Air France says no hope of survivors in Atlantic

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (AP) — Air France has told families of passengers on Flight 447 that the jetliner broke apart and they must abandon hope that anyone survived, a grief counselor said Thursday as military aircraft tried to narrow their search for the remains of the plane.

Air France’s CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, speaking to families in a private meeting, said the plane disintegrated either in the air or when it slammed into the ocean and there were no survivors, according to Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel relatives. The plane, carrying 228 people, disappeared after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris on Sunday night.

Investigators were relying heavily on the plane’s automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms. They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation. He spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.

“What is clear is that there was no landing. There’s no chance the escape slides came out,” said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who heads a victims’ association for UTA flight 772, shot down in 1989 by Libyan terrorists.

No survivors makes Flight 447 Air France’s deadliest plane crash and the world’s worst commercial air accident since 2001.

Military rescue planes were trying to narrow the search zone Thursday as ships headed to the site to recover wreckage. The “extreme cloudiness” in the search zone also prevented U.S. satellites scanning the area from providing any useful leads, according to French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck.

Brazil’s Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with 140 miles (230 kilometers) separating pieces of wreckage. The overall zone is roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast, where the ocean floor drops as low as 22,950 feet (7,000 meters) below sea level.

The floating debris includes a 23-foot (seven-meter) chunk of plane, but pilots have spotted no sign of survivors, according to Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral.

Brazilian military planes located new debris from Air France Flight 447 Wednesday, after seeing an airline seat and oil slick a day earlier. But Prazuck said Thursday that French planes had made six missions over the area and have yet to spot any wreckage.

“As of today French planes have not found any debris that could have come from the Air France Airbus that disappeared,” he said. “There have been radar detections made by the AWACS (radar plane) … and each time these signals have not corresponded to debris.”

He said, however, French teams have been searching in different places and at different times than the Brazilian search teams.

Three more French overflights were planned for Thursday, Prazuck said. A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane also joined Brazil’s Air Force in trying to spot debris.

Heavy weather delayed until next week the arrival of deep-water submersibles considered key to finding the black box cockpit voice and flight data recorders that will help answer the question of what happened.

The Pourquoi Pas, a French sea research vessel carrying manned and unmanned submarines, is heading from the Azores and will be in the search zone by June 12, Prazuck said. The equipment includes the Nautile, a mini-sub used to explore the undersea wreckage of the Titanic, according to French marine institute Ifremer.

Story Continues →