Passenger plane goes down off Sicilian coast

[ECH1969]

ROME - A Tunis Air passenger plane went down in the sea Saturday off the Sicilian coast on a flight from Bari, Italy, to Tunisia, the Palermo airport tower said.

"It landed in the sea," Vito De Blasi, a tower official told The Associated Press. Alberto Pellegrino, a spokesman for the air traffic safety agency ENAV told SKY TV TG24 that rescuers were on their way to the craft with 35 passengers on board but the passengers' fate wasn't clear.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8849746/

[Mr. Peanut]

1. Mercury is Retrograde...

until the middle of August. Let’s hope the Shuttle makes it down safely.

[MindPilot]

3. Huh?

The Shuttle is in orbit around *Earth*, not Mercury.

:shrug:

[Mr. Peanut]

12. Mercury governs travel...

Mercury stationary retrograde on 23 Jul 2005 at 20Leo28
Mercury stationary direct on 16 Aug 2005 at 08Leo45

Travel is considered tricky whenever Mercury is apparently retrograde in its orbit as viewed from earth. Note the Toronto crash, although fortunate for the passengers, occurred August 3, 2005. Since then there have been several flight problems. Now the shuttle must land in California rather than Florida.

A quick prayer for the safety of the Discovery crew.

[Mr. Peanut]

13. Shuttle lands safely...

Thank you, God.

[DS1]

4. Thanks for the new catch-line

I'm going to use that everytime I hear some bad news.

[Tesla]

5. Only till the 15th!!

then its back on track.

[DS1]

6. Nah, I'm using it all year

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Helpfully, astrologyweekly.com advised people to go on vacation

while Mercury was in a retrograde phase. I'd expect a lot of the passengers travelling on a Saturday from Italy to Tunisia were on vacation, and I'm sure they were extremly grateful they took the advice - if they survived, that is. :sarcasm:

[MindPilot]

2. Evidently god is finished miraculously protecting airliners.

:yoiks:

[HereSince1628]

8. Yeah, it seemed like a long run without a crash, was it really?

Is this just one of those wrong impression things I get?

[MindPilot]

9. Well, you know aerodynamics--like evolution--is only

a theory.

Planes crash because schools don't teach alternate theories of levitation.

[uppityperson]

10. Update, at least 9 dead, 20 rescued (6 injured) per BBC

At least nine people have been killed when a Tunisian passenger plane made an emergency landing in the sea off the coast of the Italian island of Sicily.
The Tunis Air plane was carrying 39 passengers and crew on board.

More than 20 have been rescued; six were seriously injured and transported by helicopter to hospital, the coastguard said. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4127636.stm

[sabra]

11. Tunisair plane crashes off Sicily,at least 10 dead

<<SNIP>>
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L06192727.htm

Tunisair plane crashes off Sicily,at least 10 dead
06 Aug 2005 17:54:52 GMT

Source: Reuters

PALERMO, Sicily, Aug 6 (Reuters) - At least 10 people were killed and 14 injured when their Tunisair charter flight crashed into the sea near Sicily on Saturday after reporting a technical fault, emergency services said.

The chief magistrate on the island off Italy's southern tip put the death toll at 14 and said five people were missing.

The pilot of the plane, an ATR 72 carrying 39 people to Tunisia, made a distress call to Palermo airport at 3:24 p.m. (1324 GMT), requesting to make an emergency landing, Italy's civil aviation authority told Reuters.

<</SNIP>>