With no firm evidence yet available, it seems unusual that AF feel able to publicly state the cause at this stage.

Maybe they have information that they have not yet made available to the public?

Regarding ships
 

It's highly unlikely that the watch on a bridge will be looking out for falling aircraft; their view of the sky - from inside - is practically nil.

Having said that you can be pretty certain that all ships in the possible vicinity were alerted quickly and that at the very least their courses would be altered to cross the possible wreckage path. Ships traveling between East Coast South America and Europe are pretty much under the flight path and I would guess that at least twenty commercial vessels right now will have all the crew that's awake on a sharp lookout.

By the way Automatic Vessel Identification System or AIS only works in vhf range.

Message is normally sent via ACARS after several sensors confirm a failure (data are checked by a maintenance oriented system). So the sending of the failure message is not immediate. I would say the possibility of the message being sent during the break up is highly unlikely.

Sparelung:

The flight crew would breathe 100% Oxygen under pressure at FL350. Sure it wont last forever, but longer than the PAX 15mins oxygen supply, and one would think give enough time for crew to find a suitable exit strategy. If the path behind was clear of CB activity, turn around and fly out the way you came in!?

The reports of texts from the plane would not be the first tasteless hoax of this type. Someone was prosecuted in Greece, I believe, for pretending to have received a text from someone on board the Helios 737 that crashed near Athens.

Yeap, in Cyprus, where i come from. It was a foreigner who was at the time living and working in Cyprus, and thought of playing the cruel farce of claiming he received an sms from a friend passenger on the plane that he saw the pilot of the plane turning blue in his face and running towards the back of the plane. And that the passengers were also freezing and that the alleged friend was scared.

Later on investigation prooved that he didn't know anyone on board and he was arrested when he admited the farce.

I think he (or his lawyer) later claimed he was either a lunatic or suffered from depression.

And surely the ACARS would pick up a lot more failures if it was breaking up.

For what it's worth ACARS is a fairly primitive digital system, invented in the 1970's and works in a similar way to Telex.

Flying through thunderheads
 

Responding to messages implying that airliners studiously avoid CBs:
As a scientist and relatively frequent SLF mostly in the US, I'd say that incidental CB penetration is fairly common. I've experienced many episodes over the years, usually at high altitudes when the PF is attempting to stay at the ATC assigned altitude and thread between overshooting tops hidden in the anvil cirrus. The last one was just a week ago over Colorado. As heard on Ch 9 on UAL, a missed ATC check-in led to confusion when the pilot requested a diversion around a CB. We were denied the turn and clipped the convective tower leading to violent updrafts and downdrafts for about 30 sec. Just about every flight over terrain in the southwest or anywhere in the southeast this time of year is a roulette wheel for convective excitement given the volume of air traffic around/over storms, and the Alps in summer speak for themselves. I think the biggest problem could be dry CB tops which don't show up well (or at all) on the WX radar (especially a problem over Africa, I gather). Flying through anvil cirrus or at night, I suspect the PF won't see it until the plane is inside it. Certainly, I have experienced night-time ITCZ CB penetration on the way to Australia where I saw the clouds and lightening prior to the turbulence. Of course, most of these are non-events in terms of fatal consequences (just a little more fatigue on the airframe and PF/CC/SLF nerves), but citing the manuals on CB avoidance doesn't seem to capture the true richness of today's flight environment. As to how CB penetration guidelines or lore may have contributed to today's tragedy, I only speculate, but normalization of deviance can be a killer.
Apologies for the non-pilot post - back to lurking...

To bring some corrections:

The passengers came from numerous countries:

Paris, 01 juin 2009 - 19h41 heure locale
Communiqué N° 5
Air France est en mesure de confirmer les nationalités des passagers qui se trouvaient à bord du vol AF 447 du 31 mai 2009, disparu entre Rio de Janeiro et Paris-Charles de Gaulle. Cette liste a été constituée sur la base des informations fournies par les autorités brésiliennes.

