Miracle baby in China who survives the worst train crash in China

A Miracle has happened in China.

A toddler was found alive in the rubbles of China worst train crash in recent times.

The toddler was rescued about 21 hours after the crash involving two high-speed trains in eastern China that killed at least 35 people including 2 foreign nationals and injured more than 200 others.



Xinhua News Agency said the unconscious child was found early Sunday evening, 24th July 2011 while rescuers were clearing one of the train cars just as the cleanup efforts were almost completed.

China Central Television first reported that the toddler was a boy, but later said a 4-year-old girl.

However, it is not immediately known wether the parents of the toddler were among the passengers of the ill-fated train.



The crash happened on Satuday evening, 23rd July 2011 when a bullet train traveling south from the Zhejiang provincial capital of Hangzhou to Wenzhou city, suddenly lost power after being struck by lightning.

The train then stopped in the track and shortly after was hit from behind by another bullet train.

The first four cars of the moving train fell about 65 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) off the viaduct onto the ground below.

One carriage ended up in a vertical position, leaning against the viaduct.

State broadcaster CCTV said there were more than 900 passengers on the train that stalled, and more than 500 passengers on the train that hit it.

As a result of this crash, 3 high-ranking railway officials were fired and would be subject to investigation and prosecution.

They were Long Jing, head of the Shanghai Railway Bureau; Li Jia, head of the Shanghai railway bureau's committee of the Communist Party of China; and deputy chief of the bureau, He Shengli.

It was the first derailment on China's high-speed rail network since the country launched bullet trains with a top speed of 155 miles (250 kilometers) per hour in 2007.

It was also China's worst train accident since April 2008, when a train traveling from Beijing to the eastern coastal city of Qingdao derailed and crashed into another train, leaving 72 dead and another 416 injured.

This latest incident unravelled yet another mistakes, flaws and weaknesses in China's huge transportation system. Why no signals or communications were relayed to the second train to warn about the danger ahead. Were there any steps taken to avoid the deadly collision?

If the first train communications system malfunctioned as a result of the loss of power, then why not just use mobile phones to notify the Train Station Headquarters about the grave and dangerous situation so that the second train will stop in time before hitting the stalled train?

If this crash happend, then it is possible that the same incidents could happen in China in the future.

European Union wants world aviation blacklist

So does it mean that some airlines, allow air unworthy aircrafts to fly and carry passengers??

Because after two major plane crashes in a spate of less than a month, The European Union, EU wants a full list of airlines around the world, deemed unsafe and not complying to standard flying safety procedures.

On the 1st of June 2009, Air France Airbus Flight 447 from Rio De Janeiro to Paris, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 passengers and crews on board.

Today, June 30, 2009, another Airbus, operated by Yemeni Airlines and carrying 153 passengers and crews, including 3 babies, crashed into the Indian Ocean, off Comoros.

The recent incident has prompted the EU's transport chief to call for a worldwide blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe, as investigators probe the crash of the Yemeni airliner, BBC reported.

"My idea is to propose a world blacklist similar to that in the EU," Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani told reporters.

"If we want to achieve better safety I'm convinced that we need to have a worldwide blacklist, the European blacklist works pretty well in Europe,".

"Otherwise it's going to be difficult to have an adequate level of safety." He said.

Yemenia Air is not on the EU's blacklist, which is updated regularly.

Mr Tajani said he would contact Yemenia to "see what happened and to verify the level of safety" of its operations in Europe.

A French minister said faults were found on the same plane during a check in 2007.

Following the accident overnight, a child has been rescued alive and some bodies have been found.

Reports say the plane was due in the Comoros capital Moroni at about 0230 (2230 GMT on Monday). Most of the passengers had travelled to Yemen's capital Sanaa from Paris or Marseille on a different aircraft.

The EU blacklists dozens of airlines from across the world - most of them from Africa and Asia - meaning they are banned from flying to the 27-nation bloc.

Mr Tajani, quoted by Reuters, said "the plane that crashed was not the plane that travelled in Europe, and that's why we want to control with Yemeni airlines which planes it is using, because the plane that flew in Europe was a good plane, the French did control it".

A Yemenia Airbus A330 flew the Paris-Marseille-Yemen leg of the journey. But in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, the passengers who were flying on to the Comoros boarded a second Yemenia plane, the A310 that crashed.

