France

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    4 Crew Members Injured as Air France Plane Faces Severe Turbulence

    Air FranceAir France flight AF006 had to return to the Charles de Gaulle airport, France, on the afternoon of November 4.

    The flight, heading to New York’s JFK airport, was turned back after 4 crew members got injured midair due to severe turbulence. According to a statement released by Air France, the aircraft faced bad weather during the initial cruise phase.

    The Airbus A380 superjumbo aircraft landed uneventfully and medical aid was provided immediately to the injured crew members.

    All the passengers remained unharmed.

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    Helicopter Crashed near France-Switzerland Border; 5 Killed

    helicopterA helicopter crashed in the garden of a house located in the suburbs of Montbeliard, France, on the morning of October 2.

    The accident happened after the EC130 helicopter departed from an airport in Lausanne, Switzerland, with 7 people aboard. The French police confirmed that the aircraft came down just a few hundred meters from the Montbeliard aerodrome, around 13 kilometers from the France-Switzerland border.

    The police also said, “Of the seven Swiss people on board, five have died, one has been rushed to hospital with multiple injuries and the seventh person, whose condition is not yet known, is being pulled out.” The deceased include 6 men and a woman.

    The cause of crash is not clear at the moment.

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    Medical Emergency Prompts Thomson Holidays Flight to Divert to France

    ThomsonA Manchester-bound Thomson Holidays flight had to make an emergency landing at Nantes Atlantique Airport, France, at round noon on September 6.

    The decision for diversion and emergency landing was made after a passenger in his mid 50s suddenly fell sick midair, shortly after the flight TOM2621 took off from Alicante, Spain.

    The paramedics were ready at the scene when the plane safely landed. The passenger was treated for about half an hour and the flight resumed after his condition stabilized.

    The flight, which was due to land at Manchester Airport at 1:05 p.m. eventually landed at 3:30 p.m.

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    Airbus Launches E-Fan Electric Trainer Airplane

    ElectricThe Airbus Group launched their two-seater, E-Fan electric trainer airplane in France last month.

    The all-electric all-composite experimental plane designed specifically as a demonstrator for the small electric aircraft technology made its first public flight in Bordeaux, France, during the Airbus’ E-Aircraft Day.

    The aircraft is comparatively quieter than the non-electric planes and has zero carbon dioxide emissions during flight. Moreover, it lasts an hour for training flights and half an hour for manoeuvres.

    According to Airbus, the E-Fan electric trainer plane will be used as a model for designing, building and selling two improved versions through their subsidiary company, VoltAir.

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    Air France Flight 447


    Air France 447 went down over the Atlantic in 2009.

    The fly-by-wire A330 incorporates technology that prevents the airplane from entering a stall, but during a complete loss of airspeed information, however, the system reverted to manual control.

    The final report said said the pilots were “completely surprised” by technical problems experienced at high altitude and engaged in increasingly de-structured actions until suffering “the total loss of cognitive control of the situation.”

    CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation has been recorded said pilots generally manually manipulating the controls for only three minutes:one minute and 30 seconds each for take-off and landing.

    “We are moving towards automated operations where the pilot isn’t even permitted to fly. That means the first time in your career you will ever feel what an aircraft feels like at 35,000 feet is when it’s handed to you broken.”

    See a video examination of the Air France 447 flight

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    Air Mediterranée Airbus Runway Overrun

    On March 29, 3013, an Air Mediterranée Airbus A321-111 en route from Agadir-Al Massira International Airport to Lyon Saint-Exupéry Airport ran off the runway on landing at Lyon Saint-Exupéry Airport.

    The flight from Dakar had a stopover in Agadir.

    The plane was mired in soft ground. Firefighters assisted the passengers out one by one on waterlogged ground. Passengers were ported to the terminal by bus.

    According to witnesses, the crew was Greek, and had little English and little French.

    Machine translation of the incident from the beginning:
    “The stop in Agadir was not provided. We said we had to refuel because of the weather. Upon landing, there were warning signs: the plane was a little unusual zig-zag before stopping. We left about 20 minutes later. In Lyon, the aircraft flew over the track for a long time, very close to the ground, without asking. Then we felt the brakes, we went left, then right, straight into a field, probably over a hundred meters. We then felt burnt and we were afraid that it caught fire.”

    182 people were aboard. No injuries were reported.