Missing plane!

[Kitten]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8076848.stm

scary, lets hope it turns up safe and has nothing more serious than a transponder problem.

[divine]

It's several hours late already isn't it?

If it was just a transponder you'd expect it to have already landed with a broken transponder. Losing contact and the plane not turning up - it's probably crashed :(

Even it landed somewhere else, unless it was a completely deserted island they've had enough time to have communicated via normal radio or something.

[Dazzy_G]

How did Lost start again? .......

[Flibster]

It was scheduled to land 3 hours ago.

Outlook is bleak.

[Happy]

How did Lost start again? .......

Or Bioshock for that matter.

[Feek]

Not good, I'd be expecting a plane with a broken transponder and effective loss of comms to be making an emergency landing somewhere.

[divine]

Well it would have run out of fuel by now even if it was airborne still.

Latest reports are of heavy turbulence and short circuits around 02:15 UTC/GMT

edit - Brazilians also reporting it vanished off of military radar too, which is not reliant on transponder signals.

[Mark]

They're now suggesting it might have been brought down by a lightning strike, which given airliners design to conduct lightning and resist damage would certainly be a freak accident, possibly involving positive lightning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Positive_lightning)

[iCraig]

It'll be down one way or another by now. Just up to the rescue teams to find the survivors, if any.

[Kitten]

the timing was all wrong on the breaking news thingy when I posted this. It said it was due to arrive at 11.10 UK time, which then changed to 11.10 French time/9.10 UK. Seemed likely it could still be airborne then or at least just unable to communicate.

[Kainz]

How did Lost start again? .......
That fat bloke ate the cabin crew.

[Dee]

Ive been hankering after updates on this all day, seems almost surreal :(

[Belmit]

Just shows how we rely on technology. If the radio and transponder go and the plane crashes in millions of square miles of ocean, not much can be done. :( The only difference in this modern age being that we expect to have the information somehow so the few times this sort of thing happens it feels very unnatural.

[divine]

I don't think the radio and transponder did 'go', but there are areas over sea whereby only limited communication is possible anyway, so whether they were working or not would have been irrelevant. Someone on OcUK linked to PPRuNe which has some very good information on it.