By my watch, the takeoff roll for Air France flight 380 lasted 35 seconds. "39 seconds," corrected Laurent Bonnard, a French historian, as we chatted in a lounge area later. Either way, all the planiacs on board Air France's inaugural A380 Airbus flight from New York City to Paris agreed the takeoff was a thing of beauty. Imagine an apartment building with wings that steps into the sky with the quiet grace of a ballet dancer. The lack of ...

A small part that tells computers on some highly-automated Airbus aircraft how fast the plane is flying became a concern again Wednesday. European aviation authorities ordered airlines to check "pitot tubes" that have come under suspicion since the crash of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean in June. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued the emergency airworthiness directive Wednesday, requiring airlines to check Goodrich Corp.-manufactured pitot tubes aboard Airbus A330 and A340 models in the next five ...

The father of a teenage girl who remarkably survived a plane crash off the Comoros islands has described how his daughter was ejected from the plane into the Indian Ocean. "She didn't feel a thing. She found herself in water," Paris-based Kassim Bakari told French radio RTL after speaking to his 13-year-old daughter Bahia who was recovering Wednesday in hospital in Moroni. "She could hear people talking, but in the middle of the night she couldn't see a thing. ...

The flight data recorders from a Yemenia Airways crash were possibly located off Comoros on Wednesday, a day after a jetliner with 153 people aboard went down in the Indian Ocean, a French official said. "It seems like the 'black boxes' have been localized, but are not very accessible, according to information we obtained this morning. But they have been localized," Alain Joyandet, a French junior foreign minister told CNN affiliate BFM TV in a phone interview from Comoros. The ...

The airline operating an Airbus A310-300 jet that crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday with 153 people aboard was being monitored by EU authorities, according to France's transport minister. Dominique Bussereau told French television that inspectors in his country had also noted several faults on the doomed Yemenia Airways plane, Agence France-Presse reported. "The company was not on the blacklist (of airlines banned from European airspace) but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to ...

A Yemeni jetliner with more than 150 people aboard has crashed in the Indian Ocean off the island nation of Comoros, aviation officials in Yemen said Tuesday. The jet was en route to Moroni, the capital of Comoros, from Yemen's capital Sanaa when it crashed about an hour before reaching its destination, officials from the national airline Yemenia said. There was no immediate news of the fate of those on board. Yemenia Flight 626 left Sanaa at 9:30 p.m. ...

Authorities are most unlikely to recover all parts of the Air France plane that went down June 1 in the Atlantic Ocean with 228 people aboard, an official with France's air accident investigation board said Wednesday. "It's virtually certain that the entire aircraft will not be recovered. All the bodies which are or will be found will be recovered, but I do not know how many. I cannot say to you," Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of Bureau d'Enquetes et D'Analyses, ...

The world's premier air show takes place in Paris next week, with the recent loss of Air France flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean likely to cast a shadow over the event. The annual Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary, gives the air transport industry the chance to promote the latest innovations in aerospace technology and attract buyers for both commercial and military aircraft. Manufacturing giants Boeing and Airbus are two of the ...

A New Mexico police officer was rescued Wednesday after surviving a helicopter crash in the snowy Santa Fe National Forest, but the fate of the pilot remained unknown. The simple fact is that the blizzard of airworthiness directives, company memos, weather reports, technical specifications and diverse other documents that have surfaced since last week constitute entirely circumstantial evidence. Aviation history is replete with accidents with causes utterly unrelated to what first seemed the obvious explanation. For the investigators, the challenge ...

In one way we know a huge amount about the loss of Air France flight 447 -- much more than is usual so soon after an accident. But in another, we know nothing at all. The simple fact is that the blizzard of airworthiness directives, company memos, weather reports, technical specifications and diverse other documents that have surfaced since last week constitute entirely circumstantial evidence. Aviation history is replete with accidents with causes utterly unrelated to what first seemed ...