On Air France Flight AF447, was Terrorism Involved?

Debris found floating in the Atlantic north of the Brazil may be part of what remains of missing Air France Flight AF447, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean early Monday morning. According to Agence France-Presse, Brazilian officials reported that air force aircraft spotted what looked like debris from a plane but could not confirm with certainty.

A Brazilian air force spokesman said that an aircraft seat was seen in the debris. However, something from the debris must be retrieved and matched with the missing Airbus A330 to get a positive identification.

Air France Flight AF447 left Rio de Janeiro at 6 p.m. Sunday evening on an 11-hour flight to Paris, France. About four hours into their journey, pilots radioed that they were experiencing turbulence. Fifteen minutes later, an automatic signal was received from the plane that it was experiencing electrical problems.

No distress signal was received.

Airline and government officials are still reluctant to say that the Air France flight is missing due to a crash. They have yet to rule out even terrorism. French Defense Minister Herve Morin stated on Europe 1 radio, "We can't rule out a terrorist act since terrorism is the main threat to Western democracies, but at this time we don't have any element whatsoever indicating that such an act could have caused this accident."

The official stance is partially due to a report from a Brazilian airline TAM that "bright spots" had been seen on the ocean's surface, perhaps from burning wreckage. And if the "black boxes," the onboard recording devices that track and store electronic data regarding the operations of an aircraft, are never recovered, then the answer to the puzzling disappearance might never be found.

Flight AF447 was carrying 228 people when it vanished without a trace.

If the plane is not found or recovered and no survivors are located, Flight AF 447 will become the worst disaster in Air France's 75-year history.

The worst Air France aircraft accident previous to AF447 occurred in 2000, according to Allexperts.com, when the fuel tank of AF4590, a supersonic Concorde, caught fire, causing the plane to not get enough lift and subsequently crash. There were 100 passengers and nine crewmen killed. Four people on the ground were also killed.

According to the Associated Press, the worst single-plane disaster ever recorded occurred on August 12, 1985. A Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 lost part of its tail fin and crashed into a mountainside. There were 520 passengers and crew aboard.

The worst airline disaster in history occurred on March 27, 1977, when a KLM 474 and a Pan American 747 collided on runway in Tenerife, Canary Islands. There were 583 killed.

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Sources:

World Almanac

Associated Press

Allexperts.com