Air France flight AF 447 has gone missing over the atlantic. The flight left Rio at 2200 GMT on Sunday, and was due to land at 0910 GMT in Paris, but contact was lost at 0130 GMT, some 186 miles northeast of the Brazilian city of Natal. It had 216 passengers and 12 crew on board, including three pilots. The passengers included one infant, seven children, 82 women and 126 men. [more inside]
posted by ArkhanJG on Jun 1, 2009 - 125 comments

"Tower, we're going down, this is PSA." These are the best sites I've found for cockpit voice recordings and air traffic control transcripts for airplane accidents." Feel that mother go"..the second link also has the transcript of the Challenger crew.
posted by JohnR on Jan 8, 2003 - 16 comments

Libyan gets minimum of 20 years for Lockerbie Bombing by Scottish Court. Why are British courts handing out such tiny sentences? After all, in America it's not uncommon for people to receive 99 years for a single murder. Some people are doing over 10 years for rape alone. This Libyan could have easily received the death sentence if he were in the US, as it was similar in scale to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Yet, in the UK, it's possible to kill people through negligence, and get away with it. Just last month an uninsured driver was speeding, killed a pedestrian, fled the scene, and although found guilty, only received a driving ban!

Is the UK overly soft in its sentencing? Or is the USA overly draconian?
posted by wackybrit on Jan 31, 2001 - 23 comments