So does it mean that some airlines, allow air unworthy aircrafts to fly and carry passengers??

In November 2008 the European Commission reported on Yemenia's safety performance, saying the airline had been implementing a "corrective action plan in the area of maintenance and operational discipline in a sustainable manner, to avoid the recurrence of significant safety deficiencies".

Spot inspections of Yemenia planes, known as "ramp checks", had earlier revealed "serious non-compliances", the Commission said.

But it concluded that Yemenia had reacted "appropriately and in a timely manner" to resolve the shortcomings. So the Commission decided not to blacklist Yemenia.

The list includes all of Benin's carriers, airlines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kyrgyzstan and six based in Kazakhstan.

The list also includes One Two Go Airlines of Thailand and Motor Sich Airlines of Ukraine.

The European Commission says Angola and Indonesia have made improvements but it is maintaining a ban on all their airlines.

After the Airbus crash off Brazil, now it happend again

Barely a month after the crash of Air France Airbus A310 from Rio De Janeiro to Paris, claiming more than 200 lives, a crash involving the same type of aircraft was reported today in Comoros.

It was reported that a 5 year old child, miracously survived the crash.

Miracles do happen.

It was God who saved that child.

27tjzkeur3

I noted that there are some similarites here.

Both the Brazil and Comoros incidents involved the same aircraft - an Airbus.

Both incidents were linked to bad weather, in this case strong winds.

Both aircrafts plunged into the sea.

The Air France Airbus A330 flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, on 1st June 2009, claiming 228 lives, was flying from Rio De Janeiro to Paris.

The Yemeni Air Airbus A310 flight that crashed today, 30 June 2009 was on its way from Paris to the island nation of Comoros, via Marseille and Yemen.

The Airbus A310 aircrafts are older than the A330 version.

Both are made by Airbus of course.

Airbus is based in Toulouse, France.

God bless the passengers of both flight, the Air France Airbus A330 flight 447 from Rio De Janeiro to Paris and the Yemeni Air Airbus A310 flight to Comoros from Paris via Marseille and Yemen, today.

Meanwhile, air crash happened before in Comoros in 1996, and it was high profile, for the aircraft was hijacked and the crash was filmed on video by tourists.

On November 23, 1996, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, was hijacked, fifteen minutes out from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, by three Ethiopians seeking political asylum.

The plane crashed in the Indian Ocean near Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125 of the 175 passengers and crew on board. 50 people, including the pilot, Captain Leul Abate, survived the crash.

All the hijackers were presumed dead too.


The video of the hijacked, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 piloted by Leul Abate, crashed landed in the Indian Ocean near Comoros. 125 passengers and crews died, but Abate survived.

Infact, Captain Leul Abate survived 3 aircraft hijackings in his career.

Each time, he survived, including the crash in Comoros.

Air France and Airbus - the French connection

The crash site of Air France Flight 447










Various photos and diagrams of the Pitot Tubes

Could it be a tiny piece of metal caused the crash of a 120 tonne modern aircraft – the Air France Airbus A330 Flight 447..?

Based on media reports, a possible flaw in the tiny piece of metal called the Pitot tubes, used to measure the speed of aircraft, is being investigated in the case of Air France Flight 447 which disappeared in the Atlantic ocean with 228 people on board, while on a flight from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, France on 1st June 2009.



The L-shaped metal Pitot tubes jut from the wing or fuselage of a plane, and are heated to prevent icing. The pressure of air entering the tubes lets sensors measure the speed and angle of flight. An iced-over, blocked or malfunctioning Pitot tube could cause an airspeed sensor to fail, and lead the computer controlling the plane to accelerate or decelerate in a potentially dangerous fashion.

Air France said it began replacing the Pitot tubes on the Airbus A330 model on April 27 after an improved version became available, and will finish the work in the "coming weeks." The monitors had not yet been replaced on the plane that crashed.

So who is at fault here?

Airbus aircrafts are being manufactured in the huge Airbus complex in Toulouse, France.

The aircraft that crashed belongs to Air France.

So there is a French connection here.

Why Airbus and Air France, both from France, cannot sort out the flaws in the Pitot tubes?

Who is at fault and responsible for the crash???

In normal circumstances, aircrafts as huge as Airbus A330 can pass through stormy conditions as well as endure lightnings.

