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The Crash of Flight 447

 

            The crash of Air France flight 447 on June 1 2009 is considered one of the worst disasters in the flight history. Flight AF 447 was a regular commercial flight with an Airbus A330-203 airliner, serving from Rio de Janeiro –Brazil to Paris –France. On board were 216 passengers and 16 crew members. In the effort to elucidate the mystery around the disappearance of flight AF447, NOVA (NOVA is the highest rated science series on television and the most watched documentary series on public television - PBS) assemble a team of independent investigators, team which was formed mainly from pilots, engineers, safety experts, weather experts. They were all trying to look for answers for this ultimate question: how could a state-of-the-art airliner with elaborate electronic safety and navigation features and a faultless safety record simply fall out of the sky? This is what this documentary tries to elucidate.
             Using the known facts and combined with new scientific analysis the team try to reconstruct the airline final moments. One of the first things they started to look at, were the air traffic control transcripts. These were not revealing anything out of ordinary: in their last radio message, at 1:35 a.m., the pilots give their position and altitude and they were exactly where they supposed to be. A minute later at 1:36 a.m., Brazil Air Traffic Control tried to reach them to confirm when the aircraft is due to be handed over to African Air Traffic Control, in Senegal, Africa. Even if it was no reply, this was no cause for alarm. Sometimes bad weather conditions could influence communications; atmospheric interference could alter high frequency radio communications. Then, at 1:48 a.m., the airplane disappears from the radar. This issue was not considered a major problem either at beginning. It is well known that because of the curvature of the earth the land radars will stop to track planes over a few hundred miles off the shore.


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