Travel Safety Update - Latin America / Caribbean.

Jun 14, 2009

Air France, Airbus

As search teams pulled the tail section of an Air France jetliner from the Atlantic on Monday, attention focused on violent thunderstorms that may have contributed to the accident. Beyond the reach of land-based radars, aircraft flying over the ocean rely on cockpit radar that may not fully reveal a storm's intensity. Both Boeing and Airbus are offering more advanced systems as options on new jets, while United Airlines and other carriers are streaming weather updates to pilots' laptop computers. Meanwhile, recovery of the plane's vertical stabilizer could help narrow the search for voice and data recorders, which are usually carried in the tail section of an aircraft. Jun 9, 2009

Air France, Airbus

Brazilian search teams located and recovered the vertical stabilizer from the downed Air France A330-200 around 600 mi. northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago and had found at least 24 bodies as of late. Jun 9, 2009

Air France, Airbus

A French nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment began searching on Wednesday for the flight recorders of an Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic last week, the French military said. The Emeraude was sent to the area to hunt the "black box" recorders, which may help explain the disaster and which are believed to lie on the ocean floor. Investigators face a long search for clues to what went wrong when the Airbus A330 jet disappeared on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris killing all 228 people on board, French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said. "Up to now, the time frame for the search for victims and debris has been of the order of days or a week. Here, at the very least, it's going to be of the order of weeks or months," he told LCI television. The Air France (AIRF.PA) flight is believed to have run into trouble when it hit a violent storm midway over the Atlantic Ocean and potential problems with speed sensors have become one of the focal points of the inquiry. Other causes have not been ruled out, but France's interior ministry said on Wednesday that two passengers whose names had been identified as suspicious turned out not to be a concern. The website of the French weekly L'Express had quoted a French military spokesman as saying the names could be linked to Islamic terrorism. Jun 9, 2009

Air France, Airbus

Brazilian search teams located and recovered the vertical stabilizer from the downed Air France Airbus A330-200 around 600 mi. northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago and had found at least 24 bodies as of late yesterday. Jun 9, 2009

Aviacsa

Aviacsa, the Monterrey-based LCC grounded temporarily by Mexican authorities that accused it of maintenance irregularities, said on its website that it resumed service last Saturday. A judge nullified the suspension, according to press reports. Jun 11, 2009

Cancun

At least 12 of the 40 hotels that closed their doors in Quintana Roo due to the fall in tourism as a result of the sanitary emergency brought about by the H1N1 flu, reopened. Eight of the hotels that opened again are located in the Maya Riviera and the other four are located in Cancun. Jun 11, 2009

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