Air France plane missing with 228 aboard

Air France plane missing with 228 aboard - Flight en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro
By Ben Hall in Paris, Kevin Done in London and agencies
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: June 1 2009 11:58 | Last updated: June 1 2009 16:46
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ed0588a4-4e98-11de-8c10-00144feabdc0.html


An Air France passenger jet with 228 people on board is believed to have crashed into the Atlantic on Monday en route from Brazil to Paris after suffering an electrical breakdown during a heavy thunderstorm.

Air France said the Airbus A330 jet flew through “severe turbulence” four hours into its flight and far off the Brazilian coast before sending out an automatic warning of an “electrical fault”. It was the last contact with the aircraft.

“It is probably a combination of circumstances that could have led to the crash,” said François Brousse, the company’s communications director, adding that it could have been hit by lightning.

The French government sent three airforce reconnaissance planes from a base in Dakar, Senegal and a naval vessel from the Gulf Guinea to search for the crash site. Brazilian aircraft were also scrambled to join the search. But the area where the Air France jet may have come down is vast.

The accident is the worst in Air France’s 75-year history and the first since a New York-bound Concorde crashed shortly after take-off from Roissy Charles de Gaulle in 2000, killing 109 people.

The Airbus A330, a twin-engined, wide-bodied jet, took off from Rio de Janeiro at 19.03 local time (22.03 GMT) on Sunday and was due to land at Roissy at 11.10 local time yesterday.

The Brazilian air force said that when the plane left its radar area at 0148 GMT it had been flying normally at an altitude of 35,000 feet and at 453 knots. It failed to make contact at the next attempt half an hour later at 0220. Air traffic controllers on both sides of the Atlantic tried in vain to re-establish contact with the aircraft.

The twin-engined plane was carrying 216 passengers, three flight crew and nine cabin staff.

Most of those on board were Brazilian, 40 to 60 were French and 25 German, according to Jean-Louis Borloo, the French transport minister who called the crash “an awful tragedy”.

Air France said relatives of people travelling on board flight AF 447 were being taken care of at Roissy Charles de Gaulle. President Nicolas Sarkozy visited a crisis centre set up at the airport.

Air France said the A330-200 entered service in April 2005 and had completed 18,870 flight hours. It had last been in heavy maintenance on April 16. It was powered by two General Electric CF6-80E engines.

The Airbus A330-200 is the most successful long-haul aircraft built by the European aircraft maker. As of April Airbus had taken 557 orders for the twin-engined aircraft and had delivered 343. According to Airbus there were 341 in operation around the world.

It is used typically on medium capacity long-haul routes and according to Airbus typically has around 250 seats in a three-class configuration with first, business and economy cabins, and as many as 290 in two-class business and economy cabins.