A bomb “may very well have exploded” on the Airbus A330 an Air France pilot told the French newspaper Le Figaro. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the pilot said a general electrical breakdown, perhaps caused by lightning, was not likely.
The pilot said the aircraft has five different sources for electrical power and partial battery backup in the event of a general electrical failure. He indicated the simultaneous failure of these systems was unlikely.
“That appears difficult to me,” he said.
Bomb Could Explain System Failures
On the other hand, the pilot said a bomb explosion could explain the loss of cabin pressure and the multiple electrical failures reported by an automated system on the aircraft before all contact was lost. He said this also would explain why the pilots never sent a distress signal.
No reports have been made of a threat against Flight 447, which left Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris. However, a bomb threat was made against an Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris several days earlier.
Terrorism on Air France Not Being Ruled Out
“We cannot, by definition, exclude a terrorist attack because terrorism is the main threat for all Western democracies,” French Defense Minister Herve Morin said Tuesday.
No terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for an attack on the aircraft, Morin noted, suggesting that a bombing probably was not responsible for the catastrophe.
Numerous Internet postings by pilots support the possibility of a bomb explosion, such as those on weathergraphics.com, which offered a detailed analysis of the meteorological conditions at the time of the crash, several hundred miles off the northeast coast of Brazil.
Turbulence Theory Gains Traction
Meteorologist Tim Vasquez, a former flight route forecaster for the U.S. Air Force, concludes that “turbulence is a definite candidate as a contributing factor,” in the crash. He believes Air France Flight 447 passed through three thunderstorm clusters, the last being a large multicell convective system capable of producing strong updrafts. He thinks the jet was in this last storm at the time it sent out its last automated message.
Other experts also point to turbulence as a possible cause, especially given the length of the debris field discovered by Brazilian military pilots Tuesday.
Air France Flight 447 went down in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, an area along the Equator that is frequently struck by severe thunderstorms. Although the Airbus A330-200 is a modern jet designed to withstand extreme turbulence, it is possible that a structural flaw could cause the breakup of the aircraft in such conditions.
Dennis D. Jacobs - Dennis D. Jacobs is an award-winning journalist and avid traveler. His byline has appeared in scores of publications, including the St. ...
