Continue reading »]]> Air France Flight 447 sent out 24 automated error messages — including one saying the aircraft’s autopilot had disengaged — before it vanished with 228 people on board, aviation investigators said Saturday.

But even as they analyzed the error messages and satellite images of the doomed flight’s path, investigators said they still have a lot of work to determine what caused the plane to go down.

“I would just like to ask you to bear in mind that all of this is dynamic and there are a lot of question marks,” Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France’s accident investigation bureau told reporters.

“We don’t know how the aircraft entered the water. We don’t know how these pieces of debris entered into the water and that you have to take into account the current … and the shape of the ocean floor.”

The error messages suggest that the plane may have been flying too fast or too slow through the stormy weather it encountered before the crash, officials said.

In addition, investigators have said the plane’s autopilot disengaged, cabin pressure was lost and there was an electrical failure before the disaster.

The jet’s manufacturer, Airbus, sent a Telex to operators of Airbus models reminding them of what to do when speed indicators give conflicting readings.

The spokesman said the notice does not mean there is any major flaw in the aircraft, but is simply a reminder to pilots of what to do in the cockpit if they get conflicting information about air speed.

All 228 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus 330 are presumed to have died when the plane disappeared northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil.

The flight originated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was en route to Paris, France.

Search teams were still trying to find debris from the jet Saturday, two days after a Brazilian Air Force official said debris plucked from the ocean was not from the Air France jet.

Official: Missing plane sent 24 error messages

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HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant are understood to have both been severely damaged in the underwater accident earlier this month.

Both are fitted with state-of-the-art technology aimed at detecting other submarines, but it apparently failed completely.

Although both France and Britain insist that security was not compromised during the collision and there was no danger of a nuclear incident, inquiries are now under way in both countries.

Each boat is a key part of their respective county’s nuclear deterrent, ready to unleash their destructive weapons at a moment’s notice.

French Navy sources confirm that Le Triomphant, one of four strategic nuclear submarines of the so-called “Force de Frappe”, was returning from a 70 day tour of duty when the incident occurred.

It happened in heavy seas, and in the middle of the night between February 3 and 4, and left Le Triomphant’s sonar dome all but destroyed.

The sonar dome should have detected the Vanguard but Le Triomphant’s crew of 101 claimed to have “neither saw nor heard anything”.

The French tried to play down the collision, with a Navy spokesman saying: “The collision did not result in injuries among the crew and did not jeopardise nuclear security at any moment.”

The Ministry of Defence would not even confirm it had taken place. A spokesman said: “It is MoD policy not to comment on submarine operational matters, but we can confirm that the UK’s deterrent capability has remained unaffected at all times and there has been no compromise to nuclear safety.”

Le Triomphant took at least three days to limp back to her home port, while HMS Vanguard returned to her home base in Faslane, in Scotland.

With a complement of 135 crew, she is the lead boat of the Vanguard class of submarines which carry Trident ballistic missiles around the world.

Le Triomphant is also the lead ship in her own class of Triomphant nuclear submarines.

Each carries 16 M45 ballistic missiles, weighs 35 tons each, carries six warheads and has a range of around 5,000 miles.

France’s Atlantic coast is notorious for being a “submarine graveyard” because of the number of underwater craft, mainly German U-boats, sunk in the area during the Second World War.

British and French nuclear submarines collide in Atlantic

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Continue reading »]]> MADRID: At least 10 people, including four children, were killed as high winds struck Spain and France on Saturday, tearing roofs from buildings, blowing down trees and power lines and whipping up huge waves.

The Spanish authorities said the four children were killed and several others injured near Barcelona on Saturday when the roof of a sports center collapsed in high winds. A spokeswoman for the Catalan government said the children had been sheltering from the wind in the sports hall in Sant Boi de Llobregat, just south of Barcelona, when the roof and some of the walls collapsed.

Jaume Bosch, mayor of Sant Boi, said the children were 9 to 12 years old, according to the Web site of La Vanguardia, a Barcelona-based newspaper. The spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity under government rules, said seven other children and two adults were injured, one of them seriously. Emergency services had pulled everyone free of the rubble of the building by midafternoon, she said.

Photographs of the collapsed building on the Web site of La Vanguardia showed a large, corrugated iron roof caved in over a pile of concrete rubble. Witnesses said about 30 children had been preparing to play baseball and decided to take shelter inside the building.

