Air France

H

harry

At the Start
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Apr 16, 2005
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Would you fly with them?

No plane since the 60's has crashed through turbulence.

Concorde... now this

I know its not many but a proper airline should never have this happen
 
Amongst all the other speculation it has been raised this morning that it may have been a bomb on board as Air France had, allegedly, received a specific threat about this route four days before this flight.
Whenever anything like this happens I wish the press could be stopped from speculating and creating unnecessary conjecture until some hard evidence is found.
 
I flew with Air France to Paris from Heathrow 11 days ago - I wouldn't hesitate to fly with them again.

One thing I did note when flying into CDG last year from Spain was the relative lack of border controls when compared to the UK.

Tbh I've seen reports that the plane broke up in mid-air which would indicate a bomb. This immediately made me think of the Air India jet that broke up off the coast of Ireland (County Cork iirc) 24 years ago (the joys of watching Air Crash Investigations).
 
Someone can no doubt correct me if I'm wrong but Concorde crashed because a bit came off and pierced the fuel tank.
 
It is alleged that it was a 'Continental Airlines' plane that deposited a strip of metal that shredded the tyre which then flew up into the fuel tank causing a rupture. The Americans and French are still arguing about it. The evidence i've seen seems to support the French account, but that means massive pay outs to the victims and corporate America doesn't try and do these things in a hurry. I expect we'll see a stalemate with Continental refusing to pay, and the American government doing their best to protect yet another of their failing air industry companies.

I've only flown Air France to South Africa but they provided plenty of leg room, a reasonably good service, their ground crew were particularly rude and had no sense of customer focus, but apart from that they were a decent airline i felt, and damn sight better than these dreadful British charter firms. I'd give them 5 out of 10, and just regard them as pretty average.
 
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Some league tables for you (although they do seem to have an American bias) but even so, they can't invent crashes that haven't occured, but the methodology does allow a big carrier whose had a couple of fatal crashes to out perform a smaller one like 'Emirates' who've never crashed a plane in their history. I was under the impression the Qantas never had either, but apparently not.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm
 
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Qantas hadn't up to the release of Rain Man, then I believe they suffered one shortly afterwards. No inference that one caused the other obviously.
 
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I wouldn't label Emirates a "small" airline! They're the fastest growing and well into the top 10, if not 5 of the biggest International airlines.

I'd not think twice about flying with any of the major European airlines, they all have to conform to very very strict guidelines and standards set out by the EU which are the harshest in the world and as such, many airlines from other continents are banned from flying to the EU.

Regarding this crash, can't really speculate too much until more facts come out. It looks like a bomb to me but Air France and Airbus will be keeping their cards very close to their chests either way. It is very very strange for a modern A330 to seemingly break up in the air like that for no reason, if it wasn't a bomb and a technical or structural fault then they should be thinking about grounding the entire A330 fleet which would bring world air travel to a semi standstill.

I don't think we'll hear much more until the French submarine arrives in the area in the early part of next week.
 
0.76 million flights is small in airline terms (small, small to medium in places) at best.

I'd be interested to know just what was in the cargo hold. It wouldn't be the first time that civil carriers have been found to be shipping potentially hazardous material. We'll get a bit of a blame game develop I suspect.

Air France will want to blame Rio security
Brazil will want to blame Air France check in staff
Airbus will want to blame anything that absolves their design (in the event of them being dead, pilots have proven popular in the past)
The Americans are bound to have a say and they'll want to blame Airbus in order to promote Boeing
Rolls Royce will doubtless be involved somewhere, and they'll look to blame Air France maintenance
When they all come together and discuss they'll probably agree to blame Gordon Brown


My own suspicion at this stage is the fact that it was serviced 3 months ago might not be insignificant. I've always been under the impression that the number of planes that crash shortly after a major service is disproportionately high. Usually in the name of poor training, cost cutting, or time saving a short-cut in maintenance is undertaken and this takes a few months to work through into a catastrophe.

Terrorism would be a useful scapegoat in this case that would suit most of those involved (apart from Brazil of course but they'd be at the bottom of any list of considerations - in any case we could always send the Met round to shoot them if they complain too loudly).

