kysmet wrote: 
According to your link, the automated system reported a loss of cabin pressure. That might have made it impossible for the pilot to do anything, including sending a Mayday.

 kysmet wrote: 
what happened to this plane!

 kysmet wrote: 
I hate to be the alarmist, but I'm thinking a bomb was set off. 

Wreckage seen in search area for missing plane

Is it strange that there's no news of the pilot making a Mayday call?  Could this have happened so fast that there wasn't even time for that?

Me,I am just waiting for some one to claim the "Kill"! (either way ,very sad news,two maybe four swedes on the plane)

 phineas wrote:
 
Powerful = short battery life. The transponders exist and the batteries last a week or so as is. Keep in mind that the antenna is likely underwater.

 dmax wrote: 
eek!

 samiyam wrote: 

 Zep wrote: 


"Imagine If you will..."

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Ah. Still, I'm surprised that there's no powerful transponder that somehow (magically) gets activated in a disaster.

 phineas wrote:
 
Wrong direction. GPSes receive, they don't transmit. The transmitters are up in orbit.

You could build satellites to continuously monitor airplane positions if the airplanes all had transceivers on board to tell the satellites where they were. It would be pretty expensive even if you used an existing satellite network (like the satphone birds)—somebody has to track all that data, and you really only need it once in an airplane's life. Ground tracking handles the task otherwise so it would be redundant for intracontinental flights.

 Lazy8 wrote: 

I watch Deadliest Catch and whenever a ship goes down and they show the rescue effort, I'm always amazed how far things get swept away and how it's almost impossible to see anyone or anything unless you're right overhead.  Granted, this plane didn't go down in the Bering Sea but I'm sure it's almost the same situation.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
But what about a GPS?

 rosedraws wrote:
 
There are radio beacons that activate in crash situations but they are pretty weak. You have to get pretty close to detect one, assuming it survives the event. And that airplane was a long way from anyplace. It's a big ocean.

 rosedraws wrote: 
It was on radar when it disappeared, but it is still far from land, and the search area is huge.

It would be very unusual for lighting alone to have brought this Airbus down.  Jets are struck by lightning all the time, and no crash has been attributed to a direct hit for four decades.

The A330 is a very modern airliner and is designed to withstand a lot, so whatever did this was exceptional indeed. 

 rosedraws wrote: 
I think they are, here. (At least I hope so, post 9/11.) But maybe not so much in Senegal?

 kysmet wrote: 
I guess we really don't have anything that can find an airplane?  It's amazing that such a looonnnnng period of time went by between last radio/radar contact and when they decided something was wrong.  I've been under the ill conceived notion that airplanes are tracked more thoroughly than that.

 rosedraws wrote: 

"Nothing on Spanish radar, nothing on Moroccan radar, nothing on French radar - we seriously have to fear the worst,"

*sigh*

 kysmet wrote: 
Oh dear. 

BBC Story.  Still no news though.