So what exactly happened to the flight on 1st June 2009 at approximately 11.14 pm?

God bless the souls of the 228 passengers of Air France Flight 447. A baby is among the passengers of that flight.

Accidents involving Airbus A 330 aircrafts, happened before.

Notable accidents and incidents involving the Airbus A330 aircrafts :

• On 30 June 1994, an A330 owned by Airbus on a test flight simulating an engine failure on takeoff crashed shortly after take-off from Toulouse, killing all seven on board.

• On 15 March 2000, a 6-year-old Malaysia Airlines A330-300 aircraft was severely damaged by corrosive liquids that were being transported in the cargo hold on a passenger flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. The corrosive liquid oxalyl chloride was mistakenly declared as non-toxic solid hydroxyquinoline. 18 canisters of the substance were transported via Kuala Lumpur intended to transit to Chennai. Five airport workers fell ill as they were unloading baggage from the aircraft at Kuala Lumpur after some of the canisters had leaked and chemicals spilled into the aircraft's cargo hold, resulting in extensive corrosion damage to the fuselage, wing box structure and landing gear. The aircraft was subsequently declared written-off.
On 12 June 2007, a court in Beijing ordered China National Chemical Construction Corp, the owner of the cargo, to pay US$65 million to Malaysia Airlines for the loss.

• On 24 July 2001, two Sri Lankan Airlines A330-243s were destroyed on ground by an LTTE attack at Colombo's Bandaranaike International Airport, Sri Lanka, along with an Airbus A320-200, an Airbus A340-300 and a squadron of military aircraft. Another two planes, an A320 and an A340 were also damaged but have since been repaired

• On 24 August 2001, Air Transat, Flight 236, an A330-243, performed the world's longest recorded glide with a jet airliner after suffering fuel exhaustion over the Atlantic Ocean. The plane flew powerless for 19 minutes and covered 65 nautical miles (120 km) to an emergency landing in the Azores (Portugal). No one was injured, but the aircraft suffered some structural damage and blown tires.

• On 18 July 2003, B-HYA, a Dragonair A330-342 encountered severe turbulence associated with Tropical Depression Koni over the South China Sea, during the flight KA060 from Kota Kinabalu to Hong Kong. 12 crew members and 3 passengers were injured, of which 2 crew members sustained serious injuries, but there were no fatalities. The aircraft landed safely at Hong Kong International Airport.

. On 7 October 2008, VH-QPA, an A330-303 operating Qantas Flight 72, suffered a rapid loss of altitude in two sudden uncommanded pitch down manoeuvres, causing serious injuries while 80 nautical miles (150 km) from Learmonth, Australia. After declaring an emergency, the aircraft landed safely at Learmonth.

• On 1 June 2009, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-203 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people onboard, was reported lost over the Atlantic Ocean.The aircraft crashed in the Atlantic Ocean 400-500 miles northeast of the islands of Fernando de Noronha. All passengers and crew were killed. The cause remains under investigation.

The latest news on the search and rescue of Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean.


File photo of an Air France Airbus A 330 taking off









Photos released by Brazil's Air Force, showing the search and rescue operations.


Brazil's Navy sailors recover debris from the missing Air France jet at the Atlantic Ocean, Monday, June 8, 2009.

RECIFE, Brazil – Search crews recovered the vertical stabilizer from the tail section of an Air France airliner that went down in the Atlantic, Brazil's air force said Monday — a key find that could help locate the black boxes and determine why the jet crashed.

Eight more bodies also were found, bringing the total recovered to 24 since Air France Flight 447 disappeared with 228 people on board, according to Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz.

The discoveries of debris and the bodies are all helping searchers narrow their hunt for the jet's black boxes, perhaps investigators' best hope of learning what happened to the flight. The data and voice recorders are located in the fuselage near the tail section of the jet.

William Waldock, who teaches air crash investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, said that does not mean the black boxes will necessarily be located near where the debris was recovered, "but finding the tail narrows down the area even further."

Brazilian military officials have refused to detail the large pieces of the plane they have found. But a video on the Brazilian air force Web site entitled "Vertical Stabilizer Found" shows video of the piece — which keeps the plane's nose from swinging from side to side — being located and tethered to a ship.

The part had Air France's blue-and-red stripes, was still in its original triangular shape and was not visibly burned.