José Antonio Godina, a parent of one of the children in the sports center who was quoted by the Web site of El Mundo newspaper, said the scene was “horrific.”

“We heard a very loud noise and we thought it was a tree falling on a roof,” he said. “But when we got there, the roof of the building had literally flown off and the walls had collapsed on them.”

The newspaper did not say whether Godina’s child was among the injured.

In northern Spain and southern France, the gales, which reached 160 kilometers an hour, or 100 miles an hour, cut power supplies and closed airports and roads.

The authorities on both sides of the border called on people to stay indoors and stay clear of beaches and harbors as eight-meter waves pounded the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts.

The local authorities in the Landes region of France said one person was killed and one seriously injured when a tree fell on a car, according to Reuters. In Spain, the police said three other people had been killed in Catalonia, one by a falling wall and two by falling trees. Two men, including one police officer, were killed in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia, the police said.

In France, the national power grid manager, Électricité Réseau Distribution France, said nearly 1.2 million homes were cut off. Fecsa, the electricity grid manager in Catalonia, said tens of thousands of people in the northeastern region of four million inhabitants were without power.

The French agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, said the storm was “the worst since 1999,” when a huge storm killed 88 people in France and left nearly four million people without electricity, according to Reuters. He said France would call on the European Union to help finance reconstruction efforts once the extent of the damage becomes clear.

The French interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said she had ordered that 700 extra security forces be sent to the region to help with rescue efforts and that extra equipment also be sent to help clear roads and electric lines.

High winds kill 10 in Spain and France – International Herald Tribune

Continue reading »]]> EIGHTY thousand homes were without electricity this morning and two people have died after bad weather hit across France.

Heavy snowfall continues to affect the Massif Central and severe downpours have hit the south east.

Four departments will remain under orange alert by Météo France until 16.00 today – the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the Hautes-Alpes, the Alpes-Maritimes and the Savoie, with warnings of snow, black ice and avalanches.

The alert has however been lifted for the Auvergne region and the departments of the Ardèche, the Loire, the Lozère and the Var.

Evacuations have taken place in the Vaucluse in the towns of Apt, Bédarrides, Piolenc and Cavaillon due to flooding.

Around 80,000 homes are still without electricity in the Massif Central after heavy snowfall. Power was restored Sunday evening to around 13,000 of 25,000 homes affected in Aveyron.

Around 10,000 residents in Marvejols in Lozère look set to be without electricity throughout the day. A special telephone line has been set up on 0811 000 648.

Traffic has been affected by the bad weather. Heavy lorries and coaches are still banned in both directions on the A89, the Clermont/Brive route, the A71, the Paris/Clermont, route between Montmarault and Clermont-Ferrand, and on the A75, the Clermont/Montpellier route, between Lempdes and Lodève.

Many smaller roads have been closed in the Vaucluse, the Var and the Alpes de Haute-Provence, as well as several sections of the seafront roads in the Alpes-Maritimes, between Antibes and Villeneuve-Loubet, Cagnes-sur-Mer and Saint-Laurent-du-Var and between Roquebrune and the Italian border via Menton.

Trains have been delayed in the south due to torrential rain and strong winds. Around 15 trains were yesterday delayed between two and five hours in the Var, the Bouches-du-Rhône and the Alpes Maritimes.

Four TGVs heading for Metz, Paris, Lille and Brussels were hit by delays of between three and five hours due to a fallen tree.

A 50-year-old motorist died yesterday afternoon after losing control of his car in the bad conditions, which careered into the Loire at Lavoûte-sur-Loire, in the Haute-Loire. A 58-year-old Swiss snow-shoe hiker died in an avalanche in the Jura and his wife has been seriously injured.

The Connexion

Continue reading »]]> French search divers have recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the Airbus plane that crashed in the Mediterranean killing all seven people on board.

The black box was to be dried out in Paris before data was retrieved, said Air New Zealand’s Ed Sims.

Four of the airline’s staff, one aviation official and two German pilots were on the plane. Only two bodies have been found off the Perpignan coast.

More than 40 divers have been searching the sea for bodies and wreckage.

Mr Sims said the recorder appeared to be in a good condition.

“This marks a significant step in the process of understanding what caused this tragic accident.

“French authorities continue to put every effort into the recovery operation.”

Family visit

They will continue to search for the flight data recorder, he added.

