Brazilian and French rescue teams continued to search Tuesday for the passengers of an Air France jet that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean as details of Flight 447 began to emerge. The Airbus A330 encountered heavy turbulence about 02:15 a.m. local time Monday (10:15 p.m. ET Sunday), some three hours after the jet carrying 228 people left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for Paris, France, on an 11-hour flight, according to Air France CEO…
Brazilian and French rescue teams continued to search Tuesday for the passengers of an Air France jet that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean as details of Flight 447 began to emerge.
The Airbus A330 encountered heavy turbulence about 02:15 a.m. local time Monday (10:15 p.m. ET Sunday), some three hours after the jet carrying 228 people left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for Paris, France, on an 11-hour flight, according to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon.
At that point, the plane’s automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company’s maintenance computers, indicating "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down," he told reporters. During that time, there was no contact with the crew, Gourgeon said. "It was probable that it was a little bit after those messages that the impact of the plane took place in the Atlantic," he added. The Airbus A330 was off radar and probably closer to Brazil than to Africa at the time, he said.
Two squadrons from Brazil’s air force launched a search near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean, about 225 miles (365 kilometers) from Brazil’s coast, an air force spokesman told CNN. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France sent ships and planes to the area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Brazil. "Our Spanish friends are helping us, Brazilians are helping us a lot as well," he said.
The Brazilian air force received a report that a flight crew from the Brazilian airline TAM reported seeing "shiny spots" in the sea on the route of Flight 447. Senegalese authorities were notified about the sighting in their airspace, but a ship searched the area without result.
Among the passengers were 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby, in addition to the 12 crew members, Air France said. The airliner identified the nationalities of the other victims as: Argentinean (1); Austrian (1); Belgian (1); Brazilian (58); British (5); Canadian (1); Chinese (9); Croatian (1); Danish (1); Dutch (1); Estonian (1); Filipino (1); French (61); Gambian (1); German (26); Hungarian (4); Icelandic (1); Irish (3); Italian (9); Lebanese (5); Moroccan (2); Norwegian (3); Polish (2); Romanian (1); Russian (1); Slovakian (3); Spanish (2); Swedish (1); Swiss (6); Turkish (1).
The jet was 4 years old and had last undergone routine maintenance April 16.
"This is a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen before," Sarkozy told reporters at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, where he had met with relatives of the missing aboard the flight. "I said the truth to them: The prospects of finding survivors are very low," he said.
France asked the U.S. military to assist in the search with U.S. detection satellites, French Transport Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told CNN affiliate France 2. Pentagon officials did not immediately confirm the request. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told reporters in San Salvador, El Salvador, that he had spoken with Sarkozy, but neither leader knew what to say.
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