Air France Jet Is Feared Lost on Flight From Brazil to Paris

PARIS — An Air France passenger jet traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared and was presumed to have crashed after its electrical systems malfunctioned during a violent electric storm on Sunday evening. Officials said Monday that a search had begun for the wreckage in a vast swath of the Atlantic Ocean.

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President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, right, with his transport minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, held a news conference at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on Monday.
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The Times's Christine Negroni on the crash of an Air France 330-200 jet bound for France from Brazil.

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Times Topics: Airplane Accidents and Incidents

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Relatives and friends left a crisis center on Monday at Galeão - Antonio Carlos Jobim airport in Rio de Janeiro.

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Experts were at a loss to explain fatal damage to a modern jetliner from either lightning or turbulence, even that of a tropical storm.

Air France is extremely distraught and the whole team of Air France is suffering, Pierre Henri Gourgeon, the chief executive of Air France-KLM, told reporters in Paris. We would like to say to the relatives of the victims that we are totally with them and will make every effort to help them.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said: Its a tragic accident. The chances of finding survivors are tiny.

The plane, an Airbus 330-200, was carrying 216 passengers, 9 cabin crew members and 3 pilots, the airline said. In all, people of 32 nationalities were on the plane, most of them Brazilian or European. There were also two Americans, the airline said.

The flight took off from Rio de Janeiro at 7:30 p.m. local time (6:30 Eastern time), and its last verbal communication with air traffic control was three hours later, at 10:33 p.m., according to a statement from the Aeronautica, the agency in charge of Brazilian air space. At that time the flight was at 35,000 feet and traveling 520 miles per hour.

About a half-hour after the radio call, the plane encountered an electrical storm with very heavy turbulence, said an Air France spokeswoman in Paris, Brigitte Barrand. The last communication from the plane was 14 minutes later — a series of automatic messages indicating that the aircraft had suffered an electrical-system malfunction, Air France officials said in Paris. The Associated Press reported that it also suffered a loss of cabin pressure.

A completely unexpected situation occurred on board the aircraft, Mr. Gourgeon of Air France told Frances LCI television.

Brazilian officials said the plane disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean between the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, 186 miles northeast of the coastal Brazilian city of Natal, and Ilha do Sal, one of the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa. It is a huge area of ocean, three times the size of Europe, officials said.

The plane went missing in a zone known to sailors and pilots as the horse latitudes — an area of intertropical convergence close to the Equator particularly susceptible to storms and violent wind changes, said Julien Gourguechon, who has been an Air France pilot for a decade.

In the area, thunderstorms are possible at altitudes of up to 55,000 feet. Weather reports from the time of the incident indicated high clouds and isolated thunderstorms, CNN reported.

The plane was flying beyond the reach of Brazilian and Senegalese radar when it went missing — a gap that always occurs for aircraft on long trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific flights.

The Brazilian Air Force sent two planes to search for wreckage, an air force spokesman, Col. Henry Munhoz, told O Globo television in Brazil, and three ships from the Brazilian Navy were sent out. A French Air Force plane joined the search from a base in Senegal, Africa, as did a Spanish plane, news services reported.

The head of investigation and accident prevention for Brazils Civil Aeronautics Agency, Douglas Ferreira Machado, told O Globo that he calculated that, given its speed, the plane must have left Brazilian waters by the time contact was lost.

Its going to take a long time to carry out this search, The A.P. quoted him as saying. It could be a long, sad story. The black box will be at the bottom of the sea.

The automatic messages, which were possibly triggered by a number of alarms on the aircraft, were likely received by satellite by the Air France maintenance system, Mr. Gourguechon said. He added that the cause of the planes clearly exceptional disappearance, apparently with no distress signal, was unlikely to be purely meteorological.

Lightning alone is not enough to explain the loss of this plane, he said. Turbulence alone isnt enough to explain it. It is always a combination of factors.

All jets are built to withstand severe turbulence and lightning strikes.

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[shazzabelle2]

God bless all the lost souls and those who love them. xx

[Swifteagle]

Some respect man, you are shameful...

[lukasx12n]

from Rio de Janeiro to Paris

[arthur5135]

LOST

[4Locke4]

It crashed on a mythical moving island and all passengers were killed by a smoke monster.

[MsBemylover]

OMG,i pray this never happen with someone again.:0

Co-pilot:Natasha

[bernard240vdc]

this aircraft could of become surrounded by violent thunderstorms that formed all around it leaving very little choice for the pilots no pilot will fly a aircraft intentionaly through a thunderstorm even the most modern airliners can be brought down by a violent thunderstorm and big storm clouds reach altitudes that are beyond the capabilities of airliners to reach some supercells reach up to some 60,000 feet big thunderstorms are best to stay away from in a aircraft

[Zenkovicfamily]

they probably past the bermuda triangle slightly

[Amandaaa876]

Congratulations. Thank you for sharing your story with us, mate.

[eldest1408]

Dang... i found out about this when I was in a flight to Houston, TX. The people behind me were asking each other of they new about the Air France missing plane. The FLIGHT ATTENDANT asked them! What a way to make us feel comfertable. But, when we landed in Houston, TX for my layover, it was on TV and we were kinda nervous because we had to fly through a storm but all went well. :)

[Bilderbergz]

pure BS all planes are equipped with radar equipment to detect and avoid potential storms, so pretty much what they are telling us is that the pilots drove into right into a storm which cause electrical damage and killed all the passengers..... wow