KEY POINTS:
Call it superstition, call it a healthy sense of self-preservation, but flight-deck crews get nervous about a plane's first flight after a big overhaul.
No doubt, there was a certain sense of anticipation as five New Zealanders and two Germans sought permission from Perpignan air control to take off on the "acceptance flight" of the Airbus 320, registration D-AXLA - the koru freshly repainted on the tail.
The German captain and co-pilot from XL Airways, a subsidiary of the troubled XL Leisure Group, were at the controls. Air New Zealand captain Brian Horrell would have been strapped in at their shoulders as they turned on to the runway.
Seated further back were engineers Noel Marsh, Michael Gyles and Murray White, and Civil Aviation Authority inspector Jeremy Cook.
XL was returning the plane to Air New Zealand after a two-year lease, but first it had been refitted by Airbus at Toulouse, then repainted by EAS Industries in nearby Perpignan.
The plane took off and headed east, out to sea. For 90 minutes, the pilots and engineers tested it with a series of manoeuvres and circuits above the Mediterranean.
These acceptance flights are intended to push a plane to its limits - and that is why "tech crew" approach them with some trepidation.
At 4.45pm, the crew contacted air traffic control at Perpignan, as they descended through flight level 120 - an altitude of about 3650m - on a direct approach to the airport.
But there was a RyanAir flight ahead of them in the landing queue, and so the air controller locked them into the radar and directed the A320 to descend to 1200m.
Philippe Bes, a ham radio enthusiast just a few kilometres from the coast, had been listening to Perpignan tower and heard the controller's direction.
"The pilot read it back and this is the last time we heard the pilot," a shocked Bes wrote on a plane enthusiasts' online forum. "Not a single mayday, nothing."
The time was 4.46pm - and the A320 disappeared from the radar.
XL Airways Germany executives in Frankfurt, the plane's ultimate destination, were initially told that the plane had successfully ditched in the sea. It was not to be.