Air France are absolved of the worst charges that could be levelled against them
Airbus and Rolls Royce remain untainted from the design side
The French can launch a domestic crackdown
Other governments can revisit ID cards



Is it really in French interests to recover the black box?

a 1998 link:whistle:
 
I think this particular A330 was using General Electric engines, not Rolls Royce engines. I would imagine Airbus and GE are crapping it and hoping they don't find the Black Boxes either. A grounding of the A330 fleet would be catastrophic. They've grounded fleets for less than this before.

And about Emirates... From Wiki...

"In 2008 the airline was the eighth-largest airline in the world in terms of international passengers carried,[3] and fifth-largest[4] in the world in terms of scheduled international passenger-kilometres flown. It is also the ninth-largest in terms of scheduled freight tonne-kilometres flown (eighth in scheduled international freight tonne-kilometres flown).[5]. The airline ranks amongst the top 10 carriers worldwide in terms of revenue, passengerkilometres, and has become the largest airline in the Middle East in terms of revenue, fleet size, and passengers carried."
 
Just been on the news & apparently they have now received the planes auto message that they were flying through electrical storm clouds, they now believe it broke up mid air.
 
But in the context of accident histories GS, an airlines current status in a pecking order is neither here nor there, as it's assessed against the number of flights they've made going back decades.

I'm surprised they're using GE engines, RR were supposed to be a partner in what used to be Airbus industries consortio, and they were certainly fitted in most A330's. Mind you with Boeing losing more and more market share to Airbus.........:ninja:.

Any American warships in the vacinity?
 
Warbler said:
But in the context of accident histories GS, an airlines current status in a pecking order is neither here nor there, as it's assessed against the number of flights they've made going back decades.

I'm surprised they're using GE engines, RR were supposed to be a partner in what used to be Airbus industries consortio, and they were certainly fitted in most A330's. Mind you with Boeing losing more and more market share to Airbus.........:ninja:.

Any American warships in the vacinity?
Click to expand...

Fair point regarding accident history Warbs, I'd say that Emirates were the safest of all the major airlines flying at the moment. I wasn't too impressed by their food when I went with them in March though but the seats were very comfy. That said, I'd rather get there in one piece than have an apple crumble and a decent seat.

American Warships? :lol:
 
A league table of air crashes is pretty irrelevant for the bulk of carriers given the scarcity of accidents. All western (and asian too) airlines have remarkable safety records. Supringsly even more so with budget airlines, which demonstrates that the industry polices itself superbly....

Not so good in africa and old soviet union of course

I think it was a bomb frankly. Eletrical storm? naaahh

Anyone remeber Dan Air? Or Dan Dare as they were known? one went down weekly if i remeber rightly....

Warbler....I think that slaggi ng off americans in relation to this at this stage...is a little premature shall we say
 
Boeing is NOT losing market share to Airbus. Also, its Dreamliner would already appear to have better prospects than the slow selling A380
 
I'm sure you'll find the most crashed plane in history Clive, was British, although strictly speaking Concorde would be right up there on any percentage charts too.

I'm reminded of a lovely story in the 'new Russia' I was told by some American when I was in Leningrad, shortly after Communism broke down and they had no order, command and control and little understanding what was worth what etc.

It involved an aerofloet internal flight which was running in its usual chaotic fashion. Half way into the flight the cabin crew came round with a plate asking for money. The American (who had clearly been brought up on a tipping culture) objected as he didn't think the service deserved a dime. It was explained to him however, that one of the parts in the planes engine was in the process of failing, but the pilot reckoned he could get it to an airport safely. However, it would require a replacement part and since no one knew who had any money and who didn't, the maintenance team would only accept cash. If they couldn't raise enough money to pay for the part and the labour, then the plane would have to continue onwards and hope that the old part didn't fail mid flight!!!

He contributed quite quickly and the whip round raised the cash
 
The most crashed plane was the Comet of course and be fair warbler...it was a pioneering plane. A bit irrelevant to compare that from the 50's to safety standards 50 years plus on
 
Only thing that makes it appear not to be a bomb is the presence of an oil slick on the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not sure how any storm could damage an aircraft like the A330 so bad as to bring it down and make it unflyable. It's all very very strange at present. Something freaky like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123 is the most likely scenario.
 
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