"White Light" Seen Where Air France Flight Lost

(Madrid, Spain) The Air France flight 447 disaster on Monday may have been viewed by the pilot, co-pilot and a passenger on a Spanish airliner.

The captain of a Spanish airliner flying in the same area as the Air France plane when it disappeared claims to have seen "an intense flash of white light", the company's director general said Thursday.

Flight 974 between Lima and Madrid was flying "slightly further north" than the ill-fated Airbus when the captain "saw something which seemed potentially interesting" for crash investigators, Jose Maria Llodra told AFP.

"Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds," the captain wrote in the report, Llodra said.

Obviously, this report lends credence to the theory that Flight 447 experienced a possible explosion from a bomb, a familiar terrorist tactic.

I'm unconvinced on the terrorism angle simply because terrorists typically rely upon wide media exposure of their attacks and frequently take immediate credit for each incident. To my knowledge, that hasn't happened.

Of course, there's always the possibility that a bomb could have been used as a method of assassination where the number of collateral victims was of no concern to the perpetrator. A Colombian drug lord used the tactic a number of years ago.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.


[Update 6/6/09]

For some unknown reason, the original source of the information on this story has been spiked. Consequently, the Google cache link is replacing the former Expatica link. Thanks to a commenter.