Waldock — who examined the photos and video of the stabilizer and rudder — said the damage he saw looks like a lateral fracture.

"That would reinforce the idea that the plane broke up in flight," he said. "If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces."

No signs of burn marks on the stabilizer offered scant clues: Any explosion or fire in the fuselage would likely not make its way back to the tail section, according to Waldock. Examining the fracture surfaces will also be key, Waldock said, since it will indicate from what direction the force came that snapped the piece.

Investigators are also looking at the possibility that external speed monitors — called Pitot tubes — iced over and gave dangerously false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm.

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the faulty airspeed readings and the fact the vertical stabilizer was sheared from the jet could be related.

The Airbus A330-200 has a "rudder limiter" which constricts how much the rudder — which is attached to the vertical stabilizer — can move at high speeds. If it were to move too far while traveling fast, it could shear off and take the vertical stabilizer with it.

"If you had a wrong speed being fed to the computer by the Pitot tube, it might allow the rudder to over travel," Goelz said. "The limiter limits the travel of the rudder at high speeds and prevents it from being torn off."

Asked if the rudder or stabilizer being sheared off could have brought the jet down, Goelz said: "Absolutely. You need a rudder. And you need the (rudder) limiter on there to make sure the rudder doesn't get torn off or cause havoc with the plane's aerodynamics."

Goelz also said the bodies recovered will play a role in the investigation. If investigators can determine the identity of a body and know where that person was sitting in the plane, the types of injuries sustained could offer clues into the crash.

The investigation into TWA Flight 800 that crashed off the coast of Long Island, New York, in 1996, found that victims sitting in front of row 30 sustained flash burns. Goelz said that helped investigators confirm that the nose broke off and fire blew back from the fuel tank onto those passengers.

The wreckage and the bodies were found roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, and about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from where the jet was last heard from on May 31.

Some high-tech help is on the way for investigators — two U.S. Navy devices capable of picking up the flight recorders' emergency beacons far below on the ocean floor. What caused the Airbus A330-200 to plunge into the middle of the ocean on May 31 with 228 people on board might not be known until those black boxes are found.

An internal memo sent to Air France pilots Monday and obtained by The Associated Press urges them to refuse to fly unless at least two of the three Pitot sensors on each planes have been replaced.

The leader of another pilots' union, however, said Monday that Pitot troubles probably didn't cause the Flight 447 disaster.

Searchers must move quickly to find answers in the cockpit voice and data recorders, because acoustic pingers on the boxes begin to fade 30 days after crashes.

While large pieces of plane debris has helped narrow the search, it remains a daunting task in waters up to 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) deep and an ocean floor marked by rugged mountains.

Ocean currents over the eight days since the disaster have pushed floating wreckage far and wide, complicating the search, said U.S. Air Force Col. Willie Berges, chief of the U.S. military liaison office in Brazil and commander of the American military forces supporting the search operation.

"In the sense that as the debris drifts away, you're not sure exactly where the black boxes or other parts of the aircraft are on the bottom of the ocean."

The two towed pinger locators the U.S. is sending are expected to arrive in Brazil late Monday and will be dropped into the ocean near the debris field by Thursday, Berges said.

The search is focusing on several hundred square miles (square kilometers) roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.

The listening devices themselves are five-feet long and weigh 70 pounds. One will be towed by a Brazilian ship, the other by a French vessel, slowly trawling in a grid pattern across the search area. The devices can detect emergency beacons to a depth of 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).

Cables attached to the devices lead to on-board computers, enabling a 10-person team that accompanies each device to listen for pings and to visually see them on a screen, like a radar spotting objects in air.

The French nuclear attack submarine Emeraude, arriving later this week, also will try to find the acoustic pings, military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said.

If the pings are located, French deep-water unmanned subs aboard the oceanographic survey ship Pourquoi Pas will attempt to retrieve the boxes from the ocean floor.

Searchers have spotted two airplane seats and debris with Air France's logo, and recovered dozens of structural components from the plane. They had already recovered jet wing fragments, and said hundreds of personal items believed to from passengers were plucked from the water.

France is leading the investigation into the cause, while Brazil focuses on the recovery of bodies and wreckage.

