Air France Union Urges Crews Not to Fly Airbus

Weather alone can't explain crash: aviation analyst

(NEWSER) - Searchers spotted more wreckage today from Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean earlier this week with 228 people aboard. A team of international aircraft discovered four fields of metallic debris and a 12-mile fuel slick some 220 miles off the Brazilian coast, the Washington Post reports. Lighter plane parts may flow in currents to Africa by next week. 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»

(NEWSER) - The Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean early today after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris is believed to have crashed, Reuters reports. Mechanical malfunctions kept the aircraft's crew from keeping in touch with air-traffic controllers after they reported serious turbulence about 4 hours into the flight. "It is probably a combination of circumstances that could have led to the crash," an airline rep said. More»

(NEWSER) - Brazil's Navy and Air Force gave up their search for Air France Flight 447 victims today, citing the difficulty of finding bodies and wreckage 25 days after the crash, Reuters reports. "It's already been nine days without seeing any bodies," a Brazilian officer said. French ships will remain, seeking black boxes that may help solve the mystery of the crash. Fifty-one bodies and 600 pieces of wreckage have been recovered so far. More»

Cockpit sensors failed in same model as crashed Air France jet

(NEWSER) - Federal investigators are probing two recent incidents in which speed and altitude sensors malfunctioned on Airbus 330s, USA Today reports. The failures, one on a Northwest Airlines flight and one on Brazil's TAM Airlines, are similar to those being investigated in the crash of an Air France A330 earlier this month. More»