air france flight 447 bodies pictures

[160], France requested two "towed pinger locator hydrophones" from the United States Navy to help find the aircraft. Families and friends of the victims were outraged by the decision. It's a testament to the integrity of the Airbus that it withstood the forces it was subjected to; in his book, Pilot Error Jean-Pierre Otelli makes the case that a lesser airliner would probably have been ripped to shreds. Rare footage of the search for a passenger plane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in one of the worst accidents in recent aviation history has been released on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. In a trial operation on Thursday, a remote-controlled submarine with robot arms lifted a body to the surface. [166][170][174] The search area had been drawn up by oceanographers from France, Russia, Great Britain and the United States combining data on the location of floating bodies and wreckage, and currents in the mid-Atlantic in the days immediately after the crash. [3], The BEA's final report, released at a news conference on 5 July 2012, concluded that the aircraft suffered temporary inconsistencies between the airspeed measurementslikely resulting from ice crystals obstructing the aircraft's pitot tubeswhich caused the autopilot to disconnect, after which the crew reacted incorrectly and ultimately caused the aircraft to enter an aerodynamic stall, from which it did not recover. [67] The aircraft left Brazilian Atlantic radar surveillance at 01:49 UTC,[2]:49[68] and entered a communication dead zone. of the Air France flight 447 that crashed into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009 is seen, after the mass . [293][294][295][296], On 16 September 2012, Channel 4 in the UK presented Fatal Flight 447: Chaos in the Cockpit, which showed data from the black boxes including an in-depth re-enactment. The two Americans who died in the crash were Michael Harris, 60, who worked in Rio de Janeiro as a geologist for Devon Energy, and his wife Anne Harris, 54, a physical therapist. [245] The BEA and Air France both condemned the release of this information, with Air France calling it "sensationalized and unverifiable information" that "impairs the memory of the crew and passengers who lost their lives. One of those messages suggests external speed sensors had iced over, destabilizing the plane's control systems. The first body from the wreckage of Air France Flight 447, finally located last month after two years of fruitless searches, was raised to the surface on Thursday. [41] Soon after this, Robert said to himself, "climb" four consecutive times. The search cost 31m (27m) and took almost two years, but only by recovering the black box flight data and voice recorders at the bottom of the ocean was Frances air investigation agency (BEA) able to solve the mystery of why the plane crashed. During this ascent, the aircraft attained vertical speeds well in excess of the typical rate of climb for the Airbus A330, which usually ascend at rates no greater than 2000 feet per minute (10m/s). Confirming the discovery of one large piece of the plane, Frances Transport Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said it contained 'identifiable bodies' . This is standard contingency procedure when changing altitude without direct ATC authorization. Blue seat "We confirm the recovery from the water of debris and bodies from the Air France plane," air force spokesman Jorge Amaral told reporters in the northern city of Recife on Saturday. [158][159] The Air France flight recorders were fitted with water-activated acoustic underwater locator beacons or "pingers", which should have remained active for at least 30 days, giving searchers that much time to locate the origin of the signals. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. The French government says that all of the bodies must be recovered. Because the pilots could not obtain immediate permission from air traffic controllers (ATCs) to descend to a less turbulent altitude, the mayday was to alert other aircraft in the vicinity that the flight had deviated from its allocated flight level. An initial search immediately after the crash found 50 bodies and hundreds of pieces of the plane, but went cold after that. Last night Brazil . More precisely: that after one of the three independent systems had been diagnosed as faulty and excluded from consideration, the two remaining systems disagreed. The engines always responded to commands and were developing in excess of 100 percent N1 when the flight ended. [109], Commercial air transport crews routinely encounter this type of storm in this area. [163] In late July, the search for the black boxes entered its second phase, with a French research vessel resuming the search using a towed sonar array. The Metron team used what it described as "classic" Bayesian search methods, an approach that had previously