Air France flight recorders located in Atlantic

Signals from the flight data recorders of the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located, a media report said Tuesday.

The Le Monde newspaper said French naval vessels had picked up a weak signal from the flight recorders at the site of the June 1 crash. The paper did not give the source of the information.

The report said a mini-submarine had been dispatched Monday to try to find the black boxes on the ocean floor. The devices may contain information on what caused the crash of the Airbus A330 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

‘The search effort has been complicated by the uneven surface of the ocean floor. The depth at the site is almost 5,000 meters (16,400 feet),’ the paper said.

Air France said it could not confirm the report.

Beacons on the recorders send an electronic impulse every second for at least 30 days. The signal can be picked up from two kilometres away.

French vessels involved in the search operation include a nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment and a research ship equipped with mini submarines.

Ten of the 50 bodies recovered from the plane have been identified as Brazilians.

Airbus denies planning to ground A330/340 fleet

Airbus denied on Wednesday a French newspaper report that it is considering grounding its fleet of A330 and A340 planes in the wake of last week’s Atlantic plane disaster, saying they are safe to fly.

Le Figaro reported in its early Thursday edition that Airbus does not exclude the move after the Air France plane, an A330, crashed during a storm.

Responding to the report that Airbus may ground the fleet of almost 1,000 jets and order airlines to change speed sensors, Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath told Reuters: “We are not considering grounding the fleet because it is safe to operate.”

The report appeared on the front page of Le Figaro’s Thursday edition, which was released before publication.

The twinjet A330 and four-engine A340 come from the same family of aircraft and have many shared components. The longer-distance A340 has four engines instead of the A330’s two.

There are 605 A330s and 359 A340s in operation, according to the planemaker, part of European aerospace group EADS.

These include 340 of the variant involved in last week’s disaster, known as the A330-200.

French crash investigators have said the Air France jetliner sent out 24 error messages including one suggesting that its speed sensors, known as pitot tubes, were giving inconsistent readings. But they have stressed it is too early to say whether this was linked to the cause of the crash.

The sensors on the Air France plane were built by Thales which has declined to comment pending investigations.

According to Airbus, the Thales sensors are an optional alternative to the sensors in the basic design of the A330, which are made by Goodrich of the United States.

They are among many components on an aircraft for which airlines can choose between alternative suppliers.

The French media and the media in general seem to be cornering Airbus at almost every stage. Doesn’t speak well of Airbus as it ends up looking like it’s covering up.

New Signs That Air France Jet Broke Up in Flight

Two pieces of evidence have emerged that lend new credence to the theory that the Air France jet that crashed more than a week ago broke up in flight.

The Brazilian Air Force released information on Tuesday night showing that bodies from Flight 447 had been recovered from locations that were more than 50 miles apart. And Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer, sent its airline customers a bulletin saying a re-analysis of the stricken plane’s last automatic transmissions reinforced the idea that many parts malfunctioned, but that the parts that measure air speed may have failed first.

A faulty air speed indicator could mislead pilots into flying faster than the aircraft could withstand, or faster than it should be flown into turbulence — two circumstances that could lead to the craft coming apart in flight.

The theory will remain just that, however, until more evidence is collected. The black boxes that contain data and voice recordings are likely to be the key to resolving the mystery of what happened to the plane, which was carrying 228 people. According to news service reports, the French nuclear attack submarine Émeraude, with a crew of 72 men, has joined two sonar-detecting surface vessels in the search for the boxes. Each vessel is able to sweep a narrow strip of ocean for the “pings” emitted by the boxes and audible for a distance of no more than three miles under ideal conditions.

In its message sent to airlines this week, Airbus said that no data was available beyond the automatic transmissions from the Air France jet, but it appeared that the manufacturer was fitting those messages into a scenario that began with the air speed problem. It said those messages “indicate that there was unreliable air speed indication” and that that situation was “consolidated” by messages indicating other failures that would be consequences of such a failure.

The Web site of The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com, first reported on the Airbus bulletin.

Airbus evidently did not fit all the messages into a clear sequence. It said one message showed a change of cabin pressure equal to an altitude change of greater than 1,800 feet per minute “which remains to be explained.” One explanation would be cabin depressurization.

Perhaps to reassure airlines, Airbus said the data did not suggest a loss of the computerized instrument display, or the Air Data Inertial Reference Unit, which helps planes locate their positions and which has had problems on other A330s.

