Missing French jet hit storms: 228 on board

UPDATED:

SAO PAULO (AP) — 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 Monday, 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 has asked for help from U.S. 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 7:03 p.m. local time (2203 GMT, 6:03 p.m. EDT) 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 (0148 GMT, 9:48 p.m. EDT), indicating it was flying normally at 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) and traveling at 522 mph (840 kph).

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 (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday) 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 had been deployed to search the area far off the northeastern Brazilian coast.

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