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Mixed reports; Airbus A320 on test flight in France, with 5-7 persons on board, either German Airline Stardust, or CNN reporting Air New Zealand, crashed into sea??
Seven people were on board an Airbus A320 aircraft, belonging to Air New Zealand, which has ditched off the coast of France during a training flight.
A spokeswoman for the French coast guard Gendarmerie Maritime says the precise location of the twin-jet is unclear, but that the organisation believes it to be between 1km and 5km from the coast near Perpignan.
She adds that the jet belonged to Air New Zealand and is lying 20-30m below the surface of the water.
The condition of the seven occupants is unknown, she says. The aircraft came down at about 17:00.
Airbus has so far been unable to provide any further details.
Google Map Airbus flight line at Toulouse.
Google Earth aircraft reported as down 1-5 km off the coast of Perpignan.
Aircraft had just been returned to Air New Zealand and was on an acceptance flight, with 2 German, and 5 New Zealanders, including two senior Air New Zealand pilots.
Aircraft was on approach to land at LFMP and was said to be in a steep descending turn when it impacted the water. Said to be a non-survivable accident, thus rescue crews are performing recovery of debris.
Aircraft Photos was the 2,500 Airbus A320.
Not not even bothering to look right now?
Sounds funny 
… no way this could have resulted in pilot error. Something mechanically had to have gone wrong, maybe a problem with the computer system that controls flight surfaces? Sounds a lot like the B-2 crash in Guam a while back where a computer system failed on takeoff and brought it down.
It rather reminds me of the 1980s crash of the Air France A320 caused by a failure of the fly-by-wire controls.
Which accident? I recall the “decent” issue which was a setting of the autopilot and the “demo” flight that went into the trees. I recall the latter being more of a “spool up” issue of the engines than any failure. Wasn’t there an accident in Central America a few years ago after a repaint? Cause was tracked back to the static port(s) still being masked.
Yup. I don’t read it as I failure of the FBW. Perhaps a coding change or change in how it was flown, but I don’t see any true failure. Maybe just semantics on my part.
The Airbus A320 that crashed in the Mediterranean last Thursday had just been painted in Air New Zealand livery and The Australian says investigators are probing whether the fresh paint led to the crash. Although only two bodies have been recovered, it’s assumed all seven people aboard the four-year-old aircraft died in the crash. The plane had recently been rented to a German airline and was in the process of being returned to Air New Zealand. The cockpit voice recorder has been recovered but the flight data recorder, which will likely provide more insight to the paint-clogged sensor theory, has not.
Meanwhile family and friends have arrived in France to mourn the loss of their loved ones including five from New Zealand: Auckland pilot Captain Brian Horrell, 52, Christchurch engineers Michael Gyles, 49, and Noel Marsh, 35, and Auckland engineer Murray White, 37 and Wellington engineer Jeremy Cook. Two German pilots who died have not been identified.