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

That's 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 takeoff was unremarkable. The plane reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.

The passengers read and watched movies and slept. 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 Longavisha.

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.

There's a long flight. Air France flight 447.

It was a long flight.

So they had two copilots, known as first officers, and one captain.

They would fly the plane in shifts. two of them flying while one slept.

We know that the flight proceeded normally for several hours.

...