CARACAS, Venezuela -- An Air France plane carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris has disappeared off the Brazilian coast after hitting strong turbulence, officials reported Monday morning.
Air France plane with 228 people on board was presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Monday after hitting heavy turbulence during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.The airline offered its condolences to the families of the passengers, making clear it did not expect to find survivors.
At least 60 of those on board were French, roughly 60 were Brazilians and two were Slovaks, their countries said.Brazilian officials feared that the Airbus A330 had gone down with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard.
The Brazilian air force had begun search and rescue operations in the Atlantic Ocean off the Brazilian coast, near the small island of Fernando de Noronha, a lieutenant colonel told Brazil's TV Globo.
Air France said that the airplane had sent an automatic signal four hours after it took off indicating that it had electrical problems, while going through turbulence. The airline reported a short-circuit aboard Flight 447.
The plane left Rio at 7 p.m. Sunday bound for Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. It never arrived.Air France said the Airbus flew into stormy weather four hours after take-off from Brazil and soon afterwards sent an automatic message reporting electrical faults.
A company spokesman said several of the plane's mechanisms had malfunctioned.
"It is probably a combination of circumstances that could have led to the crash," he said, adding that the airliner might have been hit by lightning.
Aviation experts said lightning strikes on planes were common and were not enough alone to explain a disaster.
The Brazilian air force said the plane was far out over the sea when it went missing.
Military planes took off from the island of Fernando de Noronha off Brazil's northeast coast to look for it and the Brazilian navy sent three ships to help in the search.
France sent one of its air force planes from west Africa.
Flight AF 447 left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. (4:00 p.m. EDT) and had been expected to land at Paris's Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday at 11:15 a.m.Air France reported that the passengers consisted of one infant, seven other children, 82 women and 126 men. The airline said the plane entered service in 2005 and last underwent maintenance on April 16.
Air France set up a center at the Charles De Gaulle airport for the families of those aboard. French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent his transportation and environmental ministers to the airport to monitor the situation.
The airline said that the indications pointed to a serious electrical short circuit which crippled the jet after it passed through storms near the equator. A series of automatic messages from the aircraft warned of a “short circuit” after strong turbulence.
Francois Brousse, the chief spokesman for Air France said that it could have been hit by lightning.The Brazilian air force had begun search and rescue operations in the Atlantic Ocean off the Brazilian coast, near the small island of Fernando de Noronha, a lieutenant colonel told Brazil's TV Globo.
Air France said that the airplane had sent an automatic signal four hours after it took off indicating that it had electrical problems, while going through turbulence. The airline reported a short-circuit aboard Flight 447.
The plane left Rio at 7 p.m. Sunday bound for Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. It never arrived.
Air France reported that the passengers consisted of one infant, seven other children, 82 women and 126 men. The airline said the plane entered service in 2005 and last underwent maintenance on April 16.
Air France set up a center at the Charles De Gaulle airport for the families of those aboard. French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent his transportation and environmental ministers to the airport to monitor the situation.
STORM PATCH
On its flight northeast from Rio, the jetliner would have had to pass through a notorious storm patch shifting around the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone.
"It is a zone in the tropics where you can have particularly deep thunder clouds," said Barry Gromett, a meteorologist at the London Weather Center.
The carrier said 216 passengers were on board, including seven children and one baby, as well as 12 crew members.
The passenger list was not released, but French tire company Michelin said the head of its Latin American operations, Luis Roberto Anastacio, had been on the flight.
Tearful relatives and friends were led away by airport staff after they arrived at Roissy expecting to greet the passengers.
About 20 relatives of passengers also arrived at Rio's Galeao airport on Monday morning seeking information.
Bernardo Souza, whose brother and sister-in-law were on the flight, complained he had received no details from Air France.
"I had to come to the airport, but when I arrived I just found an empty counter," he said.
Senior French government minister Jean-Louis Borloo ruled out the possibility of a hijacking.
"It's an awful tragedy," he told France Info radio.
If no survivors are found it will be the worst loss of life involving an Air France plane in the firm's 75-year history.
The plane was an Airbus 330-200 powered with General Electric engines. If the plane is confirmed to have crashed, it would be the first time an A330 has been lost during an operational airline flight.
Air France said the plane had 18,870 flight hours on the clock and went into service in April 2005. It last underwent maintenance in a hangar in April this year.
The last major incident involving an Air France plane was in July 2000 when one of its Concorde supersonic airliners crashed just after taking off from Paris, bound for New York.
All 109 people on board were killed along with at least four on the ground.
(Additional reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey, Gerard Bon, Astrid Wendlandt and Tim Hepher in Paris, Pedro Fonseca in Rio; editing by Crispian Balmer and Richard Meares).
Signal indicated electrical problems
About a half-hour later, the plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence," officials said. It sent an automatic message 14 minutes later reporting electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure.
Air France told Brazilian authorities the last information they heard was that automated message reporting a technical problem before the plane reached a monitoring station near the Cape Verde islands.
Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said seven aircraft were deployed to search the area far off the northeastern Brazilian coast.
"We want to try to reach the last point where the aircraft made contact, which is about 745 miles northeast of Natal," Amaral told Globo TV.
Meteorologists said tropical storms are much more violent than thunderstorms in the United States and elsewhere.
"Tropical thunderstorms ... can tower up to 50,000 feet. At the altitude it was flying, it's possible that the Air France plane flew directly into the most charged part of the storm — the top," Henry Margusity, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather.com, told The Associated Press.
Brazil's Navy said it was sending three ships to search waters about 680 miles from Natal.
Portuguese air control authorities say the missing plane did not make contact with controllers in Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores Islands nor, as far as they know, with other Atlantic air traffic controllers in Cape Verde, Casablanca, or the Canary islands.
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