Airline officials and family members have travelled to France, as well as representatives from the airline’s investigation unit, the New Zealand police, and New Zealand’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission.

The plane, built in 2005, was leased by Germany’s XL Airways from Air New Zealand, and was undergoing checks after a refit before being handed back to Air New Zealand.

AFP news agency said some of the debris had drifted towards the Spanish coastline, about 20 miles (30km) from the crash site.

Airbus said the plane had been built in 2005 and had accumulated about 7,000 hours of flying time.

The A320 is a single-aisle aircraft that can seat about 150 passengers and is one of the most popular Airbus jets in use.

BBC NEWS

Continue reading »]]> MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) — A jet carrying 88 people crashed early Sunday morning in western Russia, killing everyone on board, an airline spokesman said.

Twenty-one foreigners were on the flight, including passport-holders from Azerbaijan, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and Ukraine, said Lev Koshlyakov, spokesman for flight operator Aeroflot Nord.

Authorities are trying to confirm the presence of an American on board, Koshlyakov said.

The person was listed as an American in the passenger list, but has a Russian last name, he said. Authorities intend to check with the U.S. embassy for a final determination.

The Boeing 737 was en route to Perm from Moscow when the pilots lost communication with air traffic control just before landing about 3:10 a.m. (2110 GMT), Koshlyakov said. He described the weather at the time as “mediocre.”

Eighty-two passengers — including seven children — were on board, in addition to six crew members.

“It slammed in front of my house and there was a huge flame. And it looked like fireworks,” an unidentified woman in Perm told Russian state television.

“It just threw me across my sheets … Then my daughter ran in from the next room and asked if a war had started.”

The cause of the crash was not immediately known and is under investigation, Koshlyakov said. Rescue teams were on the scene and had recovered the plane’s flight data recorder.

Continue reading »]]> ( AP) Firefighters endured extreme temperatures and cramped quarters Friday as they extinguished an intense blaze in the undersea train tunnel that has revolutionized travel between France and England.

The fire deep under the English Channel left the British Isles cut off for more than a day from continental Europe other than by sea or air – the only routes that existed before the undersea tunnel opened to passengers in 1994.

Laboring through the night, firefighters painstakingly worked toward each other from separate ends in France and Britain to combat the blaze, which broke out Thursday afternoon aboard one of the trains that whiz back and forth through the 30-mile tunnel, transporting trucks and holidaymakers’ cars.

Firefighters spent no more than 15 minutes at a time inside the tunnel, because of the intense temperatures of up to around 1,830 degrees. The blaze was declared extinguished around midday.

Five of 14 people injured remained in hospitals Friday, said prosecutor Gerald Lesigne, who was investigating the blaze. Officials said some people had inhaled large quantities of smoke; others hurt their hands by breaking the train’s windows to escape.

Officials appeared to rule out terrorism as a cause of the blaze, one of the most serious incidents in the history of the tunnel that has made day trips between Paris and London possible by high-speed train.

French Transportation Minister Dominique Bussereau said the fire “likely resembles something accidental,” without elaborating. Jacques Gounon, chief executive of Eurotunnel, which operates the tunnel, said he had no reason to believe the fire could have been “criminal.”

There was confusion about when the link might reopen.

The Channel Tunnel is actually three tunnels, each 130 feet beneath the sea bed. One tunnel carries passengers and freight from France to England, while another runs in the opposite direction. They are connected to a central service tunnel, used for maintenance and emergency access.

The fire was in the tunnel that runs from England to France. Its burned sections could be closed for weeks.

The tunnel has had a few fires in the past, including one in 1996 that shut freight traffic for months.

Eurotunnel hoped to reopen the France-England tunnel as soon as possible, but Gounon said they would first “verify that all fire detection systems function well. We will take our time.”

Eurostar, which operates sleek high-speed passenger trains through the tunnel, said it would not resume services before Saturday at the earliest.

Passenger frustrations in both France and Britain over the temporary loss of the tunnel showed how reliant people have become on the link. Some 26,000 people travel through it on average each day.

The huge lines of trucks that built up on the English side lessened Friday as police told motorists to avoid the area. Police turned parts of a major highway into a giant parking lot for trucks, in an emergency procedure they dubbed “Operation Stack.”