been successful in the search for the submarine USSScorpion and SSCentral America. Frank Ciacco said bodies would be severely fragmented if the jetliner hit the water intact. It was produced by Minnow Films. Copyright 2023 Flying Media. All are believed dead. In response, Bonin (without informing his colleagues) pulled his side-stick all the way back again,[41][2] and said, "We're going to crash! Hylton added that when "Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky, it was tempting to deliver a tidy narrative about the hubris of building a self-flying aircraft, Icarus falling from the sky. The 8million search is being financed jointly by Air France and Airbus, who are both at the centre of a criminal enquiry into the disaster, and face manslaughter charges. "[252], In a July 2011 article in Aviation Week, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger was quoted as saying the crash was a "seminal accident" and suggested that pilots would be able to better handle upsets of this type if they had an indication of the wing's angle of attack (AoA). Twelve years after an Air France Airbus plane crashed into the Atlantic killing 228 people, a court has ruled that the airline and manufacturer should go on trial for involuntary manslaughter. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. In an article in Vanity Fair, William Langewiesche noted that once the AoA was so extreme, the system rejected the data as invalid, and temporarily stopped the stall warnings, but "this led to a perverse reversal that lasted nearly to the impact; each time Bonin happened to lower the nose, rendering the angle of attack marginally less severe, the stall warning sounded againa negative reinforcement that may have locked him into his pattern of pitching up", which increased the angle of attack and thus aggravated the stall. But experts say the bodies have been preserved, as fragile "waxworks" by the extreme cold, darkness, water pressure and lack of fish life. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, minister for environment and transport issues, was more direct: "In the past we found the tail, pieces scattered about, but this time we have found a large part of the plane surrounded by debris, she told French radio. All 228 people who were on the plane are believed to have died. Roughly 20 seconds later, at 02:12 UTC, Bonin decreased the aircraft's pitch slightly. Thus, we hope to find the black boxes., And Air France-KLMs chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon added: This is very good news because it brings with it the hope that at last we will get some information on what caused this accident, which to this day remains unexplained.. The Remora 6000 remotely operated vehicle was designed and constructed by Phoenix International Holdings, Inc. of Largo, Maryland, United States. Robert Soulas, president of an organization of victims' families, and Col . A violent. [285][286][287] [288] On 7 December, prosecutors announced that they would not seek conviction of either company for manslaughter as they were unable to prove them guilty, and recommended acquitting both companies. It was complicated. He said if the wreckage had been on a rocky rather than sandy ocean bed we may not have found it. She said it was possible that the bodies might be identified. The nine-week trial of two aviation giants, Airbus and Air France, for involuntary manslaughter in the crash of Air France flight 447, will conclude on Thursday, thirteen and a half years after an . Air France flight 447 was a scheduled passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, France, which crashed in June 2009. [187] The French Ecology and Transportation Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet stated the bodies and wreckage would be brought to the surface and taken to France for examination and identification. [185] Other items found were engines, wing parts and the landing gear. Speaking at a news conference near Paris, French air accident investigation agency head Paul-Louis Arslanian said the debris is from all areas of the plane. "[96] The 12 warning messages with the same time code indicate that the autopilot and autothrust system had disengaged, that the traffic collision avoidance system was in fault mode, and flight mode went from "normal law" to "alternate law (ALT)". Confused, Bonin exclaimed, "I don't have control of the airplane any more now", and two seconds later, "I don't have control of the airplane at all! The weakening of the two co-pilots' task sharing, both by incomprehension of the situation at the time of autopilot disconnection and by poor management of the ". [172][173] The search covered an area of 6,300 square kilometres (2,400sqmi; 1,800sqnmi), mostly to the north and north-west of the aircraft's last known position. In the days after the crash around 50 bodies and several hundred aircraft parts were picked up out of the water. [138], By 16 June 2009, 50 bodies had been recovered from a wide area of the ocean. The bodies of the chief pilot and a male flight attendant on Air France Flight 447 are among those that have been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, the airline said Wednesday. THE DISAPPEARANCE of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 has "uncanny" similarities to the disappearance of Air France flight 447, an aviation expert has pointed out. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges. Macabre images of the underwater tomb, which includes British and Irish victims, have been grabbed by submarines equipped with robot-controlled cameras. The Brazilian Air Force Embraer R99 flew for more than 100 hours, and electronically scanned more than a million square kilometers of ocean. "[84][41][2][85][38] The last recording on the CVR was Dubois saying, "(ten) degrees pitch attitude. A picture taken on June 2, 2010 at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris shows a funerary stela in tribute to the victims of the Air France Flight 447 Rio-Paris plane crash. 1,017 Air France Flight 447 Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO All Sports Entertainment News Archival Browse 1,017 air france flight 447 stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. The doomed AF447 flight couldn't have been easy for passengers. Bodies of the victims and the wreckage of the Airbus 330 jet have been at the bottom of the mid-Atlantic, 3,900 meters (12,000 . Temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, caused autopilot disconnection and [flight control mode] reconfiguration to. Marc Dubois. This confirmed the findings of the preliminary reports and provided additional details and recommendations to improve safety. Audience Relations, CBC P.O. June 8, 2009 -- An "ocean of debris" now surrounds divers recovering wreckage and bodies from Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean, and searchers today recovered the . Old Medication, New Use: Can Prazosin Curb Drinking? The operation to recover bodies from the crash of Air France 447, which plunged into the Atlantic Ocean two years ago, has ended with 27 more sets of human remains brought to the surface, a French . The Airbus A330-200, The Airbus A330 is a modern midsize glass-cockpit and fly-by-wire aircraft, considered to be one of the safest aircraft in operation today. Add to this the fact that a plane is very difficult to control at stall speeds, so the pilot flying the plane was making big side-to-side movements of the flight controls, causing large-scale lurches to the left and right. [77] The right-side instruments were not recorded by the flight data recorder. For years, the cause of the crash - the. Answer: If your speaking in regards to the crash of #447, I think I can add some information. Vanity Fair magazine cobbling cockpit audio recordings, flight-data records and investigator interviews painted the final, frantic moments of Flight 447, which took off from Rio de. [232][233][234] Safety recommendations issued by BEA for pitot probes design, recommended, "they must be fitted with a heating system designed to prevent any malfunctioning due to icing. The crew made inappropriate control inputs that destabilized the flight path. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Nasal spray reduces risk of infection 86% - nearly DOUBLE protection given by shot in arm, 'He is NOT a threat': Mental health advocate DEFENDS 6'6" thug, 17, who had to be dragged off unconscious female teaching aide who he knocked out for confiscating his Nintendo Switch, Woke LA DA George Gascon SUSPENDS attorney who 'misgendered' transgender child molester, 27 - who started identifying as a woman after DNA linked her to cold case of man beaten to death, How Roald Dahl's family caved in to censors to keep their whizzpopping $444million gravy train on track, writes ALISON BOSHOFF, 'Roald Dahl was a bigot and he never supported me, but really?' [36], Three pilots were in the aircrew:[2]:2429, Of the 12 crew members (including aircrew and cabin crew), 11 were French and 1 was Brazilian. and But the body disintegrated in warmer water. Hylton explained that the A330 "was considered to be among the safest" of the passenger aircraft. At six minutes past midnight, one of the co-pilots made a call back to the head flight attendant, alerting her that the plane would shortly be entering an area of turbulence. [c], In addition to the routine position reports, F-GZCP's centralized maintenance system sent a series of messages via ACARS in the minutes immediately prior to its disappearance. Collect, curate and comment on your files. Photograph: Reuters, disappeared on 1 June 2009, killing all 228 people on board. Other ships sent to the site included the French research vessel Pourquoi Pas?, equipped with two minisubmarines able to descend to 6,000m (20,000ft),[126][127] since the area of the Atlantic in which the aircraft