10th June 2009

Worst  Air France diaster in 75 year hisory

French and Brazilian authorites have confirmed that wreckage found in the Atlantic belongs to an Air France jet that went missing on Monday with 228 people on board.

Air France flight 447 left Brazil on Sunday and lost contact with air traffic controllers during a severe storm. Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger has sent a letter of condolence to his counterparts in France and Brazil.

Brazilian navy divers were headed on Wednesday to a 5km strip of water strewn with aeroplane seats, an orange buoy, pieces of metal and jet fuel. The area is about 1,200km northeast of the coastal city of Recife.

A French government spokesman said they would await the official results of an analysis of the debris but there was no longer any doubt that the wreckage belonged to the  missing flight.

The Paris-bound Airbus was carrying 216 passengers of 32 nationalities, including seven children and one baby. Air France expressed its "sincere condolences to the families and relatives of passengers and crew members".

The Swiss foreign ministry confirmed that six Swiss were on board. Leuenberger on Tuesday expressed his dismay at the accident and offered the support of the Swiss government to families of the victims.

The aircraft flew into a severe weather zone with strong winds, four hours after taking off from Rio de Janeiro and 15 minutes later sent an automatic message reporting electrical faults and loss of cabin pressure, the airline said.

Brazil's air force, which last had contact with the plane at 1.33am on Monday when it was  approx 350 miles from Brazil's coast, sent six aircraft to look for it and the navy dispatched three ships to help. France also asked the United States to assist in locating the crash site using satellite data.

"We have to work as if it were possible to find survivors," said Colonel Jorge Amaral of the Brazilian air force.

Air France said a lightning strike could be to blame and that several of the mechanisms on the Airbus 330-200, which has a good safety record, had malfunctioned. The firm said the plane, which was powered with General Electric engines, went into service in April 2005 and last underwent maintenance in April.

But aviation experts commented that lightning strikes on planes were common and could not be the only cause of a disaster. Reuters news agency reported that flight data sent to the World Meteorological Organization reported that two Lufthansa jets passed through the same area of turbulence on Monday without incident.

Relatives in Paris and Rio were being cared for by teams of psychologists. Sixty-one passengers were French citizens, 58 Brazilian and 26 German. Twelve crew members were also on board.

If no survivors are found, it would be the worst disaster in Air France's 75-year history.