Long before the crash, Airbus had recommended that airlines replace parts, called Pitot tubes, that scoop in air to help planes measure their air speed. The company said in its new message that for now, airlines could continue flying with older Pitot tubes.

The Federal Aviation Administration sometimes makes such manufacturer recommendations mandatory, as air worthiness directives, but Laura J. Brown, an agency spokeswoman, said “we don’t think we’re at the point where we can issue an air worthiness directive.”

“We don’t have data to indicate an unsafe condition exists,” she said.

A Delta Air Lines spokeswoman, Betsey Talton, said Delta had replaced the tubes on some models and was replacing them on its A330s, the model in the accident.

Flying behind doomed jet, a Spanish aircraft avoided disaster

A Spanish plane bound for Madrid on Monday was closely following the Air France aircraft when it disappeared with 228 people on board. The Iberia flight crew tried to contact their French colleagues, in vain. s the doomed Air France jetliner plunged into the storms above the Atlantic Ocean, Flight IB 6024, bound for Madrid, decided to change its itinerary to avoid the ominous clouds. As they circled the storms, its pilots heard the last messages emitted by Brazilian air traffic controllers to the jetliner, the Spanish press reports.

The Iberia aircraft took off from Rio de Janeiro at 00:07am (Madrid time – GMT+2), seven minutes after the Air France jetliner, according to the website of the Spanish daily ABC.

Silence

The IB 6204 crew members — who prefer to remain anonymous — explain that they were flying in the same air corridor as the French aircraft, ten minutes behind it, at a distance of about 128 km.

Facing difficult weather conditions, much like the AF 447, the captain and co-pilot decided to reroute 56 km to the east. “That’s how we navigated the storm, in order to avoid turbulence and electrically charged clouds,” says one of the Spanish pilots.

The Spanish pilots never saw the Air France jet, but they did hear the unanswered messages sent by Brazilian air traffic controllers trying to establish contact with the French pilots.

Worried, the IB 6024 pilots tried to contact their French colleagues, without success. They also tuned into the aircraft emergency frequency, but heard no distress messages.

The Air France jet stopped emitting automatic messages at 3:33 am on Monday morning.

False readings

French air safety investigators said that automatic messages broadcast by the Rio-to-Paris flight just before it plunged into the Atlantic had shown that the plane’s systems were giving false readings.

“Airbus sent a reminder overnight to all the companies using its planes about procedures to follow in the case of inconsistency in speeds measured,” a spokesman for the French-based manufacturer told AFP.

The French daily Le Monde reported Thursday that the pilots of the Air France jet — which is still missing, along with the 228 people on board — may not have been flying at the right speed for dangerous weather.

Airbus declined to comment on the report.

The Iberia jet was an Airbus A340-300.

Retrieving Air France black box will be epic task

 

The first sighting off Brazil’s coast of possible wreckage from a missing Air France jet signals the start of what could be one of the most challenging operations ever mounted to retrieve the tell-tale “black box.”

The box, which is in fact two separate devices containing cockpit voice recordings and instrument data, offers the best chance of finding out why the Airbus jetliner vanished in an Atlantic storm en route to Paris with 228 people on board.

The devices are designed to send homing signals when they hit water, but merely locating them presents one of the most daunting recovery tasks since the exploration of the Titanic and barring good fortune, could take months, experts said.

If they are in waters as deep as some people fear, 4,000 meters (13,100 ft) or more, unmanned submersibles would be tested to their limits. Yet past disasters have led to advances in equipment which do give hope for finding out what happened.

“There is a good chance that the recorder would survive but the main problem would be finding it,” said Derek Clarke, joint managing director of Aberdeen-based Divex, which designs and builds military and commercial diving equipment.

“If you think how long it took to find the Titanic and that the debris would be smaller, you are looking for a needle in haystack. You are very quickly looking at a large area to survey and could spend months running sonars down to a deep depth.”

Black boxes have an underwater beacon called a pinger which is activated when the recorder is immersed in water. The beacon can transmit from depths down to 14,000 feet, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

RECORD DEPTHS

Clarke spends time preparing for the unthinkable as part of an industry network on stand-by to help rescue submarines.

But the depths in this stretch of ocean far exceed the 600 meter maximum at which any navy could attempt a useful submarine rescue, a senior diving expert at Britain’s Royal Navy said.