Victoria Morgan was among the British tourists stuck at Paris’ Gare du Nord. She went to the station twice only to be told there were still no trains. It was time to fall back on the form of transport favored before the tunnel existed – a ferry to England from Calais in northern France.

“You can jump up and down and scream and shout but it’s an accident, it couldn’t be helped,” said John Piears, 65, who was at the other end – at St. Pancras station in London – his trip to Germany and Austria with his wife in hiatus.

“We’re on holiday and it’s all part of the fun. We’re going to have a coffee now and people-watch,” he said.

The 30-car shuttle train was carrying 32 people – mostly truck drivers accompanying their vehicles – when the fire erupted about seven miles from the French side.

“Suddenly we heard an explosion. We went to the back and we saw flames through the window, and we immediately felt the heat,” Polish truck driver Andrzej Czapla said.

He said he and another driver forced open the doors and went into the tunnel.

A truck driver identified as Patrick Lejein on French TV said: “The train chief was in a corner, panicking. We drivers broke the windows to get out of the train.”

Eurotunnel’s Gounon said people suffered smoke inhalation injuries because they evacuated the train themselves before tunnel operators had ventilated away the smoke, as safety procedures call for.

While a popular success, the tunnel has flirted with financial disaster. Eurotunnel was heavily burdened by debt before reaching a restructuring deal last year. It assured investors Friday that any financial impact of the accident “will be limited.”

Continue reading »]]> A Ryanair flight carrying British holidaymakers has been forced to make an unscheduled landing due to a loss of cabin pressure, the company has said.

Flight FR9336 from Bristol to Barcelona Girona Airport was hit by a “depressurisation incident” on Monday night, Ryanair confirmed.

The plane was diverted to Limoges in central France and 16 passengers were taken to hospital with earache.

Ryanair said it had sent an engineer to try to find out what happened.

In a statement posted on its website, Ryanair said said the loss of pressure “caused the oxygen masks on board to deploy”.

“As a safety precaution the captain descended and diverted the aircraft to Limoges Airport at approximately 2330 local French time,” the company said.

“All 168 passengers disembarked safely upon landing. “A total of 16 passengers together with five accompanying family members have been transferred, at their request, to a local hospital complaining of earache.

“As a precaution, Limoges Airport have arranged a local doctor to be available to any other passengers should they require.”

Arctic explorer Pen Hadow and his family were among those on the flight.

“I would say some people thought we were going to die – that is how frightening it was,” he said.

“The woman sitting in the seats in front of us was whimpering.”

Mr Hadow, who became the first man to walk unaided to the North Pole in 2003, said some people had clapped when the plane landed safely, while others cried with relief.

Replacement aircraft

Ryanair said a replacement aircraft had been flown from Stansted Airport to Limoges to take the remaining passengers to Barcelona. They were expected to land some time in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

“The remaining 21 passengers, and any others who do not wish fly onwards to Barcelona Girona this evening, have been offered overnight accommodation and will be transferred onward to Barcelona Girona by coach on the morning of the 26th August,” the statement said.

A Ryanair spokesman could not confirm how many passengers, other than those attending hospital, had chosen not to fly.

BBC NEWS | UK | Forced landing for Ryanair flight

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CHAMONIX, France (AP) — The bodies of eight climbers swept up in an avalanche near Mont Blanc were located Monday, buried beneath 20 to 50 meters (65-164 feet) of ice, police officials said.

Regis Lavergne, commander of the High Mountain Gendarmes based in Chamonix, said a helicopter picked up the signal of special homing devices the climbers were wearing. It appeared from the signals that the climbers — four Germans, three Swiss and one Austrian — had fallen into a deep crevasse.

Because the area is prone to avalanches, rescuers will not attempt to recover the bodies, which are expected to resurface in “a few weeks or several years” due to the movement or melting of the glaciers, Lavergne told reporters at a news conference.

Rescuers had initially said the missing climbers were Swiss and Austrian nationals, but officials later said they included four Germans, who were climbing with an Austrian guide.

The names of the victims have not been made public.

Seven people hospitalized following the avalanche were discharged on Monday, officials said.

The avalanche began around 3 a.m. Sunday after a block of ice as wide as two football fields cracked off a side of the Mont Blanc du Tacul, one of the peaks in the Mont Blanc range, at an altitude of some 3,600 meters (11,800 feet).

During a visit to the region Sunday, French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said there was no hope of finding any of the climbers alive.