Page 23 - Aa320 News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

One of the world's most popular planes. cnn's miguel marquez looks at the airbus 8320 from nose to tale. >> reporter: worldwide, more than 3,600 airbus 8320s are flown by more than 400 airlines, charter companies, and private entities. eight american carriers combined have more than 450 a-320s in their fleet, among the biggest, jetblue, united, delta and us airways, 69 each. in the short to medium range world, the a320 is second only to boeing's 737, which has delivered nearly 8,000 of its ultra popular planes. the a320 family of planes includes the a-318, 319, and 321, all similar in range an...

A320 and a-330 is very much the same. their flight decks are the same. pilots have flown a 320 you can convert to a 330 or the other way around within a few days because servicing so familiar to him. >> we know weather was a factor in both flights. there were thunderstorms at the time and both of these flights were that in inter tropical convergence zone. i one that means something significant too because thunderstorms are somewhat unique in this zone of sorts, is that right? >> you got to be this is happening in the same zone but in very different seasons. this is happening in the monsoon sea...

In the case of the air asia flight they formed in the morning. had much of the same effect. the danger lurking within these storms, pilots are very alert to are these extreme down and up currents so they can fly through each of those conditions successively and that cause very violent turbulence. as i said i think the difference here is that there's a lot of rain involved in this scenario which there wasn't in the south atlantic at the time. >> okay. we do know that air france flight though had some problems with icing and, in fact the air speed sensing probes became very clogged. pilots lost ...

In october 2008. since then, the airline says it has taken off some 13,600 times, logging approximately 23,000 hours in the air. airbus 8501 was carrying more than 18,000 pounds of fuel when it departed, enough for about three and a half hours of flight. shortly before disappearing the pilot asked if he could ascend to 38,000 feet. that request was denied. the a320 is certified to fly up to 39,000 feet. its absolute limit is 42,000 feet, weight, temperature, weather, and fuel all play a role in how high the plane can fly safely. in its history, 16 a320 planes have crashed, nine of those crashe...

That passengers are very uncomfortable. 38 minutes into the flight the pilot requested to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet. at first air traffic controllers gave the okay but then told the pilot to wait until six nearby planes cleared the air space. four minutes later the airbus 320 disappeared. there was no mayday or pan pan, which is a lower level distress call. some experts believe that's an indication of a catastrophic event. but remember the air france crash in 2009 also happened in bad weather with no distress call. and it turned out the pilots there spent minutes trying to save tha...