Archived material Access restricted Article
Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Tue 08/02/2005 View Mon 08/01/2005 View Sun 07/31/2005 View Sat 07/30/2005 View Fri 07/29/2005 View Thu 07/28/2005 View Wed 07/27/2005
1
2005-08-02 Home Front: WoT
Air France Airbus in flames at Toronto airport
Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 17:17|| || Front Page|| [11133 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 AirFrance/KLM flight....

http://www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven/images/vluchtschema.html
Posted by Dutchgeek 2005-08-02 17:25||   2005-08-02 17:25|| Front Page Top

#2 
From Toronto TV Station/AP
Posted by BigEd 2005-08-02 17:31||   2005-08-02 17:31|| Front Page Top

#3 Another view
Posted by BigEd 2005-08-02 17:34||   2005-08-02 17:34|| Front Page Top

#4 Eyewitness account
Posted by BigEd 2005-08-02 17:35||   2005-08-02 17:35|| Front Page Top

#5 Accident or not? Any word about the passengers?
Posted by trailing wife 2005-08-02 17:36||   2005-08-02 17:36|| Front Page Top

#6 Air France sites are down
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 17:40||   2005-08-02 17:40|| Front Page Top

#7 From Big Ed's link: Several passengers have been taken to hospital, and while casualty counts aren’t known, it’s apparent there have been some survivors. An unknown number were picked up on the Highway, fleeing the scene.

The airplane came in too high for the landing, bumped down hard, a tire burst, it slid off the runway, then came the fire, according to the article. It doesn't sound like a terror attack.
Posted by trailing wife 2005-08-02 17:40||   2005-08-02 17:40|| Front Page Top

#8 The airplane came in too high for the landing

That's what the term "Go Around" was invented for. If you are too high, just go up aand try again.
Posted by Laurence of the Rats">Laurence of the Rats  2005-08-02 17:42|| http://www.punictreachery.com/]">[http://www.punictreachery.com/]  2005-08-02 17:42|| Front Page Top

#9 There are survivors, casualties uncertain
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 17:42||   2005-08-02 17:42|| Front Page Top

#10 I was there, roughly 500m from the runway at the same time. Severe weather.

There is a report now that everyone survived.
Posted by Rafael 2005-08-02 17:44||   2005-08-02 17:44|| Front Page Top

#11 Confirmed: Passengers obviously got out before flames got too bad
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 17:46||   2005-08-02 17:46|| Front Page Top

#12 Got into airfrance.fr.

Informations aux passagers
Aucun événement à signaler sur l'ensemble du réseau Air France.
Pour plus d'informations sur nos vols, nous vous invitons à consulter notre rubrique "Actualités des Vols".

IDIOTS
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 17:50||   2005-08-02 17:50|| Front Page Top

#13 I remember thinking, there's no way they're letting anyone land in this weather. EXTREMELY heavy rain, strong gusts of wind, lightning, poor visibility, all in the immediate vicinity. I was roughly 500 metres from the start of that runway outside a shopping mall, waiting for the rain to stop.
This is definitely weather related (barring any mechanical failure). Someone should be fired for letting this plane land in such conditions.
Posted by Rafael 2005-08-02 17:54||   2005-08-02 17:54|| Front Page Top

#14 There are really enough other airports in the area, right? And you would come in with enough fuel to get there.

But information policy of Air France is non existant. airfrance.com is down, airfrance.fr has "no incidents".

But hell I wouldn't fly Air France anyway
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 17:57||   2005-08-02 17:57|| Front Page Top

#15 Just prior to the accident, the weather was bad, with rain, lightning, poor visibility and so forth, but it was not that severe to prevent landings. Just at that moment, at around 16:10 the weather turned severe with an extremely heavy downpour of rain. I haven't seen rain like this in years around here.

It may be the plane was already committed to land, and was unlucky enough to just catch this severe weather.
Posted by Rafael 2005-08-02 18:06||   2005-08-02 18:06|| Front Page Top

#16 There aren't really any big commercial airports nearby. The closest one is about one hour flight time away (Ottawa, Montreal, New York, Detroit). There's also Buffalo just across the border but it may not have a long enough runway.