Brazil said on Tuesday its military planes had spotted wreckage 400 miles off its northern coast.

Speaking beforehand, based on reports of the plane’s probable location, Neil Wells, senior lecturer in oceanography and meteorology at Britain’s National Oceanography Center, said the black box could be more than 4,000 metres below the surface.

“There is no doubt about it; you will be pushing the limits of the technology. It is not a straightforward operation.”

The oil industry has significant unmanned deep-sea capability but only operates down to 3,000 metres, Clarke said.

Such depths are well below the reach of manned craft.

A handful of deep-sea prowlers such as the U.S. Navy’s Alvin, which surveyed the wreck of the Titanic at 4,000 metres below the Atlantic in 1986, could be equipped for such depths.

A U.S. Navy report based on similar disasters, released under the Freedom of Information Act late last year, found it was possible to recover aircraft wreckage including the black boxes from depths of up to 6,000 metres.

It cited advances since the 1980s in technology such as sonar for combing rugged sea floors, new software and acoustic beacons or “pingers” which indicate a position under water.

Both recorders were recovered from the crash of Air India Flight 182, which was blown up off the Irish coast in 1985.

They were recovered from some 2,000 metres in a search which lasted more than two weeks.

Two years later, South African Airways Flight 295 crashed into the Indian Ocean near Mauritius, triggering the deepest hunt for an airliner yet undertaken, with investigators recovering the cockpit voice recorder after a three-month search from a record depth of more than 4,200 metres.

Whatever the challenges, industry experts say the stakes are too high to give up on the search. “Not knowing would be totally unacceptable to Airbus and to aviation in general,” said David Learmount, safety and operations editor of British-based aerospace magazine Flight International.

The first sighting off Brazil’s coast of possible wreckage from a missing Air France jet signals the start of what could be one of the most challenging operations ever mounted to retrieve the tell-tale “black box.” The box, which is in fact two separate devices containing cockpit voice recordings and instrument data, offers the best chance of finding out why the Airbus jetliner vanished in an Atlantic storm en route to Paris with 228 people on board.

The devices are designed to send homing signals when they hit water, but merely locating them presents one of the most daunting recovery tasks since the exploration of the Titanic and barring good fortune, could take months, experts said.

If they are in waters as deep as some people fear, 4,000 meters (13,100 ft) or more, unmanned submersibles would be tested to their limits. Yet past disasters have led to advances in equipment which do give hope for finding out what happened. ”There is a good chance that the recorder would survive but the main problem would be finding it,” said Derek Clarke, joint managing director of Aberdeen-based Divex, which designs and builds military and commercial diving equipment.

“If you think how long it took to find the Titanic and that the debris would be smaller, you are looking for a needle in haystack. You are very quickly looking at a large area to survey and could spend months running sonars down to a deep depth.”

Black boxes have an underwater beacon called a pinger which is activated when the recorder is immersed in water. The beacon can transmit from depths down to 14,000 feet, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

Brazil said on Tuesday its military planes had spotted wreckage 400 miles off its northern coast.

Speaking beforehand, based on reports of the plane’s probable location, Neil Wells, senior lecturer in oceanography and meteorology at Britain’s National Oceanography Center, said the black box could be more than 4,000 metres below the surface.

The oil industry has significant unmanned deep-sea capability but only operates down to 3,000 metres, Clarke said. Such depths are well below the reach of manned craft. A handful of deep-sea prowlers such as the U.S. Navy’s Alvin, which surveyed the wreck of the Titanic at 4,000 metres below the Atlantic in 1986, could be equipped for such depths. A U.S. Navy report based on similar disasters, released under the Freedom of Information Act late last year, found it was possible to recover aircraft wreckage including the black boxes from depths of up to 6,000 metres.

It cited advances since the 1980s in technology such as sonar for combing rugged sea floors, new software and acoustic beacons or “pingers” which indicate a position under water. Both recorders were recovered from the crash of Air India Flight 182, which was blown up off the Irish coast in 1985. They were recovered from some 2,000 metres in a search which lasted more than two weeks. Two years later, South African Airways Flight 295 crashed into the Indian Ocean near Mauritius, triggering the deepest hunt for an airliner yet undertaken, with investigators recovering the cockpit voice recorder after a three-month search from a record depth of more than 4,200 metres. Whatever the challenges, industry experts say the stakes are too high to give up on the search. “Not knowing would be totally unacceptable to Airbus and to aviation in general,” said David Learmount, safety and operations editor of British-based aerospace magazine Flight International.

