Burning wreckage of Air France flight 447 was spotted by another airline pilot. According to the Brazilian airline TAM, the pilots of one of its Airbus A330 that took off shortly after the Air France aircraft and also flying the identical route spotted was has been described as “orange colored spots on the ocean”.
The Brazilian Air Force confirmed the sighting roughly 40 minutes after the final contact between flight 447 and the Brazilian air traffic center.
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What is the approximate seperation (time/ dist) between the TAM 330 and AFrance 447?
Considering it was an identical route they could shed light on the actual wx enroute?
For the TAM 330 pilots to spot the “orange coloured spots” on the surface the area where the ac came down must have been fairly clear.
It still baffles me how a modern jet would get itself into a storm of such intensity ( if it did ) to a point of wrecking it.
I don’t know the approximate separation between the two flights. The TAM flight was flying the opposite route (Paris - Rio). I personally doubt that the storm itself brought this aircraft down. Modern jets are designed to withstands such storms, plus the pilots all had a lot of experience flying the Airbus A330.
According to this yahoo article, Qantas Flight 72’s computer system went crazy and caused it to drop 650 feet in a few seconds. This happened in October of last year on a similar aircraft, an Airbus A330.
Yahoo Article on Qantas 72 Incident