit the water with a higher force."
Lack of burn evidence would not necessarily rule out an explosion, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
If something caused the lower fuselage to burn or explode, "passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage" and the plane would still disintegrate in flight," Goglia said. "These are scenarios that cannot be ruled out."
Searchers from Brazil, France, the United States and other countries are methodically scanning the surface and depths of the Atlantic for signs of the Airbus A330 that crashed May 31 after running into thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 people aboard were killed.
Brazilian Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said in a news conference Wednesday that several body parts, as well as pieces of the plane and luggage were found in the search area by the French amphibian ship, Mistral.
Munhoz did not provide further details, and Brazilian Capt. Giucemar Tabosa Cardoso said "a significant" number of body parts had been retrieved from the ocean.
Still missing are the plane's flight data and voice recorders, thought to be deep under water.
French-chartered ships are trolling a search area with a radius of 50 miles (80 kilometers), pulling U.S. Navy underwater listening devices attached to 19,700 feet (6,000 meters) of cable. The black boxes send out an electronic tapping sound that can be heard up to 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) away, but these locator beacons will begin to fade after just two more weeks.
U.S. Air Force Col. Willie Berges, commander of the American military forces supporting the search, said the black boxes emit beacons at a unique frequency, virtually guaranteeing that any signal detected would be from the pingers.
"The question becomes if the black box is with the pinger, because they can get separated," Berges said. "If a signal is located, the French would then send down a robotic vehicle that is in the area to look at it, confirm that it is the black box and bring it up."
Without the black boxes to help explain what went wrong, the investigation has focused on a flurry of automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact; one suggests external speed sensors had iced over, destabilizing the plane's control systems.
Arslanian said most of the messages appear to be "linked to this loss of validity of speed information." He said when the speed information became "incoherent" it affected other systems on the plane that relied on that speed data. But he stressed that not all the automated messages were related to the speed sensors.
The automated messages were not alarm calls and no distress call was picked up from the plane, he said.
Air France has replaced the sensors, called Pitot tubes, on all its A330 and A340 aircraft, under pressure from pilots who feared a link to the accident.
Arslanian said a French doctor from the BEA was not allowed to participate in autopsies done so far on some Flight 447 bodies by Brazilian authorities, and those autopsy results have not been released to the BEA. He said he was "not happy" with this situation.
However, he added that French judicial authorities, who are conducting a parallel criminal probe, were present at the autopsies.
Brazil's Federal Police and state medical authorities in Recife who are overseeing the autopsies said in a statement that two French investigators, a dental expert and a doctor, had been following the examinations as observers since June 10.
The French are leading the crash investigation, while the Brazilians are leading the rescue operation. Vandore reported from Le Bourget, France. Associated Press writers Greg Keller in Le Bourget and Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro also contributed to this report.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
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. the show could provide some clues as this crash looks quite similar to the few investigations that have been done. if you remember the air swiss crash, all systems fell apart as well, and the plane just fell from the sky, perhaps an internal fire happened to air france just like air swiss, that took everything down, and maybe caused a small explosion which is why another plane saw a bright flash.
I think I'll take a parachute!
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