Emergency at Edinburgh Airport over Air France plane alert

 

A FULL scale emergency was declared at Edinburgh Airport tonight after an Air France flight reported engine trouble.

The plane with 28 passengers and six-crew aboard had been delayed from departing from Edinburgh bound for London City Airport for almost an hour.

But shortly after taking to the air the pilot reported hearing a “clunking” noise from the engine and abandoned the flight.

The stricken aircraft was forced to circle overhead having lifted off at 6.34pm – 49 minutes late – before landing safety at 7.30pm.

No reason was given for the delay.

Witnesses say a convoy of fire-trucks and ambulances were in attendance just hours after the airline confirmed the tragic loss of a larger aircraft to the Atlantic ocean with 228 souls north-east of Brazil.

Last night a spokeswoman for airport operators BAA said: “The crew reported a rough running engine and a full emergency was declared.”

“They reported a clunking type noise coming from the engine.

“The aircraft has now landed and a full investigation is underway. The passengers have disembarked and were taken to the terminal building.”

The aircraft involved in the incident was a Dornier 7328.

In the confusion BAA had initially stated the flight was inbound from City.

Emergency

But the spokeswoman confirmed: “It was an Air France flight that had been outbound but was forced to turn back.

“It had to circle overhead for a time before landing.”

She added: “The passengers have now all been allocated seats on flights operated by Air France and BMI to Heathrow and transport will be laid on to take anyone to London City who needs it.”

None refused to board the replacement flights and no-one was injured, she said.

She said three were staying in Edinburgh overnight “because it suited their travel arrangements”, 20 were flying to London with BMI and 11 on another Air France flight tonight.

Lothian & Borders Fire & Rescue Service declared the incident “a full emergency “ and confirmed its crews had been on stand-by.

Lothian & Borders Police had also shut off parts of Glasgow Road to aid the arrival of the emergency vehicles.

The flight was due to depart at 5.45pm but was delayed until 6.34pm.

Only last week BA announced it was cutting 25 jobs on the City to Edinburgh route.

It said it had “surplus” staff after one of its planes was written off on landing at the London airport.

A full scale emergency was declared at Edinburgh Airport tonight after an Air France flight reported engine trouble.

The plane with 28 passengers and six-crew aboard had been delayed from departing from Edinburgh bound for London City Airport for almost an hour. But shortly after taking to the air the pilot reported hearing a “clunking” noise from the engine and abandoned the flight. The stricken aircraft was forced to circle overhead having lifted off at 6.34pm – 49 minutes late – before landing safety at 7.30pm. No reason was given for the delay.

Witnesses say a convoy of fire-trucks and ambulances were in attendance just hours after the airline confirmed the tragic loss of a larger aircraft to the Atlantic ocean with 228 souls north-east of Brazil. Last night a spokeswoman for airport operators BAA said: “The crew reported a rough running engine and a full emergency was declared.” “They reported a clunking type noise coming from the engine. “The aircraft has now landed and a full investigation is underway. The passengers have disembarked and were taken to the terminal building.”

The aircraft involved in the incident was a Dornier 7328. In the confusion BAA had initially stated the flight was inbound from City. But the spokeswoman confirmed: “It was an Air France flight that had been outbound but was forced to turn back. “It had to circle overhead for a time before landing.” She added: “The passengers have now all been allocated seats on flights operated by Air France and BMI to Heathrow and transport will be laid on to take anyone to London City who needs it.” None refused to board the replacement flights and no-one was injured, she said.

She said three were staying in Edinburgh overnight “because it suited their travel arrangements”, 20 were flying to London with BMI and 11 on another Air France flight tonight. Lothian & Borders Fire & Rescue Service declared the incident “a full emergency “ and confirmed its crews had been on stand-by. Lothian & Borders Police had also shut off parts of Glasgow Road to aid the arrival of the emergency vehicles. The flight was due to depart at 5.45pm but was delayed until 6.34pm. Only last week BA announced it was cutting 25 jobs on the City to Edinburgh route. It said it had “surplus” staff after one of its planes was written off on landing at the London airport.

Debris Found of Air France by Brazilian teams

Search teams scouring the Atlantic Ocean for the Air France jet which came down in a storm yesterday have found debris from an aircraft that included plane seats..

