Because planes don't just fall from the sky

Sense this
Miami, FL
January 2011

Two years ago, today, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A-330 with 228 people on board, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio De Janeiro to Paris.

State-of-the-art jetliners don't just fall out of the sky for no apparent reason. Indeed, finding out why an accident happens at all is crucial to future flight safety. Every crash teaches the industry something they didn't know previously, or initiates dialog and debate that inevitably leads to safer aircraft and procedures.

The trouble with Flight 447 was the maddeningly long time it took for searchers to locate the cockpit voice and flight data recorders at the bottom of the ocean. These devices, fitted with sonar pingers that emit sounds for upwards of 30 days after a crash, were finally found last month when a painstaking search process finally found the bulk of the wreckage. Thankfully, investigators were able to extract the data from the black boxes, and they've been slowly filling in the gaps of this ill-starred flight.

I know that commercial flight remains by far the most statistically safe form of travel. I know that I'm infinitely more likely to get smacked by a semi on the way to the airport. But I'm sure some of the passengers on this flight felt the same way when they boarded: You just never know. And any time some investigative justice is served on the cruel forces that seemingly randomly end the lives of hundreds of people who simply wanted to get home, it's a small victory for the rest of us.

Your turn: Do you feel safe when you fly? Why? Why not?

About this photo: The Air France crash investigation has zeroed in on the pitot tubes. A possible failure in these critical speed-sensing devices may have resulted in erroneous and conflicting information being fed to the flight computers - and sadly, at the time of the crash, Airbus had already warned its customers that the tubes installed on A-330s were subject to freezing and should be replaced. When you look at the outside of a plane, the tubes look so inconsequential. Yet it's often the smallest component that has the most significant impact. If only they had been replaced before that flight...