French plane lost in ocean

228 feared dead
An Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France has vanished over the Atlantic after a possible lightning strike, airline officials say, reports BBC.
The Airbus sent an automatic message at 0214 GMT, four hours after leaving Rio de Janeiro, reporting a short circuit as it flew through strong turbulence.
It was well over the ocean when it was lost, making Brazilian and French search planes” task more difficult. Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris has set up a crisis centre. “We are without a doubt faced with an air disaster,” Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told reporters.
“The entire company is thinking of the families and shares their pain.”
France”s minister responsible for transportation, Jean-Louis Borloo, ruled out hijacking as a cause of the plane”s loss.
Flight AF 447 left Rio at 1900 local time (2200 GMT) on Sunday. It had 216 passengers and 12 crew on board, including three pilots. The passengers included one infant, seven children, 82 women and 126 men.
Details of the passengers” nationalities were not being released immediately but it is believed that a number of Italians and Britons are among the French people and Brazilians aboard. The Airbus 330-200 had been expected to arrive in Paris at 1110 local time (0910 GMT).
It is reported to have disappeared 300km (186 miles) north-east of the Brazilian city of Natal.
Brazilian air force spokesman Col Henry Munhoz told Brazilian TV it had not been picked up by radar on the Cape Verde Islands on its way across the Atlantic, and confirmed that Brazilian air force planes had left Fernando de Noronha to search for the missing airliner.
A French military plane also flew out of Senegal to take part in the search.
Gary Duffy, BBC News, Sao Paolo The plane disappeared at what would have been the most vulnerable stage of the flight.
When flights leave Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, they normally make their way overland, I presume for safety reasons, for the early stages of the flight, for as long as possible.
They then turn over the north-eastern coast of Brazil out into the vast crossing over the Atlantic.
So it was at that vulnerable stage that unfortunately the plane disappeared.
There is some suggestion the plane was about 300 kilometres from the Brazilian coast. But the authorities face a major task with a vast area of Atlantic to be covered.
“The plane might have been struck by lightning – it”s a possibility,” Francois Brousse, head of communications at Air France, told reporters in Paris.
Mr Borloo said the airliner would already have run out of fuel.
“Nothing on Spanish radar, nothing on Moroccan radar, nothing on French radar – we seriously have to fear the worst,” he added.
Douglas Ferreira Machado, head of investigation and accident prevention for Brazil”s Civil Aeronautics Agency, said the search would take “a long time”.
“It could be a long, sad story,” he told Brazil”s Globo news. “The black box will be at the bottom of the sea.”
An Air France spokeswoman said there had been no radio contact with the plane “for a while”.
An Air France official told AFP that people awaiting the flight would be received in a special area at Charles de Gaulle airport”s second terminal.
Relatives and friends of the passengers have been ushered away from the main arrivals hall, the BBC”s Alistair Sandford reports from Paris.
“I want to say that everyone at Air France is deeply moved and shares the grief of the relatives of the passengers, and we will do everything possible to help them,” Mr Gourgeon promised.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed deep concern and called on the relevant authorities to do everything they could to find the plane, his office said.
Air France has opened a telephone hotline for friends and relatives of people on the plane – 00 33 157021055 for callers outside France and 0800 800812 for inside France.
This is the first major incident in Brazilian air space since a Tam flight crashed in Sao Paulo in July 2007 killing 199 people.

Courtesy of The News Today