Air France Jet Disappears

It always makes me so sad when I hear that a plane has gone down. Especially when there is little to no chance of there being any survivors. I don't know why it makes such an impact on us when there are thousands that die everyday in car accidents and from heart attacks. Maybe it's just something about the fact that rather than being an individual or just a couple of people, this is a mass death. There is something powerful and haunting about knowing that over 200 people shared that horrible death.

An Airbus 330, which is a modern jet, took off in the early hours of Monday morning from Rio de Janero, Brazil on its way to Paris, France. The flight normally takes around 11 hours, but after only 3 hours of being in the air, the plane's automatic system sent messages back to its headquarters reporting that the plane was in trouble. The story I've heard so far is that the plane encountered a wall of very serious thunderstorms, then went down somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

Search teams from Africa, South America, and Paris have been working diligently to find the wreckage or some evidence of what happened to the plane, but so far the search has not revealed anything. The average depth of the Atlantic Ocean is 12,000 feet... which is 2 miles deep. If the plane went down and sank to the bottom, I am doubtful if they will ever find it. They also aren't sure what velocity the plane hit the water, which will have a direct impact on just how much of the plane is still in tact to even be found.

I keep hoping there will be a breaking news report saying that they found many of the plane's passengers alive floating on life rafts in the ocean, but as time goes by that seems very unlikely. I was just thinking that if the pilot was able to control the plane and land it in the water like the one pilot did on the Hudson river, then maybe people were using their floatation device seats and other life rafts to stay afloat. That would be a much happier story.

I have definitely been in a plane where it was storming out and we hit turbulence. I have been scared when the plane lurched and seemed to descend rapidly. But I always grip the armrests really tight, close my eyes and tell myself, "This happens all the time, it's going to be fine." I can just imagine what the passengers of the Air France flight were thinking and feeling. It breaks my heart.