I have only a few little thoughts about this afternoon’s Air France crash at CYYZ.

I’m awestruck that scheduled airlines fly in the sorts of absolutey crappy weather that hit Toronto today. There was a continuously moving/growing thunderstorm cell right over and east of Pearson. It was there the whole afternoon. Realizing the dangers, smaller airplanes would not have flown today. Yet commercial airline traffic did not stop, merely steered around the worst of it if they could. The following picture is a rough, hand-made overlay of an aviation map and weather radar images at the time.

On LiveATC, there are some recordings of air traffic communications in the area. The recorded sector’s controller talked to the troubled flight in the 15:30-16:00 time slot, last about three minutes before the crash. Nothing sounded out of the ordinary (for a lousy dangerous weather day). Early in the next time slot, one can hear the controller informing flights of the accident, and directing them to break off approaches and head off to their alternate airports. Everyone sounded cool and calm.

One weird bit was to hear some other flight declare a “(low) fuel emergency”, then asking to be directed to Syracuse, NY (probably half an hour’s flying away even with a fast jet), rather than landing at the immediately nearby Hamilton or London airports. Very strange – I’ve been waiting to hear of a second airplane crash today.