Breaking News: Air France Flight 447 vanishes over Atlantic

AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 447, AN AIRBUS A330 JET PLANE MISSING OFF BRAZIL COAST.

An Air France jet carrying 228 people, 216 passengers and 12 crew members, from Rio de Janeiro to Paris is believed to have crashed into the Atlantic near the the Brazilian island of Fernando do Noronha on Monday after suffering an electrical failure in a fierce storm.

Flight AF 447 has 216 passengers and 12 crew on board. It left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. (6:00 p.m. EDT) and was expected to land at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday at 11:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m. EDT).

“The prospects of finding any survivors are very slim,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris after meeting shocked family members. “It’s a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen.”

Flight 447 was due to land in Paris today 11:10 a.m. local time, Agence France-Presse said. The A330, a twin-engine plane that carries about 250 people, has never suffered a fatal crash in commercial flight, though a development model crashed shortly after takeoff during testing, according to Paul Hayes, director of safety at Ascend, an aviation consultant in the U.K.

Air France said the Airbus A330-200 jet was probably hit by lightning. The Brazilian and French air forces sent out search planes to scour a vast area of ocean, but officials also held out little hope of finding survivors.

To assist families of Air France Flight 447’s passengers, below phone numbers have been established. The list of passengers on Air France Flight 447 can be accessed by families via the below international phone numbers:

In France: 0800 800 812
In Brazil: 0800 881 20 20
Outside France: + 33 1 57 02 10 55

Air France has issued the following statement a short time ago about the missing Airbus A330-200:

Air France regrets to confirm the disappearance of flight AF 447 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, scheduled to arrive at 11:10am local time today, as announced to the press by Air France CEO, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon.

The Airbus A330-200, registration F-GZCP, left Rio on 31 May at 7:03pm local time (12:03am in Paris).

The aircraft hit a zone of stormy weather with strong turbulence at 2am this morning (universal time), i.e. 4am in Paris. An automatic message was received from the aircraft at 2:14am (4 :14am in Paris) indicating a failure in the electric circuit a long way from the coast. The Brazilian, African, Spanish and French air traffic control centres all tried to make contact with flight AF 447 but to no avail. The French military air traffic control centre tried to detect the aircraft but did not succeed.

216 passengers were on board: 126 men, 82 women, 7 children and one infant. There were 12 flight crew members: 3 pilots and 9 flight attendants.

The flight captain had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340s.

Of the two first officers, one had flown 3,000 flight hours (800 of which on the Airbus A330/A340) and the other 6,600 (2,600 on the Airbus A330/A340). The aircraft was powered by General Electric CF6-80E engines. The aircraft had totalled 18,870 flight hours and went into service on 18 April 2005. Its last maintenance check in the hangar took place on 16 April 2009.

Air France fully shares the anxiety and distress of the families concerned. The families are being taken care of in a specially reserved area of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2. (Source: BNOnews)

Here is the list of nationalities on the flight:

Brazilian: 80
French: 76
German: 18
Italian: 9
US: 6
Chinese: 5
Hungarian: 4
Spanish: 2
UK: 2
Morocco: 2
Ireland: 2
Angola: 1
Argentina: 1
Austria: 1
Belgium: 1
Iceland: 1
Philippines: 1
Norway: 1
Poland: 1
Romania: 1
Russia: 1
Slovakia: 1
Sweden: 1
Turkey: 1
7 of these are children and 1 baby