I know what happened to the Air France Flight 447

Pakistan Daily

According to Air France CEO Pierre-Henry Gourgeon the Air France AirBus flying from Rio to Paris transmitted "a succession of a dozen technical messages" indicating that "several electrical systems had broken down" which caused a "totally unprecedented situation in the plane."

Gourgeon is wrong. The events that resulted in the death of 128 people over the Atlantic were precedented. There have been several similar events.

Reuters has reported that AirBus is claiming that the Airbus A330 has a good safety record, with no fatal accidents on a commercial flight. This is a falsehood that Reuters did not bother to correct.

In Miami in 1999 pilot and co-pilot of an American Airlines Airbus A300 about to land suddenly lost control of the plane to an exogenous agency. The rudder moved several times on its own. "The rudder movements were extreme" said the NTSP.

And then, from The Sunday Herald:

AMID THE media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.

Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was travelling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio's sprawling favelas.

Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.


May they, and their fellow passengers Rest in Peace.