Planes and ships searched an expanse of the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday for the wreckage of an Air France jetliner that vanished during a storm with 228 people on board.
The Airbus A330 went missing on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Monday morning. More than 24 hours later, the chances of finding survivors appeared close to nil and authorities were treating the passenger list as a death toll.
France and Brazil sent military aircraft and ships to try and locate wreckage between Brazil and West Africa.
Brazilian airline TAM said the crew of one of its planes saw "bright spots" on the surface of the ocean, perhaps caused by burning wreckage early Monday. Brazil's air force said a ship in the area indicated had found no signs of debris.
The Air France plane reported flying into heavy turbulence four hours after taking off from Rio and 15 minutes later it generated automatic messages reporting electrical faults.
No distress signal was received and aviation experts said they did not have enough information to understand how flight AF 447 could have disappeared without a trace.
RACE AGAINST TIME
An Air France spokesman said on Monday that a lightning strike could be to blame for the disaster, but aviation experts said such strikes on planes were common and could not alone explain the loss of a modern aircraft.
Senior French minister Jean-Louis Borloo said it was crucial for searchers to locate the black boxes, or flight recorders, which are programmed to emit signals for up to 30 days.
"It would be very unusual to have all the communications systems fail at once," said David Gleave, of Aviation Safety Investigations, a UK-based airport and air traffic control risk management consultancy.
No comments:
Post a Comment