Back in the day, Air Force pilots used to joke about "Air Chance." Some civilians still mutter darkly about the fly-by-wire, automated Airbus, although this apparently is its first major crash with passengers. For now the proposed explanation for the disappearance of Flight 447 over the mid-Atlantic, is severe turbulence, a possible lightning strike and hail damage.
Yet airliners are designed and pilots are trained to handle weather. It’s tempting, in this day of terrorism, to assume it was a bomb. Reports of simultaneous electrical failure and loss of cabin pressure suggest something like that. But they’ll have to find the wreckage, and hopefully the black (actually orange) flight data and voice recorders before we will ever know the cause for certain. If then.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 