For the past two days, I’ve been completely spellbound by the unfolding mystery of what happened to Air France 447.

There’s something of the locked-room mystery about the tale: passengers board a flight on a late autumn evening in Rio de Janeiro.  Among their numbers are the presidents of major corporations, doctors, lawyers, cabinet ministers, and, for a dash of complete exoticism, a handsome young prince, fourth in line to the Brazilian throne (never mind that the monarchy was abolished in the 1890s). The plane takes off, bound for Paris.  Dinner is served, the lights are dimmed.  Everything is routine.

Four hours into the flight, the plane passes over the northeastern coast of Brazil, heading for international waters.  The pilots report to Brazilian air traffic control that they’re passing out of their jurisdiction, and, as is usual when passing into an area that’s not covered by radar, they report the time that they expect to cross in to Senegalese airspace.  Some time later, the pilot reports thunderstorms and severe turbulence.  Then … nothing.  The plane never arrives in Senegalese airspace.  Calls fly back and forth between Recife and Dakar — no one can see the plane.  It never shows up on radar screens in Casablanca or Tolouse.  With the exception of a few automated messages received on a maintenance computer in Paris indicating that something has gone horribly, terribly wrong, the plane has, quite literally, disappeared.

There’s a compelling story in here, even if we try to fictionalize it.  But it’s not fiction, it really happened.  And, like lots of people everywhere, I want to know more.  Am I morbid?  Why?

There is, of course, the fear factor.  I’ve spent a good deal of time on airplanes, including ones that cross the ocean.  In less than a month, I’ll be flying transatlantic again–I’ve lost count, but I think this trip will be number 15 or 16.  I want to know what happened to AF 447 because I want some sort of reassurance that it’s not likely to happen on any flight I’m planning to take in the near future.

And then there’s the morbid part: what would it have been like to be on that plane?  *shivers*

For the past two days, I’ve spent a bit of time regularly checking updates as reported by the foreign media — back and forth between the Brazilian papers Folha do Sao Paolo and O Globo, the French newspaper Le Monde, and the message boards on Airliners.Net where polyglots helpfully translate articles in languages I can’t read.  (As a Spanish speaker, I find Portuguese easier to read than French … although clicking on the video clips that Globo has posted turned out to be pointless because, although I may be able to read Portuguese, I can’t understand the spoken language at all).

I’m also learning things about what the American press considers worthwhile.  One of the reasons why I had to break out the Spanish-Portuguese dictionary is that the English language media is doing a pretty bad job at updating the story regularly.  The Brazilian press reports every latest development, whereas BBC is running several hours behind, and CNN?  Fuggedaboutit.  Granted, it wasn’t a flight that came from the US, and there were other important goings on in the world yesterday (I refer, of course, to the Bruno/Eminem teabagging incident), but I still couldn’t help being a little snarky when I noticed that CNN became far more interested once it was known that two American citizens were on board.

Today, the world has caught up.  And the mystery is starting to clear, at least a little: although the aircraft would have run out of fuel a couple of hours after it missed its scheduled arrival time in Paris yesterday, it wasn’t until Brazil’s Minister of Defense announced that wreckage found in the Atlantic 700 miles northeast of Recife has been positively identified as belonging to Air France 447 that the media began using the word “crash.”

It’s a stunning tragedy — I feel a knot in my stomach whenever I see the images of relatives and friends arriving at the airports in Rio and Paris, trying to get more information.  They want what we all want: we want to know what happened. We want to find out it was quick.  We want to find out they didn’t know it was coming.  And we’re all pretty sure we’re wrong.

And I just can’t stop watching.