Brazil says the search area lies southeast of the jet's last transmission — automatic messages signaling catastrophic electrical failure and loss of cabin pressure. The messages mean Flight 447 likely broke apart in turbulent weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The location of the wreckage could mean the pilot was trying to turn around in mid-flight.

The L-shaped metal Pitot tubes jut from the wing or fuselage of a plane, and are heated to prevent icing. The pressure of air entering the tubes lets sensors measure the speed and angle of flight. An iced-over, blocked or malfunctioning Pitot tube could cause an airspeed sensor to fail, and lead the computer controlling the plane to accelerate or decelerate in a potentially dangerous fashion.

Air France said it began replacing the Pitot tubes on the Airbus A330 model on April 27 after an improved version became available, and will finish the work in the "coming weeks." The monitors had not yet been replaced on the plane that crashed.

An official with the Alter union, speaking on condition of anonymity because the memo was not publicly released, said there is a "strong presumption" among their pilot members that a Pitot problem precipitated the crash.

The memo says the airline should have grounded all A330 and A340 jets pending the replacement, and warns of a "real risk of loss of control" due to Pitot problems.

France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved in the crash.

Bird vs Jetliner - a confusing law of physics

Sometimes the law of nature is confusing…. And the law of physics are mind boggling….

Consider this..

A bird weighs less than a kilogram….

An average car weighs about 3,000 kilograms…

What will happen if a small bird crash head on to your car – Nothing happened right??

The bird will surely die and you keep on driving.

Ok now, a bird weighs less than a kilogram….

But the average weight of a jetliner, an Airbus A320 in this case is 70 tonnes or 140,000 pounds or 63,636 kilograms…!!!

What happen if a 1 kg bird and a 70 tonnes Airbus A320 collide head on??

Of course the bird will die… and surprisingly, the Airbus will be crippled, loose power and going down and down… and it is obviously ery dangerous for the passengers safety…

This kind of incidents are called "bird and wildlife strikes" and have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to civil and military aviation including in the U.S over the years, as well as loss of life.

Todd Curtis, founder of Airsafe.com and an expert in aviation service said "The risk is real. Birds are a threat every day, but only on rare occasion do you have them causing a crash."

He explains that an Airbus A320, the type of plane involved in the Hudson river crash, in New York, about 12 hours ago, has an engine designed to sustain damage from up to a 4-lb. bird.

"The real hazard is if you have simultaneous damage with a flock of birds. I don't know what happened in this case, but multiple engine failure due to bird strikes can bring an aircraft down," he says.

Today’s world headlines – apart from the daily Israel-Gaza war, are about a US airliner on a domestic flight with 155 people aboard that has ditched into the Hudson River in New York City but with no loss of life.

All 150 passengers, 3 flight attendants and 2 pilots were rescued in freezing weather, with a number later treated for unspecified injuries.

The US Airways Airbus A320 crashed just after taking off from LaGuardia Airport heading for Charlotte, North Carolina.

Officials believe the plane may have collided with a flock of geese. (They really give you a goosebump right??)

In this case, average weight of a full grown goose is 3 kg to 6 kg.

According to an air controllers union spokesman, a US Airways pilot reported a "double bird strike" less than a minute after take-off and asked to return to the ground, before ditching in the Hudson.

The spokesman, Doug Church, said the pilot apparently meant that birds had hit both of the plane's jet engines. It appears the birds involved were a flock of geese.

Putting aside the weird bird-aeroplane theory, the pilot of that plane who managed to save all 155 people aboard — became an instant hero.

The pilot of Flight 1549 was Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, 57, of Danville, California, a former fighter pilot who runs a safety consulting firm in addition to flying commercial aircraft.

Sullenberger, who has flown for US Airways since 1980, flew F-4 fighter jets with the Air Force in the 1970s.

Sullenberger had been studying the psychology of keeping airline crews functioning even in the face of crisis, said Robert Bea, a civil engineer who co-founded UC Berkeley's Center for Catastrophic Risk Management.

Bea said he could think of few pilots as well-situated to bring the plane down safely than Sullenberger.

"When a plane is getting ready to crash with a lot of people who trust you, it is a test.. Sulley proved the end of the road for that test. He had studied it, he had rehearsed it, he had taken it to his heart."

Sullenberger is president of Safety Reliability Methods, a California firm that uses "the ultra-safe world of commercial aviation" as a basis for safety consulting in other fields.