Airplane Accidents

The first sign of trouble was a glitch that appeared in the air speed sensors. Inside the sleek cockpit of Air France Flight 447, according to aviation experts, the crew would within minutes be confronted with a cascade of mysterious system failures. The atmosphere of a routine international flight would vanish. Warning lights would be flashing and alarms would sound as one high-technology system after another of the highly automated jetliner began going off line.

When the managing director of a small, trouble-prone Iranian airline won official permission in March to lease a couple of aging Russian-made airplanes, the country's small circle of aviation professionals gossiped about the strings he must have pulled to get the government's approval. And when one of the planes burst aflame on the runway in late July, killing the executive, Mehdi Dadpei, his son and 14 others, few in the industry were surprised. "Aria was famous for not adhering to safety standards for years," said an Iranian aviation industry insider, who spoke extensively to The Times on condition of anonymity.

As rescue crews on Friday discovered the bodies of three people in the wreckage of an Orange County-based tour airplane that crashed in the rain on a remote Catalina Island hilltop, questions emerged about the pilot's qualifications to handle charter flights. A search-and-rescue team found the burned bodies after a helicopter spotted the downed plane on a hilltop area near Mt. Orizaba, southwest of Catalina's Airport in the Sky, said Sgt.

If there is ever to be an answer to what caused Air France Flight 447 to fall from the sky, the best clues probably lie on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean amid rugged volcanic ridges and steep trenches, some plunging deeper than the Grand Canyon. Search planes scouring the area Tuesday spotted a seat, an orange buoy, a tank and a fuel slick about 400 miles off the Brazilian coast.

Two people were killed when their single-engine aerobatic plane crashed shortly after takeoff Wednesday from Santa Monica Airport and burst into flames. The red, two-seat Marchetti SF-260 airplane, registered to Malibu-based Wingspan Inc., crashed about 5 p.m. at the west end of the runway, police and airport officials said. The identities of the two victims were being withheld until family members could be notified. Witnesses said the plane was immediately in trouble.

Descending through a snowy mist toward Buffalo Niagara International Airport, the crew of a Continental commuter flight noticed a significant ice buildup on the windshield and wings of the plane, despite having turned on the craft's de-icer.

Commercial and private pilots report thousands of incidents a year where birds hit their aircraft, but the vast majority of the potentially dangerous encounters do not result in substantial damage or serious crashes. Birds are being investigated as the possible cause of Thursday's US Airways incident. Authorities said the pilot of the Airbus A320 reported a "double bird strike" during takeoff, forcing the crew to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River as both engines lost power.

If tragedy brings people together, the still-unexplained crash of a Continental Airlines commuter jet Thursday night forever links Beverly Eckert and Alison Des Forges, two extraordinary women who led separate crusades, against seemingly impossible odds. Eckert was a Sept. 11 widow who turned her grief into powerful advocacy.

A sophisticated flight-control system that relies on electronic instruments and computers came under growing scrutiny Thursday as investigators tried to unravel the mysterious crash of an Air France Airbus 330 into the Atlantic.

Brazilian military officials announced Saturday that they had found two bodies and some debris from the Paris-bound Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean with 228 passengers and crew aboard. Two male bodies, a leather briefcase containing an Air France boarding pass, a numbered blue seat and a nylon backpack were fished out of the ocean about 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago off Brazil's northern coast, Col.