Air France plane lost: Gordon Brown fears Britons were on board – Telegraph Two-engines, fly-by-wire, short-circuit. This is a formula for disaster.

The Prime Minister said that he feared that there were Britons on board the Airbus A330 which dropped off the radar after hitting turbulence over the Atlantic.

Air France officials said privately that they had “no hope” for Flight 447 which lost contact with air traffic control part way into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

As the Brazilian air force mounted a search and rescue operation in the waters around the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, families of passengers gathered at a crisis centre in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport awaiting news.

The Foreign Office said it was “urgently” seeking news on whether there were any Britons on board.

Mr Brown said: “I do fear that there may be some British citizens on board.”

Although the airline said that it could not rule out terrorism, the indications pointed to a serious electrical short circuit which crippled the jet after it passed through storms near the equator.

related link:
Airbus Safety Record

Then there is this:

Probably the most memorable A320 crash to experts was the June 26th 1988 one when an Air France A320 crashed during an air show in France, killing 3 passengers. Officially the crash was blamed on pilot error, many questions remained unanswered including a bizarre development where Switzerland’s institute of forensic evidence and criminology determined that the plane’s flight data recorder had been substituted after the crash, placing doubt on the entire investigation.

And yes, this article is not about the 330. It’s about Airbus ethics.