AIR France received a bomb threat just days before Flight 447 mysteriously crashed, killing 228 passengers, raising new fears that the jet was a victim of a terrorist attack.
Argentine police received an anonymous telephone warning on May 27 about an Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris.
Police searched the plane before passengers boarded but found nothing and it was allowed to take off with a delay of 32 minutes, an Air France spokesman revealed today.
He said there appeared to be no link between the alert and the crash on Monday of the Air France flight between Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Paris.
More debris from the Air France jet that came down in the Atlantic was spotted early yesterday, but investigators said they were pessimistic about finding the black boxes that could explain the tragedy.
French and Brazilian officials have described a "burst" of messages from Flight 447 just before it disappeared.
A more complete chronology was published today by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, citing an unidentified Air France source, and confirmed to The Associated Press by an aviation industry source with knowledge of the investigation:
- 11 p.m. local time - The pilot sends a manual signal saying the jet was flying through CBs - towering cumulo-nimulus thunderheads.
- 11:10 p.m. - A cascade of automatic messages indicate trouble: The autopilot had disengaged, stabilizing controls were damaged, flight systems deteriorated.
- 11:13 p.m. - Messages report more problems: The system that monitors speed, altitude and direction failed. The main flight computer and wing spoilers failed.
- 11:14 p.m. - The final message indicates a loss of cabin pressure and complete system failure - catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.
Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim said Wednesday that it appeared unlikely that an explosion tore apart the Air France plane.
A long fuel slick found in an zone where debris was spotted "means that it is improbable that there was a fire or explosion, but that is just a hypothesis," he said.
He was inferring that the high-octane jet fuel would have ignited if a blast or fire had occurred.
For all that though, "there is still no possibility" of determining what caused the crash, Jobim said.
The flight recorders from Air France Flight 447 could also be scattered nearly anywhere across a vast undersea mountain range that lies as much as six kilometres below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
In those remote, forbidding waters between Brazil and West Africa, variations in temperature and salinity can reduce visibility and obscure homing signals from the devices. And for salvage crews, time is short because the "black boxes" will only emit signals for a month. A list of the named crew and passengers aboard Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris carrying 228 people:
-Luiz Roberto Anastacio, 50; Brazilian; president for South America, Michelin
-Stephane Artiguenave, 35; French; salesman at electrical distributor CGED
-Sandrine Artiguenave, 34; French
-Silvio Barbato; Brazilian, former conductor for the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Theater Orchestra
-Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32; French; co-pilot of AF447
-Isabelle Bonin, 36; French; wife of AF447 co-pilot Pierre-Cedric Bonin
-Aisling Butler, 26; Irish, of Roscrea, Ireland; doctor
-Brad Clemes, 49; Canadian from Guelph, Ontario; Coca-Cola executive
-Arthur Coakley, 61; British; structural engineer for PDMS
-Jane Deasy, 27; Irish; doctor
-Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, 26; Brazilian; descendent of Brazil's last emperor
-Marc Dubois, 58; French; flight captain of AF447
-Lucas Gagriano Juca, 24; Brazilian; Air France crew member
-Jozsef Gallasz, 44; Hungarian; partner of Hungarian victim Rita Szarvas.
-Anne Grimout, 49; French; head of Flight 447 cabin crew
-Antonio Gueiros; Brazilian; information systems director, Michelin
-Michael Harris, 60; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana; geologist
-Anne Harris; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana
-Erich Heine, 41; South African-born; member of executive board of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG
-Claus-Peter Hellhammer, 28; employee of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG based in Germany
-Giovanni Battista Lenzi, Trentino area, Italy
-Li Mingwen; of Liaoning Province, China; worked at Benxi Iron & Steel
-Zoran Markovic, 45; Croatian, from Kostelji, Croatia; sailor
-Marco Antonio Camargos Mendonca, 44, Brazilian, worked for Vale SA mining company
-Christine Pieraerts; French; engineer at Michelin
-David Robert, 37; French; co-pilot of AF447
-Shen Zuobing; of Liaoning Province, China; worked at Benxi Iron & Steel
-Sun Lianyou; of Liaoning Province, China; worked at Benxi Iron & Steel
-Rita Szarvas; Hungarian; therapist at a Budapest center for disabled children. Her 7-year-old son was also aboard, but his name was not released.
-Eithne Walls, 29; Irish; doctor
-Rino Zandonai; Trentino area, Italy.
-Luigi Zortea; Trentino area, Italy.
-Xiao Xiang, 35; of Jiangxi Province, China; of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Engineering Thermophycis
-Zhang Qingbo; of Liaoning Province, China; worked at Benxi Iron & Steel
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