SAO PAULO: An Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean yesterday after running into a towering wall of thunderstorms, officials said, fearing that all aboard were lost.
The area where the plane went 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.” Speaking at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, the president said the reason for the disappearance remained unclear and that “no hypothesis” was excluded. “(I met with) a mother who lost her son, a fiancée 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 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 Flight 447, a four-year-old Airbus A330, left Rio on Sunday at 7:03 p.m. local time (2203 GMT) 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), indicating it was flying normally at 35,000 feet and traveling at 840 kph.
About a half-hour later, the plane “crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence.” It sent an automatic message 14 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 Col. 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 km northeast of Natal,” Amaral told Globo TV.
Air France spokesman Jorge Assuncao told reporters at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeao Airport that 80 Brazilians and 73 French were among the passengers. The passengers also included 18 Germans, nine Italians, six Americans, five Chinese, and four Hungarians as well as two citizens each from Britain, Spain, Morocco and Ireland.
Red-eyed with tears, relatives of passengers of the doomed plane gathered in Paris’ main airport to await news of their loved ones. In a state of shock, they were ushered into a cordoned-off area of the main terminal.
In Rio, relatives of the passengers rushed the airport, numb with shock and disbelief at the certain tragedy that had befallen their loved ones. Bernado, one of the first to arrive at the city’s airport, had despair edging into his voice as he explained his brother and sister-in-law where on the Airbus.
“I called Air France right away, and they told me they didn’t have information. That’s why I decided to come to the airport,” he said, declining to give his last name. Around 50 relatives had gathered in the hours after the news that flight AF447 had disappeared from radar screens. Few spoke to a group of waiting reporters, and they were ushered away by airport staff to a closed lounge where psychological and medical assistance was being provided.