went down was thought to be as deep as 4,700m (15,400ft). This can't be true. [2]:79[4]:7[5] The accident is the deadliest in the history of Air France, as well as the deadliest aviation accident involving the Airbus A330. They are brittle and cannot stand exposure to warmth, light or movement. For the families of the 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines MH370 from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China whose disappearance on 8 March 2014 remains a mystery, there has been no such consolation. [196], On 7 May, the flight recorders, under judicial seal, were taken aboard the French Navy patrol boat La Capricieuse for transfer to the port of Cayenne. The airline did not name the crew members, but the pilot's union had previously identified the pilot as French Capt. At 02:10:34 UTC, after displaying incorrectly for half a minute, the left-side instruments recorded a sharp rise in airspeed to 223 knots (413km/h; 257mph), as did the integrated standby instrument system (ISIS) 33 seconds later. A CGI image of flight 447 in its final hours. Several French families are split down the middle. The man who co-led the search for Air France 447 which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 says if MH370 is at or near the bottom of the sea, the wreckage could be largely preserved, and still give investigators vital clues as to why the plane disappeared so far off course. I imagine some passengers might have been roused from half-slumber; others might have tightened their seatbelts, or tossed back the half-finished drink to keep it from spilling. The airliner did not break up in flight. Streamline your workflow with our best-in-class digital asset management system. [165], The third phase of the search for the recorders lasted from 2 April until 24 May 2010,[166][167][168] and was conducted by two ships, the Anne Candies and the Seabed Worker. [178][179][180] The third phase of the search ended on 24 May 2010 without any success, though the BEA says that the search 'nearly' covered the whole area drawn up by investigators. 447 200961a330-203f-gzcp21612 . [71] At 01:55 UTC, he woke up First Officer Robert and said, " he's going to take my place". Black box data showed the aircrafts speed recorders pitot tubes had frozen, setting off a catastrophic chain of events in the cockpit. The legal investigation ended in March, but a decade on there is no indication if or when there will be a trial. 12: Update on anemometric sensors", "Airlines ordered to replace speed probes linked to Air France crash", "Airbus Recommends Airlines Replace Speed Sensors", "Flight Air France 447: List of all published press releases", "Navigation Airspeed Pitot Probes Replacement", "FAA Airworthiness Directive FR Doc E9-21368", "Airbus gives new warning on speed sensors", "Airbus Document Acknowledges Pitot Problem", "Report on Air France 447 crash deepens mystery", "AF447 stalled but crew maintained nose-up attitude", "Rio-Paris: l'ombre d'une erreur de pilotage", "Air France 447 Stalled at High Altitude, Official BEA Report Confirms", "AF447 pilot: 'Damn it, we're going to crash', "Latest Report on AF447 Crash Calls for New Training and Flight Data", "Air France 447 crash report: pilots "lacked training" to deal with stall warnings", "Air France Flight 447 will all be revealed? [87][2][85], Air France's A330s are equipped with a communications system, Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which enables them to transmit data messages via VHF or satellite. They also saw the bodies of at least 50 passengers sprawled across an abyssal plain at the base of the mountains. . The French submarines would be aided by two U.S. underwater audio devices capable of picking up signals at a depth of 20,000ft (6,100m). Air France Flight 447 (AF447 or AFR447[a]) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France. At 02:10:05 UTC, the autopilot disengaged, most likely because the pitot tubes had iced up, and the aircraft transitioned from "normal law" to "alternate law 2 (ALT2)". At 02:11:40 UTC, Captain Dubois re-entered the cockpit after being summoned by Robert. Those looking out window would have watched the plane fly into a bank of clouds, then out into clear sky, and then back into clouds. The finite beacon battery life meant that, as the time since the crash elapsed, the likelihood of location diminished. F-GZCP - 1er juin 2009 2 UTC time Co-pilot in the left seat Captain Co-pilot in the right . Debris of Flight 447 was found 3800-4000 metres below the surface by the Alucia search vessel, said Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for France's air-crash investigation agency. Ferrante told the Guardian the operation had taken money, international expertise, mathematics and in the end a bit of luck. [151][200][201][202] The search ended with the remaining 74 bodies still not recovered.[203]. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. On June 1, 2009, the A330 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 people on board. [98][99] At 02:12 UTC, a warning message NAV ADR DISAGREE indicated that a disagreement existed between the three independent air data systems. The Airbus A330-203 was in a blackspot between air traffic control towers in Brazil and Senegal, but still sending automatic communication pings every 10 minutes. After attending the briefing between the two co-pilots, the captain left the cockpit to rest at 02:01:46 UTC. What the passengers would certainly have felt, and been alarmed by, were intense buffeting and turbulence. [133] However, the notion that the aircraft fragmented while airborne ultimately was refuted by investigators. [153] The submarine would use its sonar to listen for the ultrasonic signal emitted by the black boxes' "pingers",[154] covering 13sqmi (34km2; 9.8sqnmi) per day. The first body from the wreckage of Air France Flight 447, finally located last month after two years of fruitless searches, was raised to the surface on Thursday. One hour it's not enough right now. Its final position report at 02:10:34 gave the aircraft's coordinates as 259N 3035W / 2.98N 30.59W / 2.98; -30.59. 'Sacred' sick turtle of Vietnam finally rescued after month-long bid to capture him, Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Insane moment river of rocks falls onto Malibu Canyon in CA, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' [273][274], Several cases have occurred in which inaccurate airspeed information led to flight incidents on the A330 and A340. The crew failed to recognize the aircraft had stalled, and consequently did not make inputs that would have made recovering from the stall possible. A total of 153 bodies have been identified from the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, authorities said Tuesday. Der Spiegel indicated the difficulty the pilots faced in diagnosing the problem: "One alarm after another lit up the cockpit monitors. On Wednesday, Germany's Foreign Ministry said three Germans two men from Bavaria and a woman from Hamburg had also been identified. "[38] Robert responded to this by saying, "controls to the left", and took over control of the aircraft. Some systems generated failure messages only about the consequences, but never mentioned the origin of the problem. First Photos of Wreckage from Air France Flight 447 By April 13, 2011 The wreckage from AF 447 has been located. [2]:24[270][271], Shortly after the crash, Air France changed the number of the regular Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight from AF447 to AF445. [135][136] The following day, 7 June, search crews recovered the Airbus's vertical stabilizer, the first major piece of wreckage to be discovered. The report also stresses that the BEA had not had access to the. Its pitch was 16.2 nose-up, with a roll angle of 5.3 to the left. ", Both flight recorders stopped recording at 02:14:28 UTC, 3 hours and 45 minutes after takeoff. It probably didn't seem that remarkable, or even noticeable given what else was happening at the same time. The pilots had not applied the unreliable-airspeed procedure. [275], Another incident on TAM Flight 8091, from Miami to Rio de Janeiro on 21 May 2009, involving an A330-200, showed a sudden drop of outside air temperature, then loss of air data, the ADIRS, autopilot and autothrust. The airliner was likely to have struck the surface of the sea in a normal flight attitude, with a high rate of descent; No signs of any fires or explosions were found. Showing Editorial results for air france flight 447. The final BEA report points to the human-computer interface (HCI) of the Airbus as a possible factor contributing to the crash. The Airbus A330 was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it plunged into the sea on 1 June 2009, killing all 228 people on board. Ten years ago Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic with the loss of all 216 passengers and 12 crew. . One reader commented, shortly after my AF447 piece went up, that she hoped that the passengers hadn't suffered. . An Arospatiale / BAC Concorde 101 passenger plane, registered F-BTSC, was destroyed in an accident at Gonesse, France. Preliminary investigations have claimed the aircraft, which was flying through a high-altitude thunderstorm when it disappeared, may have suffered a failure of its speed sensors. A Frenchman whose daughter was a victim told Le Figaro: " I want to recall my daughter as she was, rather than receive a sack of remains or a tiny coffin. It was the biggest search for an aircraft organised by France and the whole thing was recorded, but the footage was sleeping in a safe box with the authorities on the outskirts of Paris, Kessler said. [112][113], Flight 447 was due to pass from Brazilian airspace into Senegalese airspace around 02:20 (UTC) on 1 June, and then into Cape Verdean airspace at roughly 03:45. Investigators have