Brazilian military authorities have found the wreckage of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said June 2. The wreckage appears to be strewn along a three-mile trajectory 745 miles northeast of Brazil. Details are scarce as to the cause of the crash, and there are a number of questions that will need to be answered as investigators move forward on processing evidence from the crash. The flight appears to have left Rio de Janeiro close to its scheduled departure time on the evening of May 31. At approximately 0214 GMT on June 1, the aircraft — an Airbus A330-200 — relayed a dozen automated messages received by Air France over a four-minute period, indicating that the plane was experiencing electrical failures and a loss of cabin pressure. Six minutes later, the plane failed to make scheduled radio contact with flight controllers in Dakar, Senegal. During this time, there was no communication with the pilots. The last communication between air traffic control and the pilots indicated that they were experiencing turbulence due to anticipated weather conditions. At 1115 GMT, Air France declared that it had failed to contact Flight 447, indicating that the aircraft had most likely crashed. (click map to enlarge) It is too soon to draw any conclusions about the possible causes of this plane crash. In reality, the cause and origin of the crash will not be known for quite some time. That the crash happened at sea compounds this, because it makes collecting evidence much more difficult, as much of the debris now rests at the bottom of the sea. A number of possibilities exist that investigators will consider as they seek clues to the destruction of the airplane. These possible causes include mechanical and electrical failures, weather conditions and human causes (which can range from pilot error to terrorism). At this point in time, none of these possibilities can be taken off the table. As search crews plumb the depths of the Atlantic to recover evidence from the crash, the potential recovery of the craft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders would be enormously helpful in determining the cause of the crash. The potential mechanical issues are myriad on aircraft as complex as a modern, wide-body commercial airliner. Suffice it to say that mechanical failures are more likely to become catastrophic when the plane is relatively close to the ground, and not at cruising altitude, where there is more time for the pilot to recognize and compensate for that failure. Also, in most cases, a two-engine aircraft like the A330-200 should be able to remain airborne even with only one engine. The A330-200 also has a modern, "fly-by-wire" system, meaning it relies on computer-generated electrical signals to control the airplane. The system has quadruple redundancies. An electrical failure could conceivably be caused by a lightning strike (Flight 447 had been flying through an equatorial thunderstorm when it failed to contact air traffic control). Modern commercial aircraft are capable of handling most strikes, however, and by some estimates, most aircraft experience lightning strikes more than once a year without any appreciable damage. Nevertheless, should power to the aircraft be completely lost and the crew unable to recover it, the situation could become dire. Though there is no indication whatsoever that the incident resulted from a terrorist bombing (and indeed, a number of spokespeople have discounted the possibility, as no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the crash), the midflight crash offers an opportunity to examine the phenomenon of a terrorist "trial run." Militant groups have long focused on attacking aircraft due to their symbolic nature, fragility and the drama or "terror" factor that attacks against aircraft instill. Large airliners also provide a discrete group of victims in a confined and vulnerable space. Since the beginning of the recent wave of jihadist terrorism in the early 1990s, al Qaeda and its jihadist brethren have demonstrated a fixation on aircraft. This was not only seen in operations like Bojinka in late 1994 and 1995, but in the 9/11 operation, the Library Tower Plot, Richard Reid's December 2001 attempt to bring down American Airlines Flight 63 and most recently in the foiled August 2006 plot to destroy multiple airliners flying from the United Kingdom to the United States using liquid explosives. One of the interesting operational quirks observable from past big jihadist aircraft plots is their use of trial runs. In the case of the 9/11 attacks, the attackers used trial runs to get comfortable with the layout of the planes, passing through airport security with their gear and to gain a solid understanding of crew procedures during the flights. In the Bojinka plot, Abdel Basit used a test flight to see if his baby doll devices could get by security and if it was strong enough to take down an airliner. The attack on Philippines Air 434 showed that the concealment was effective, but demonstrated that the main explosive charge was not enough to take down the aircraft. This caused Basit to decide to add a liquid explosive supplemental charge to make sure his devices did the job when he launched the big operation against multiple airliners. (However, he caught his apartment on fire while manufacturing the liquid explosives, leading to the plot's discovery.) Tactically, Richard Reid's December 2001 shoe bomb attempt appears to be another "proof of concept" attempt. Although many people laugh at Reid and the shoe bomb idea, the plot very nearly succeeded. The FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration tested a replica of the Reid shoe bomb device on a wide-body aircraft and found that it had a devastating effect on the plane. Had Reid succeeded in detonating his device over the mid-Atlantic, it could have taken months for the cause of the crash to be determined. In that time, many other shoe devices could have been deployed. As it was, the plot's failure resulted in immediate passenger shoe checks — a practice that continues today — and the end of the usefulness of the shoe bomb design for jihadist plotters. Though there is not yet any indication that terrorism caused this crash (and whatever the origin, the true cause of the crash may never be conclusively determined), if Flight 447 was taken down by some novel means of smuggling explosives on board an aircraft — proving the concept — we could see a wider employment of this new method in a modern iteration of the planes operation — a "Bojinka goes to Rio," if you will. If this crash were the result of a successful trial run, it would not be practical for any militant group to claim responsibility for the crash until the remainder of its resources had been deployed. In light of this, it would be prudent for airline security personnel and airport screeners in the region to be on heightened alert until the cause of the crash is determined with certainty.