The Brazilian air force said “small remains” were located 650km (400 miles) northeast of the Fernando do Noronha archipelago in the area where the jet is thought to have crashed.

It could not immediately be confirmed that the debris was from Air France flight AF 447 – which had 228 passengers and crew aboard but reports from Brazil suggested that the search teams had seen aircraft seats bobbing in the sea.

Brazil’s Globo TV quoted a ham radio operator who reported hearing air force radio traffic that debris possibly from the plane had been spotted. The Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported on its website that air force radar has detected signs of oil and metal in the same area.

If the debris is confirmed as that of the Air France Airbus A33-200, air crash investigators will be significantly more confident as to the prospects of recovering the plane’s “black box” flight recorder, which will give clues as to what happened.

As search teams scoured a remote area between Brazil and the coast of Africa for traces of the plane, the French Government announced that the investigation would be led by Alain Bouillard, who led the inquiry into the fatal Concorde crash over Paris nine years ago which helped hasten the end of the supersonic airliner.

More details Awaited

Possible burning wreckage spotted after Air France plane disappeared

A pilot from Brazil’s airline TAM may have spotted a burning piece of wreckage of the Air France passenger plane that disappeared early Monday morning.

    The Brazilian Air Force confirmed late Monday that the pilot saw “orange-colored spots” on the Atlantic Ocean, about 40 minutes after the last contact between Air France Flight 447 and Brazil’s air control center.

    Investigators are now searching for more information to confirm whether these “glowing spots” are the burning pieces of the plane wreckage, the Brazilian Air Force said.

    The TAM pilot “saw glowing spots on the high sea on its path between Europe and Brazil, about 1,300 km off the island Fernando de Noronha,” the TAM airline said in a statement. Fernando de Noronha is about 350 km off the Brazilian coast.

    Air France Airbus A330-200, Flight 447, with 228 people on board, was probably hit by lightning and suffered an electrics failure while flying through an Atlantic storm, according to Air France. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday in Paris that the chances of finding any survivors are “very slim.”

    The airplane, bound for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, lost contact with the control center shortly after its takeoff from Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. (2200 GMT).

Missing French jet hit thunderstorms over Atlantic

 

A missing Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris ran into lightning and strong thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, officials said Monday. Brazil began a search mission off its northeastern coast.

Chief Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said “it is possible” that the plane was hit by lightning.

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time (2200 GMT, 6 p.m. EDT) with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand.

About four hours later, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said.

The plane “crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence” at 0200 GMT Monday (10 p.m. EDT Sunday). An automatic message was received fourteen minutes later “signaling electrical circuit malfunction.”

Brazil’s Air Force said the last contact it had with the Air France jet was at 0136 GMT (9:30 p.m. EDT Sunday), but did not say where the plane was at that time.

Brazil’s air force was searching near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of the coastal city of Natal, a spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy.

The region is about 1,500 miles northeast of Rio.

The head of investigation and accident prevention for Brazil’s Civil Aeronautics Agency, Douglas Ferreira Machado, told Brazil’s Globo TV that he believes the plane must have left Brazilian waters and could have been near the coast of Africa by the time contact was lost, based on the speed it was traveling.

“It’s going to take a long time to carry out this search,” he said. “It could be a long, sad story. The black box will be at the bottom of the sea.”

Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, at a news conference at Charles de Gaulle Airport north of Paris, said the pilot had 11,000 hours of flying experience, including 1,700 hours flying this aircraft. No name was released.

Aviation experts said the risk the plane was brought down by lightning was slim.

“Lightning issues have been considered since the beginning of aviation. They were far more prevalent when aircraft operated at low altitudes. They are less common now since it’s easier to avoid thunderstorms,” said Bill Voss, president and CEO of Flight Safety Foundation, Alexandria, Va.

He said planes have specific measures built in to help dissipate electricity along the aircraft’s skin.

“I cannot recall in recent history any examples of aircraft being brought down by lightning,” he told The Associated Press.

Experts said it was clear the plane was not in the air any longer, due to the amount of fuel it would have been carrying.

“The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion,” Jane’s Aviation analyst Chris Yates told The Associated Press.

“I would suggest that potentially it went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilot on board didn’t have a chance to make that emergency call,” Yates said, adding that the possibilities ranged from mechanical failure to terrorism.

