Officials Demand Sao Paulo Airport Shutdown

Demand for answers, heat on absent president grow

(NEWSER) - The Airbus A320 that crashed at the Sao Paulo airport Tuesday was flying with part of its braking equipment disabled, the manufacturer said today, as pressure on the government escalated. Flying without one of the aircraft's two thrust reversers is legal, but the revelation suggests the slick, short runway probably wasn't the sole cause of Brazil's deadliest air disaster. More»

(NEWSER) - A Russian-made passenger plane traveling from Tehran to the Armenian capital of Yerevan crashed in northwest Iran today, killing all 168 people aboard, Iranian state media reports. Television footage showed the smoking wreckage of the plane, and one official said it burst into flames while still airborne. A representative from Caspian Airlines said that most of the passengers were Armenians, with a small number of Georgians also on board. More»

(AP) - Brazilian searchers found a large tail section from an Air France jet today, one of the biggest pieces yet recovered from wreckage that could help narrow the search for Flight 447's black boxes. A US Navy team is bringing in high-tech underwater listening devices to detect pings from the data and voice recorders. Brazilian and French military ships had so far recovered 16 bodies and large amounts of plane wreckage—reduced from the 17 reported yesterday. More»

(AP) - Signals sent by Air France Flight 447 before it disappeared show its autopilot was not on, the head of the French agency leading the investigation into the crash said today, though it was not clear if it had been switched off or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings. Airbus says the investigation found the flight received inconsistent readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm. More»

Pilot on separate flight may have seen fire in ocean

(NEWSER) - As French and Brazilian military aircraft continue to search the Atlantic Ocean for signs of lost Air France Flight 447, investigators are mulling a range of possible explanations—lightning, bad electronics, a pilot error, or a combination of the three. Late last night the Brazilian airline TAM said its pilots spotted "several orange points," which they suspected was fire, in the ocean along the flight's route around the time it disappeared. More»