On the night from Monday 1st of June to Tuesday 2nd of June 2009, an Airbus A330-200 aircraft vanished over the Atlantic Ocean while flying from Rio de Janeiro (GIG) to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) as flight AF 447. The aircraft had taken off at 700PM local time, or 1200midnight Paris Time, and four hours into the flight the aircraft flew into a stormy area and encounted severe turbulence, all electrical systems onboard the aircraft had failed. Normally all airliners are designed to sustain severe turbulence and are tested in ability to fly near lightning strikes, but for unknown reasons the aircraft was hit by lightning even before the pilots could spot a thunerstorm on their navigation displays, so it hit the aircraft very quickly. The pilots were unable to control the aircraft since all electrial systems had failed, so did the back up electrical systems.
The Atlantic Ocean is not a radar covered area but pilots have to do position reports at regular intervals, radio contact was lost four hours after departure. Brazilian and African air traffic control centers desperately tried to contact the doomed Air France jet but were unable to. It was then obvious that chances to find survivors were slim, if not very close to zero. Over 200 passengers and 12 crew members including one captain, two copilots and nine flight attendants, were onboard the aircraft. The captain had logged a total of 11000 flight hours including close to 2000 hours on the A330/A340 aicraft. Among the passengers were mostly French and Brazilian passengers, as well as a few from other countries. There were a few children and one baby on board.
The Airbus A330 is a long haul twinjet dating from the mid 1990's, when it entered revenue service with major airlines. It was designed with FBW control sticks like its smaller predecessor the A320 was. Fly By Wire means that the flight controls are not powered by hydraulic systems like odler models were, it means that the controls respond by electrical signals following pilot input. It is a technology dating from the 1980's.
Air France operates a fleet of Airbus A330-200 aircraft on its long haul sectors. The one involved in the desaster was delivered to the company in 2005 and had logged since then a total of over 18000 flight hours, its last maintenance check took place in April 2009. Air France's last major disaster was in 2000 when a Concorde crashed shortly after take off in Paris, because of a part left on the runway by another aircraft. In 2005 an Airbus A340-300 crashed upon landing in Toronto (YYZ) in poor weather conditions. It landed and overran the runway, all the passengers and crew members survived but the aircraft burst into flames and was damaged beyond economical repair. The last disaster of an A330 was back in 1994 when an aircraft was undergoing flight testing in France, test pilots were killed, there were no passengers on board.
The Airbus A330 has maintained a good safety record since its introduction to the airlines fifteen years ago, many of them remain in service with various operators around the world.