Families who arrived to meet passengers on board were cordoned off, away from reporters, at a special Air France information center at the Charles de Gaulle airport. That center said 60 French citizens were on the plane. Italy said at least three passengers were Italian.

“Air France shares the emotion and worry of the families concerned,” Barrand said.

The flight was supposed to arrive in Paris at 0915 GMT (5:15 a.m. EDT), according to the airport.

Airbus said it was cooperating with transport authorities and Air France, but would not further comment until more details emerged.

“Our thoughts are with the passengers and with the families of the passengers,” said Airbus spokeswoman Maggie Bergsma.

The Airbus A330-200 is a twin-engine, long-haul, medium-capacity passenger jet that is 58.8 meters (190 feet) long. It is a shortened version of the standard A330, and can hold up to 253 passengers. It first went into service in 1998 and there are 341 in use worldwide today. It can fly up to 7,760 miles (12,500 kilometers).

French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his “extreme worry” and planned to visit the Charles de Gaulle airport later Monday.

A missing Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris ran into lightning and strong thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, officials said Monday. Brazil began a search mission off its northeastern coast.

Chief Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said “it is possible” that the plane was hit by lightning.

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time (2200 GMT, 6 p.m. EDT) with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, company spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand.

About four hours later, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said.

The plane “crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence” at 0200 GMT Monday (10 p.m. EDT Sunday). An automatic message was received fourteen minutes later “signaling electrical circuit malfunction.”

Brazil’s Air Force said the last contact it had with the Air France jet was at 0136 GMT (9:30 p.m. EDT Sunday), but did not say where the plane was at that time.

Brazil’s air force was searching near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of the coastal city of Natal, a spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy.

The region is about 1,500 miles northeast of Rio.

The head of investigation and accident prevention for Brazil’s Civil Aeronautics Agency, Douglas Ferreira Machado, told Brazil’s Globo TV that he believes the plane must have left Brazilian waters and could have been near the coast of Africa by the time contact was lost, based on the speed it was traveling.

“It’s going to take a long time to carry out this search,” he said. “It could be a long, sad story. The black box will be at the bottom of the sea.”

Air France-KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, at a news conference at Charles de Gaulle Airport north of Paris, said the pilot had 11,000 hours of flying experience, including 1,700 hours flying this aircraft. No name was released.

Aviation experts said the risk the plane was brought down by lightning was slim.

“Lightning issues have been considered since the beginning of aviation. They were far more prevalent when aircraft operated at low altitudes. They are less common now since it’s easier to avoid thunderstorms,” said Bill Voss, president and CEO of Flight Safety Foundation, Alexandria, Va.

He said planes have specific measures built in to help dissipate electricity along the aircraft’s skin.

“I cannot recall in recent history any examples of aircraft being brought down by lightning,” he told The Associated Press.

Experts said it was clear the plane was not in the air any longer, due to the amount of fuel it would have been carrying.

“The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion,” Jane’s Aviation analyst Chris Yates told The Associated Press.

“I would suggest that potentially it went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilot on board didn’t have a chance to make that emergency call,” Yates said, adding that the possibilities ranged from mechanical failure to terrorism.

Families who arrived to meet passengers on board were cordoned off, away from reporters, at a special Air France information center at the Charles de Gaulle airport. That center said 60 French citizens were on the plane. Italy said at least three passengers were Italian.

“Air France shares the emotion and worry of the families concerned,” Barrand said.

The flight was supposed to arrive in Paris at 0915 GMT (5:15 a.m. EDT), according to the airport.

Airbus said it was cooperating with transport authorities and Air France, but would not further comment until more details emerged.

“Our thoughts are with the passengers and with the families of the passengers,” said Airbus spokeswoman Maggie Bergsma.

The Airbus A330-200 is a twin-engine, long-haul, medium-capacity passenger jet that is 58.8 meters (190 feet) long. It is a shortened version of the standard A330, and can hold up to 253 passengers. It first went into service in 1998 and there are 341 in use worldwide today. It can fly up to 7,760 miles (12,500 kilometers).

French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his “extreme worry” and planned to visit the Charles de Gaulle airport later Monday.

Air France crash: ‘No hope’ of survivors

An Air France plane bound for Paris that disappeared with 228 people on board today has almost certainly crashed with no survivors, according to airline and government officials.

