I've never paid much attention to the news channel France24, but from Monday morning until the moment I reluctantly had to board a flight for Singapore on Tuesday, it was on non-stop at home and in the office as I followed the story of Air France flight 447.
I'm not sure if 2009 is shaping up to be a good or bad year for the aviation sector, but the crash in Buffalo of a Q400 (an aircraft I fly frequently) in February, followed by the cartwheeling of a FedEx freighter down the runway at Tokyo's Narita (an airport I use frequently), already had me on edge long before the events of early Monday morning over the Atlantic.
It had been bad enough to learn some weeks ago – from a National Transportation Safety Board report published in Aviation Week – how overworked and underpaid regional airline pilots are in the US, and that fatigue might have played a part in the Buffalo crash. It was even more alarming to see how there's very little a triple-engine jet can do when caught in cross-winds in the final stages of its approach at one of the safest airports in the world. The loss of an Air France A330 mid-flight between Rio and Paris is more unsettling still.