FRANCE’S AIR crash investigation agency has said the forced descent of an Air France jet in storms over the Atlantic last month may help explain why a plane travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed near the same spot in June.
Some 228 passengers and crew, including three Irish women, lost their lives when flight AF447 plunged into the Atlantic some 1,000km off the Brazilian coast on June 1st.
In the November 29th incident, the same type of aircraft – an Air France Airbus A330 – travelling the same route, met severe turbulence and descended into calmer weather before completing the trip. Reports suggest the aircraft, which was carrying 203 passengers and 12 crew members, encountered “severe turbulence” roughly four hours into the flight and the pilots sought permission from air traffic controllers to descend.
In the absence of a response, the pilots sent out an emergency “mayday” message via radio that they were changing altitude, a communication picked up by another Air France flight nearby.
French daily Le Figaroreported that the distress call was made when the plane was just 10 nautical miles from the area where the ill-fated jet went down months earlier.
“The incident could shed some light because of its similarities in terms of location and weather conditions,” Martine del Bono, a spokeswoman for the BEA, France’s air-crash agency, said. The investigation will also look at why air traffic controllers did not respond to the mayday signal.
Its findings will not be available by December 17th, however, when the office will present its latest update on the loss of Air France Flight 447 on June 1st.
Five months after the worst disaster in Air France’s 75-year history, the circumstances remain unclear. Some aircraft wreckage and 51 bodies were recovered, but an intensive search failed to locate the black boxes . Speculation has focused on the aircraft’s speed sensors after error messages suggested inconsistent data readings, but the BEA has said it is too early to tell if the so-called “Pitot probes” were to blame.
In a report in August, the agency said it hadn’t ascertained the cause and the inquiry may last a further 18 months.
Among the victims were three Irish women – Dr Jane Deasy (27) from Rathgar in Dublin; Dr Aisling Butler (26) of Roscrea, Co Tipperary; and Dr Eithne Walls (28) from Ballygowan, Co Down.