From its cruise altitude, the airplane’s gliding distance would also be about 100 miles, but consider that for the debris to drift that same 100 miles it would only take a drift rate of 2 knots, yielding a wide range of possibilities as to the nature of the aircraft’s descent to the water below.
Many parallels between AirAsia 8501 and Air France 447 in June 2009 are obvious. Both aircraft were lost in thunderstorm areas of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Both crashed at sea where floating debris drifted for days from the point of contact with the sea before being discovered, and both were sophisticated fly-by-wire Airbus aircraft (though different models).
While flying into a thunderstorm is always to be avoided, it was not likely the sole cause of the accident. The reported requests by the crew to deviate course and change altitude seeking to avoided thunderstorm cells and turbulence are completely normal.
The weather in the ITCZ has some unique qualities compared to your average thunderstorm over land. The storms are driven by the convergence of airflow patterns between the northern and southern hemispheres of the Earth, in addition to the usual factors of warm moist air and unstable atmospheric conditions.
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