Brazilian air force planes are searching the Atlantic for flight AF447, an Airbus A330-200 that left Rio de Janeiro at 7pm local time (2300 BST) yesterday. It had been expected in Paris at 11.15am.The Brazilian air force told the Associated Press that a search was under way near the island of  Fernando de Noronha.

An Air France source was quoted as saying that there was “no hope” for those on board.

Jean-Louis Borloo, the second most senior figure in the French cabinet, said: “By now it would be beyond its kerosene [aviation fuel] reserves so unfortunately we must now envisage the most tragic scenario.”

Borloo told France Info radio that the plane had disappeared from military as well as civilian radar screens.

Brigitte Barrand, a spokeswoman for the airline, said: “Air France regrets to announce that it is without news from Air France flight 447, flying from Rio to Paris.”

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, expressed his “extreme worry” and sent the junior minister for transport, Dominique Bussereau, and the environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, to Charles de Gaulle airport to monitor the situation.

The Air France flight was full – today is a French bank holiday and Brazil is an increasingly popular tourist destination among the French. The mood at Charles de Gaulle airport this morning was of extreme concern.

The plane was carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew. The Italian press agency Ansa reported that five Italians were on board

The plane disappeared about 190 miles north-east of the coastal Brazilian city of Natal, near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, about 1,500 miles north-east of Rio. A spokesman said the search and rescue mission was mounted after the jet failed to make regular radio contact.

According to the French media, Paris airport authorities were told by their Brazilian counterparts that the aircraft had vanished from radar screens.

The A330-200 model has not had any fatal accidents involving passengers. But in June 1994 an A330 owned by Airbus on a test flight simulating an engine failure on take-off crashed shortly after leaving Toulouse, killing all seven on board.

In October last year a Qantas A330 flying from Singapore to Perth reportedly experienced a sudden change in altitude.

The crew issued a mayday call before diverting the aircraft. About 36 passengers and crew members were injured, more than a dozen seriously.

Air France Rio-Paris flight missing with 228 aboard (Breaking News)

An Air France plane on its way from Brazil to Paris has gone missing with 228 people on board. 

Its last known location was unclear. Brazilian television said theBrazilian air force had started a search mission over the Atlantic Ocean for the plane.

Flight AF 447 has 216 passengers and 12 crew on board. It left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time and was expected in Paris on Monday at 11:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m. EDT).

“Air France regrets to announce that it is without news from flight AF 447, which was flying on the Rio de Janeiro – Paris Charles de Gaulle route and was scheduled to arrive at 11.15 a.m. today (5:15 a.m. EDT),” an Air France spokesman said.

An Air France-KLM spokeswoman in Amsterdam said there had been no radio contact with the missing plane “for a while.”

The plane was an Airbus 330-200, according to the Paris airports authority website.

Air France said relatives of people traveling on board flight AF 447 were being taken care of in a special area of Charles de Gaulle airport.

More updates as they are made available.

Aegean launches new Athens-Paris CDG Service

Aegean Airlines will start a new daily Athens – Paris CDG flight from 26 OCT 08 on its new A 321. The timings are :

A3610 ATH1040 – 1310CDG
A3611 CDG1405 – 1820ATH

Jet codeshares with Brussels Airlines to fly Paris, Manchester

Jet Airways today announced expansion of its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines to connect Paris and Manchester from October 26, with the flights operating via the Belgian airline’s European hub in Brussels.

Manchester is Jet Airways’ second codeshare destination in the UK, after Birmingham, in addition to the airline’s direct daily services to London from Mumbai, Delhi and Amritsar.

With the expansion of its existing codeshare arrangement, the premier private carrier now offers connectivity between Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, on one hand, and Birmingham, Madrid, Barcelona, Lyon, Berlin Tempelhof, Paris and Manchester, via Brussels, on the other, through its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines.

“With the expansion of its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines, Jet Airways now offers its passengers enhanced connectivity on the India-Europe sector, via its world-class, passenger-friendly hub in Brussels,” Jet CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said in a statement and claimed that his airline was “fast becoming the carrier of choice for passengers on the sector”.

Jet flies daily to Brussels from three gateway points of Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

The private carrier, with a fleet of 85 aircraft, currently has codeshare agreements with Brussels Airlines, American Airlines, Air Canada, Qantas, ANA and Etihad, offering its passengers unmatched connectivity across Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and Japan from India.