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228 feared dead after airliner lost over ocean
Source: Agencies |
June 2, 2009, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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A missing Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris ran into a towering wall of thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, officials said yesterday, fearing that all aboard were lost.
The area where the plane could have gone down was vast, in the middle of very deep Atlantic Ocean waters between Brazil and the coast of Africa. Brazil's military searched for it off its northeast coast, while the French military scoured the ocean near the Cape Verde Islands off the West African coast.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told families of those aboard that "prospects of finding survivors were very small."
If all 228 were killed, it would be the deadliest commercial airline disaster since 2001.
Sarkozy, speaking at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, said the reason for the disappearance remained unclear and that "no hypothesis" was excluded.
"(I met with) a mother who lost her son, a fiancee who lost her future husband. I told them the truth," he said.
Sarkozy said "it will be very difficult" to find the plane because the zone where it is believed to have disappeared "is immense." He said France had asked for help from US satellites to locate the plane.
Chief Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said "it is possible" the plane was hit by lightning, but aviation experts expressed doubt that a bolt of lightning was enough to bring the plane down.
Air France's manager in Rio de Janeiro, Jorge Assuncao, told reporters that the two biggest groups of nationalities aboard were Brazilian and French. Other passengers were American, Angolan, Argentine, Belgian, British, Chinese, Filipino, German, Irish, Italian, Moroccan, Norwegian, Spanish and Slovakian.
Air France Flight 447, a 4-year-old Airbus A330, left Rio on Sunday at 7:03pm local time with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, said company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand.
The plane left Brazil radar contact, beyond the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, at 10:48 local time, indicating it was flying normally at 10,670 meters and traveling at 840 kilometers per hour.
About a half-hour later, the plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence." It sent an automatic message fourteen minutes later at 0214 GMT 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 Jorge Amaral said seven aircraft had been 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 1,200 kilometers 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 15,240 meters. 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, said in a statement.
Brazil's Navy said it was sending three ships to search waters about 1,100 kilometers 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.
Sobbing relatives of people aboard the plane arrived at an airport in Sao Paulo to fly on to Rio de Janeiro, where Air France was assisting relatives. Andres Fernandes, his eyes tearing up, said a relative "was supposed to be on the flight, but we need to confirm it," Globo TV reported.
Air France said it expressed "its sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew members" aboard Flight 447. The airline did not explicitly say there were no survivors, but allowed Sarkozy address the issue for them.
Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said the plane's pilot had 11,000 hours of flying experience.
Experts said the absence of a mayday call meant something happened very quickly.
"The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion," Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates said. "Potentially it went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilot didn't have a chance to make that emergency call."
The area where the plane could have gone down was vast, in the middle of very deep Atlantic Ocean waters between Brazil and the coast of Africa. Brazil's military searched for it off its northeast coast, while the French military scoured the ocean near the Cape Verde Islands off the West African coast.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told families of those aboard that "prospects of finding survivors were very small."
If all 228 were killed, it would be the deadliest commercial airline disaster since 2001.
Sarkozy, speaking at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, said the reason for the disappearance remained unclear and that "no hypothesis" was excluded.
"(I met with) a mother who lost her son, a fiancee who lost her future husband. I told them the truth," he said.
Sarkozy said "it will be very difficult" to find the plane because the zone where it is believed to have disappeared "is immense." He said France had asked for help from US satellites to locate the plane.
Chief Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said "it is possible" the plane was hit by lightning, but aviation experts expressed doubt that a bolt of lightning was enough to bring the plane down.
Air France's manager in Rio de Janeiro, Jorge Assuncao, told reporters that the two biggest groups of nationalities aboard were Brazilian and French. Other passengers were American, Angolan, Argentine, Belgian, British, Chinese, Filipino, German, Irish, Italian, Moroccan, Norwegian, Spanish and Slovakian.
Air France Flight 447, a 4-year-old Airbus A330, left Rio on Sunday at 7:03pm local time with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, said company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand.
The plane left Brazil radar contact, beyond the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, at 10:48 local time, indicating it was flying normally at 10,670 meters and traveling at 840 kilometers per hour.
About a half-hour later, the plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence." It sent an automatic message fourteen minutes later at 0214 GMT 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 Jorge Amaral said seven aircraft had been 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 1,200 kilometers 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 15,240 meters. 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, said in a statement.
Brazil's Navy said it was sending three ships to search waters about 1,100 kilometers 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.
Sobbing relatives of people aboard the plane arrived at an airport in Sao Paulo to fly on to Rio de Janeiro, where Air France was assisting relatives. Andres Fernandes, his eyes tearing up, said a relative "was supposed to be on the flight, but we need to confirm it," Globo TV reported.
Air France said it expressed "its sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew members" aboard Flight 447. The airline did not explicitly say there were no survivors, but allowed Sarkozy address the issue for them.
Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said the plane's pilot had 11,000 hours of flying experience.
Experts said the absence of a mayday call meant something happened very quickly.
"The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion," Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates said. "Potentially it went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilot didn't have a chance to make that emergency call."
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