Please say it ain't so

Difficult as it may be, it is wrong to automatically jump to conclusions when an airplane crashes. Remember the one that crashed over New York a short time after 9/11? We ALL thought it was another terrorist act initially, until it was determined that it was a structural problem with the tail piece. The Air France crash on Sunday is a horrible, horrible tragedy, and my thoughts and condolences go out to the victims and their families.

Airplanes are built by humans, and as such are not completely immune to mechanical failures. However, it is extremely rare that an airplane just falls out of the sky. But I guess it is not out of the realm of possibility. Again, not wanting to jump to conclusions, this could still be the result of a mechanical failure of some sort. We may never know, as the black box devices may be thousands of feet under the water. However, for an airplane to just disappear from radar and end up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean without even a peep from the pilots, something major had to happen, and happen very quickly.

And then we see something like this report. Reported on a Buenes Aires news site on May 27, 2009:

Bomb threat on Air France flight.
Posted on 27 May 2009 at 16:27
The airport safety delayed an Air France flight this evening before departring for Paris immediately after the company received a bomb threat over the phone at the airport of Ezeiza.

The Federal Police, along the Firemen’s direction and the Airport’s Safety proceeded to inspect the plane, that arrived this morning from the French city and, after a brief stop, it was preparing to return.

The routine procedure lasted approximately one hour and a half and, as sources of the airport reported all the passengers are ok and they were not evacuated.

So, on May 27, an Air France flight had a bomb scare phoned in to the airport in Argentina. The Paris-bound flight was delayed as the aircraft was searched and the passengers re-screened. And three days later, a Paris-bound Air France flight from Brazil ends up at the bottom of the ocean, with no warning or distress call from the pilots.

Coincidence? I certainly hope so.