This is 99% Invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

On the evening of May 31st, 2009, 216 passengers, three pilots, and nine flight attendants

boarded an air-france flight in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The flight was headed across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris.

A warning.

This story might not be a good one to listen to if you're sitting on a plane right now.

This producer Katie Mingle letting you know that the closest exit could be behind you.

The plane that took off that evening from Rio was an Airbus 330.

The take-off was unremarkable.

The plane reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.

The passengers read and watched movies and slipped.

As they flew over the Atlantic Ocean passing the equator, there was a lot of thunderstorm

activity.

Quite typical.

Nothing really unusual about that.

That's William Longovese.

He wrote an article for Vanity Fair about this flight and has written extensively about

aviation.

He also used to be a pilot.

So I spent many, many thousands of hours in cockpits.

Which means he's particularly well suited to tell the story of air-france flight 447.

...