Since the disappearance of Air France 447, an Airbus A330-200, (the exact same model of aircraft flown by Northwest Airlines, that I took to Amsterdam last month), I have been following the news reports pretty closely.  A lot of speculation surrounds, what the call the doomed flight, but until they get the ‘black boxes’ this is mostly speculation.   However there are some unique bits of data that the aircraft’s monitoring systems sent to AirBus (or maybe Air France, it’s not clear to me where the messages were sent) that the events leading up to the crash occurred over a 10-15 minute time period.  Plenty of time for pilots to issue a ‘Mayday’ message if they’d had any indication of an impending problem.

From the various reports I’ve read, I’m going to start to assemble some timelines, and references to the article sources as possible.   It will likely take me a day or so to get this collected.  Once I have managed to do so, a follow-up message will be posted.

My prayers go out to the families affected, and especially the passengers on the fated flight.  From what I have read so far, it would appear the aircraft broke up at altitude.  I can’t image what that might have been like.

UPDATE: Timline Published.