found bodies among the wreckage of an Air France plane discovered around 4,000 metres (2.5 miles) deep in the Atlantic Ocean, nearly two years after the airliner dropped. When search suggestions are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Nationalities shown are as stated by Air France on 1 June 2009. [221] Air France chose to equip its fleet with the Thales pitot tubes. A new mission, to recover bodies, wreckage, and to find and recover the recorders, will launch soon and will be on site around the end of the month. [227][228][229], On 12 August 2009, Airbus issued three mandatory service bulletins, requiring that all A330 and A340 aircraft be fitted with two Goodrich 0851HL pitot tubes and one Thales model C16195BA pitot (or, alternatively, three of the Goodrich pitot tubes); Thales model C16195AA pitot tubes were no longer to be used. At that time, the investigation had established only two facts - the weather near the aircraft's planned route included significant convective cells typical of the equatorial regions, and the speeds measured by the three pitot tubes differed from each other during the last few minutes of the flight.[210]. The Brazilian military said search crews scanning the Atlantic Ocean located two male bodies of passengers aboard Flight 447 which crashed midway through a trip from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. As investigators released some of the images in Paris, they said they also showed the vast majority of the Airbus A330-203 had also been discovered, including its engines. The aircraft experienced a peak vertical speed close to 7,000 feet per minute (36m/s; 130km/h),[75] which occurred as Bonin brought the rolling movements under control. [230][2]:216 This requirement was incorporated into ADs issued by the European Aviation Safety Agency on 31 August[230] and by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on 3 September. [289][290][291][292], A one-hour documentary entitled Lost: The Mystery of Flight 447 detailing an early independent hypothesis about the crash was produced by Darlow Smithson in 2010 for Nova and the BBC. Thats why we also contacted and interviewed relatives of passengers for the film.. It took two years to find the flight's wreckage and the majority of the bodies in a mountain range under the ocean (via CNN . Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan. Mike Purcell, a principal engineer at the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), whose team finally spotted the AF447 wreckage, said the discovery was a great achievement. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? By The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded sounds akin to hail or graupel on the outside of the aircraft, and ice crystals began to accumulate in the pitot tubes, which measure airspeed. The pilot-in-control pulled back on the stick, thus increasing the angle of attack and causing the aircraft to, The pilots apparently did not notice that the aircraft had reached its. As the flight neared the line of massive thunderstorms straddling the Inter Tropical Convergence, any passenger who happened to be awake would probably have felt some light turbulence. Photograph: Galaxie / ECPAD AF447 was flying through a storm over the south Atlantic when it disappeared. [147][148][149] The search teams logged the time and location of every find in a database which, by the time the search ended on 26 June, catalogued 640 items of debris from the aircraft. The investigation so far has focused on a flurry of automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact. [155], Following the end of the search for bodies, the search continued for the Airbus's "black boxes"the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). At the time of the crash, it was Air France's newest A330. ", On 20 December 2010, Airbus issued a warning to roughly 100 operators of A330, A340-200, and A340-300 aircraft regarding pitot tubes, advising pilots not to re-engage the autopilot following failure of the airspeed indicators. BERTRAND LANGLOIS. The BEA stated that no conclusions had been made, investigations were continuing, and no interim report was expected before the summer. Thanks to the cockpit voice recorder, we have a pretty good idea of what the pilots heard, and the instrument data gives us a pretty good idea of what they saw. I know from experience that in heavy turbulence, a moment comes when a particularly violent lurch seems to release the anxiety of the cabin en masse; a gasp seems to erupt from everywhere at once, and a contagion of fear takes over. Flight AF447 from Rio to Paris disappeared on 1 June 2009, killing all 228 people on board. On 1 June 2009, inconsistent airspeed indications led to the pilots inadvertently stalling the Airbus A330 serving the flight, failing to recover from it and eventually crashing into the Atlantic Ocean at 02:14 UTC, killing all 228 passengers and crew on board.