1 Africain du Sud
26 Allemands-Germans
2 Américains- US
1 Argentin
1 Autrichien- Austrians
1 Belge
58 Brésiliens
5 Britanniques
1 Canadien
9 Chinois
1 Croate
1 Danois
2 Espagnols
1 Estonien
61 Français
1 Gambien
4 Hongrois
3 Irlandais-Irish
1 Islandais
9 Italiens
5 Libanais
2 Marocains
1 Néerlandais-Netherlands
3 Norvégiens-Norwegians
1 Philippin
2 Polonais
1 Roumain
1 Russe
3 Slovaques
1 Suédois-Swedes
6 Suisses
1 Turc

Unlike the hudson ditching, the air france ditching into the atlantic would be faced with;
-sea swell
-unstable atmospheric conditions
-night - no visual references
-no immediate rescue

Not the best conditions :(

1 Africain du Sud-South African
26 Allemands-Germans
2 Américains- US
1 Argentin-Argentinan
1 Autrichien- Austrians
1 Belge-Belgian
58 Brésiliens-Brazilian
5 Britanniques-Great Britain
1 Canadien-Canadian
9 Chinois-Chinese
1 Croate-Croatian
1 Danois-Danish
2 Espagnols-Spanish
1 Estonien-Estonian
61 Français-French
1 Gambien-Gambian
4 Hongrois-Hungarian
3 Irlandais-Irish
1 Islandais-Icelandic
9 Italiens-Italian
5 Libanais-Lebanese
2 Marocains-Maroccans
1 Néerlandais-Netherlands (Holland)
3 Norvégiens-Norwegians
1 Philippin-Philippino
2 Polonais-Polish
1 Roumain-Romanian
1 Russe-Russian
3 Slovaques-Slovakian
1 Suédois-Swedes
6 Suisses-Swiss
1 Turc-1 Turkish

Composites and Lightning Strikes
 

In the early to mid 90s I was doing air to air videos for kitplane manufacturers. Glassair in Arlington, WA was one of our clients.

There was great concern over the effects of lightning strikes on composite airframes. When hit by lightning, they often exploded.

The solution was to incorporate a wire mesh into the composite layers.

Glassair was also doing contract research for Boeing at the time.

sottens, re buoyancy and DFDR/CVR.

It's not a stupid question; many safety experts and engineers have suggested and even worked on possible designs.

In essence there are some serious problems associated with a design that would work as intended, and with the requisite VERY high reliability. One simple example of a problem with the concept is that, in order for the recorder to not remain trapped under whatever sturcture or parts or debris it might be underneath, it would have to be "jettisoned" somehow, rather than simply "deployed". That in itself leads to a myriad of additional design, engineering, certification, and other issues. As always, any resultant action is a function of cost versus relative benefit. In this example, there are very few instances where recorders have not been retrieved -- regardless of ocean depth or location -- so there is really no incentive to spend the enormous amounts of time and money to change the current specs.

> how many bars of pressure can the black box take, because were that's situated on
> the aircraft surely has taken it down to the bottom of the atlantic withit, IF being the
> case. That blackbox will crush.

The US specifications, which I think are similar to those in other countries, require that they withstand depths of up to 20,000 feet.

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/CVR_FDR.htm

Note also that the NTSB site suggests that the pinger can be received at up to 14,000 feet (2.65 statute miles), though the way the description is written, one could infer that it won't work below 14,000 feet. In any event, a surface ship wouldn't pick up the signal if the box was at a depth of more than 14,000 feet without some sort of towed antenna.

Fly by wire
 

i am a non professional. I would like to know what the role of "fly by wire" could be in lightning storms. Presumably such aircraft have very high protection against electrical surges ? Are FBW aircraft more prone to control problems during electrical storms ?

and in any case this technology might be overtaken by improvements in data comms that allow key data to be copied to a server in a safe location during flight.

Sky says the presidents deliverd the news to the familys.
Its now very much a serch and recover mission.

In answer to the post about a flight not being cleared to avoid and hitting the cb I'd like to add my two cents.

Don't ask for avoidance. Tell them you're avoiding. That's how I do it, and I've never had a problem yet. What they do to reshuffle what they have to reshuffle is their problem - but I'm not flying into a !!!!storm.:E

location found (sorta)
 

Air France annonce avoir localisé la zone où l'avion a disparu lundi matin, Amériques - Information NouvelObs.com

Rough translation from Google reads:

"Air France announced it has located the area where the plane disappeared Monday morning. The CEO of Air France says that the area was located "a few tens of miles around. Des passagers de 33 nationalités dont 61 Français, 58 Brésiliens et 26 Allemands se trouvaient à bord de l'appareil. Passengers of 33 nationalities including 61 French, 58 Brazilians and 26 Germans were on board the aircraft."