A mystery with only one clue: a catastrophic electrical failure

12 April 2012

Investigators were today struggling to explain the disappearance of the Air France flight as mystery over the causes of the crash continued.

Although the notoriously turbulent weather and suggestions of a lightning strike appear to have been factors, aviation experts insisted that such problems alone should not have brought the plane down.

The only definite clues are the automated message sent by the plane moments before its disappearance, reporting a failure of electrical power, pressurisation and other systems.

Today, however, Pierre Sparaco, of the French Air and Space Academy, said that back-up systems in the plane should have been sufficient to allow it to cope with an electrical failure and said that further unknown factors must have triggered the tragedy.

"For a plane to get hit by lightning is totally routine," he said. "That is not enough to explain it. There must be a missing link."

With terrorism ruled out by officials, one theory is that the electrical failures combined with fearsomely high winds that can occur in a turbulent area known as the "Pot au Noir" — black cauldron — to completely destabilise the plane.

Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates added: "Potentially it went down very quickly and the pilot didn't have a chance to make that emergency call."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in