On our honeymoon a few years ago, my wife and I (no typical /. comments...) stayed one night in a resort in Puerto Rico before travelling on to our final island destination.

We found that they had a casino and said "lets see what we can do". Long story made short, the croupier was spinning and dropping so consistently that the same 6 or 7 numbers kept coming up over and over. We stayed until his shift ended, and left up a few grand for the evening.

In Vegas, they will change the croupier as soon as they see a pattern. In P.R. they didn't even KNOW they had a problem...

-Doc

In a previous job, after having spent the majority of the previous year flying around North and South America managing cabling and infrastructure projects, I got a series of emails from my boss asking me to please complete the self-review form and return it.

I finally opened the document, typed "walks on water" and saved and sent it.

He wrote the best review of my work (of which he was completely informed) that I have ever seen, and garnered me a nice raise and a promotion as well.

I still tell people he was the best boss I ever had. He'd ask what I needed to get the job done, give it to me, and expect the job to be done on time.

Whenever I'm someone's boss, I always try to be that type of boss...

From the blog on this at:
http://freebeattychadwick.blogspot.com/

A. Leo Sereni, a former president judge in Pennsylvania, was appointed to track Chadwick's money. Eighteen months and two accounting firms later, Sereni reported no trace beyond what had been discovered a decade before. Money had been transferred to Europe and a small fraction had reappeared in U.S. accounts. Sereni concluded, 'most of it...nowhere.'
"He recommended Chadwick's release, stating, 'My God -- if he had stolen $2 million, he would have been out a couple of years ago.'"

So, it appears that the courts have made some efforts to trace the money, and have been unable to locate it.

-Doc

1. OK, that's the first confirmation of a bomb threat I've seen by Air France. (Although it WAS made against a different flight/routing...)

2. I'm not sure what info from the Wikipedia article on AA587 you cited that you think supports your assertion that the A300 and A330 are the same aircraft type, but one of the paragraphs in that article completely refutes this erroneous presumption:

"The Airbus A300 and later A310 do not operate on a fly-by-wire flight control system, instead using conventional mechanical flight controls."

As I stated above, they are two different aircraft, and do not share a common control system.

Does this mean that it wasn't a bomb, or was not related to a fault in the aircraft?
No, I actually think these are the two most likely scenarios (my gut says it's a problem with the flight control "LAWS" coupled with some mistake by the flight crew, based on incorrect instrument readings).

I think AF and the media simply do not know what happened (as of the latest reports, there has been no CONFIRMED wreckage, and the last stuff the Brazilian Navy thought was from AF447 was conclusively determined to NOT be from this aircraft), so there are a lot of theories floating around.

Apparently the speed sensors were also scheduled for replacement with ones less vulnerable to icing.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=atCz81jNNuUU

This may have played a role in the crew's actions as well, as entering a storm at the wrong speed could cause the aircraft to overstress and break up.

Until they find the FDR and CVR((the black boxes, fairly likely) or a substantial amount of the wreckage (unlikely), there is no real way of knowing.

Doc

1. I have not seen this reported anywhere, are you stating this as a fact, or a wild guess. 2. The Airbus A300 and A330 (AA587 and AF447) are two different aircraft. Although the A330 is based on a stretched A300-600 fuselage, It has new wings, stabilisers and a total fly-by-wire system. Since we still have not located the crash site, we do not have any idea what caused the aircraft to crash (or vanish, if it's never located)...

Airbus uses a sidestick controller, not a yoke (nor a yolk). There is no direct connection between the stick and the aircraft control surfaces. For more info on the Airbus Flight Control Laws, check out: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm According to the ACARS data, they were in ALT2, which corresponds to the "ABNORMAL ALTERNATE LAW w/o Speed Stability" in the referenced URL. Personally, I'll place a small bet on the bomb (or meteor), and a much larger one on the crew doing something stupid, coupled with the inherent instability of the aircraft.

According to most of the sites I've seen, A-12 60-6933 racked up 217 flights, and 406.3 flight hours.

http://www.sr-71.org/