There's no question that they had enough fuel to wait this out, especially given that 30 minutes later the weather was fine (looking out the window now, I see blue skies).

A case of really bad luck, I think. Maybe even a lightning strike.

/reporting from the scene for Rantburg
Posted by Rafael 2005-08-02 18:12||   2005-08-02 18:12|| Front Page Top

#17 The plane is usually configured for 252. but there were 309 passengers and crew according to this. Makes one really look forward to flying the A400, usually configured for 800, with Air France.
Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-08-02 18:18||   2005-08-02 18:18|| Front Page Top

#18 Confirmed: Passengers obviously got out before flames got too bad... Good everyone is safe...
So...

I think I know know where the confusion came from...



Posted by BigEd 2005-08-02 18:21||   2005-08-02 18:21|| Front Page Top

#19 By the way, that runway isn't very long as runways go at international airports, 9500ft, with a deep ravine at the end, which is where the plane ended up. Pearson airport will take some flak for this. I'm guessing that ravine will get filled in after this.
Posted by Rafael 2005-08-02 18:25||   2005-08-02 18:25|| Front Page Top

#20 Awesome job, Rafael.
Posted by Matt 2005-08-02 18:42||   2005-08-02 18:42|| Front Page Top

#21 Fox news show lightning bursts within 15 mins around the landing interval at the airport. It looked like a shotgun blast of bolts.
My money is on lightning hiting the plane.
Posted by 3dc 2005-08-02 19:54||   2005-08-02 19:54|| Front Page Top

#22 I heard on the news that one of the passengers said all the cabin lights went out before touching down. Don't know if that means anything or not.
Posted by Jackal">Jackal  2005-08-02 21:51|| home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]  2005-08-02 21:51|| Front Page Top

#23 It looks like the crew handled this very professionally.
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 22:03||   2005-08-02 22:03|| Front Page Top

#24 And btw, nothing at Le Monde yet. I guess they don't bother to work long hours.
The other French online papers were quite late, too.
Posted by True German Ally 2005-08-02 22:07||   2005-08-02 22:07|| Front Page Top

#25 I don't know about runway length, but the Buffalo International Airport is very small, definitely 3rd tier. A pleasure to fly in and out of, if you don't have to make connections anywhere else (except that you probably will, just to get there).
Posted by trailing wife 2005-08-02 22:12||   2005-08-02 22:12|| Front Page Top

#26 This may have nothing to do w/anything,but the EU issued a Directive that passengers on airliners that don't reach their original destination get a substantial reimbursement from the Airline. Strong incentive not to divert.
Posted by Stephen 2005-08-02 22:14||   2005-08-02 22:14|| Front Page Top

#27 If the Airbus landed between 4pm - 4:15pm, then he pretty much flew over my head, though I didn't see the plane (or anything). From where I was he would have been about 20 seconds from touchdown, maybe even less. I can't imagine anything landing in that weather.
Amazingly, another witness reported seeing other "heavies" landing on the same runway just before this one. The pilot then, would have had the information that other planes are attempting to land, before him. Based on this, he may have concluded it was ok to land (obviously the final decision rests with him). But I'm still not willing to take the air traffic controllers off the hook for this one. Someone screwed up.

Thanks, Matt.
Posted by Rafael 2005-08-02 22:42||   2005-08-02 22:42|| Front Page Top

#28 All aboard survive Toronto Airbus crash

Those people are very, very lucky.
Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-08-02 23:39||   2005-08-02 23:39|| Front Page Top

23:59 JosephMendiola
23:59 AgentProvocateur
23:54 Jackal
23:51 Bomb-a-rama
23:49 Mike
23:42 Red Lief
23:39 Bomb-a-rama
23:38 Sock Puppet 0’ Doom
23:35 JosephMendiola
23:34 JosephMendiola
23:27 AzCat
23:14 BigEd
23:11 Rafael
23:10 Ernest Brown
23:04 trailing wife
23:03 Captain America
22:48 BigEd
22:42 Rafael
22:41 Captain America
22:38 Raj
22:32 Zhang Fei
22:29 jn1
22:25 Robert Crawford
22:17 trailing wife









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com