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French Jet Vanishes on Flight From Brazil to Paris



Bob Edme/Associated Press
Air France's chief executive Pierre Henri Gourgeon spoke to reporters at the airline's headquarters, at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday.

French Jet Vanishes on Flight From Brazil to Paris

Published: June 1, 2009
PARIS — An Air France passenger jet traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared after its electrical systems malfunctioned during a storm with heavy turbulence on Sunday evening, and officials said Monday that a search had begun for the wreckage near a small archipelago off the Brazilian coast.

Air France's chief executive Pierre Henri Gourgeon spoke to reporters at the airline's headquarters, at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday.


“We are very worried,” said an aviation official in Paris interviewed by Agence France-Presse. “It could be a transponder problem, but this kind of fault is very rare and the plane did not land when expected.”



The plane, an Airbus 330, was carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew members. The passengers were 126 men, 82 women, seven children and one infant. There were nine cabin crew members and three pilots, the airline said.

Four hours after the flight took off at 7 p.m. local time on Sunday, the plane encountered an electrical storm with “very heavy turbulence,” an Air France spokeswoman, Brigitte Barrand, said. Air traffic controllers lost all contact with the plane about 10 minutes after the heavy turbulence was reported.

The last communication was an automatically sent message informing air traffic control of electrical-system malfunction, Air France officials said in Paris. Officials said the plane might have been struck by lightning.

All jets are built to withstand severe turbulence, especially at upper flying levels, as well as to withstand lightning strikes. Pilots are trained to try to avoid flying directly through thunderstorms, and instead try to find an opening in a storm front through which to guide their plane.

Ms. Barrand said that the pilot was very experienced, having clocked 11,000 flying hours, including 1,100 hours on Airbus 330 jets.

Officials said the plane dropped off the radar between the islands of Fernando de Noronha, the main island of an archipelago of the same name, and Ilha do Sal, one of the Cape Verde islands.

The Brazilian Air Force sent two planes to search for wreckage, centering their initial search around the island of Fernando de Noronha, an idyllic holiday destination 186 miles northeast of the coastal Brazilian city of Natal.

“We have two planes up there searching,” Air Force spokesman Col. Henry Munhoz told O Globo television in Brazil.

The plane was scheduled to arrive in Paris at 11:10 a.m. local time. It was operated by Air France and apparently did not share a flight code with Delta Air Lines, the American carrier that shares flights and routes with Air France.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France expressed grave concern about the missing airliner and sent his transport and environment ministers to the airport to monitor the situation. He was due at the airport later Monday afternoon, and relatives of passengers began gathering in a special area set aside for them in Terminal 2.

French and Brazilian aviation authorities are expected to lead the investigation, but the United States’ National Transportation Safety Administration may be involved if the plane had American made engines or had any American passengers on board.

No Airbus 330 passenger flight has ever been involved in a fatal crash, though the seven-person crew of a test flight died in a June 30, 1994, crash near Toulouse, France, where Airbus is based. The test was meant to simulate an engine failure at low speed with maximum angle of climb.

In October 2008, an A330 operated by Qantas on a flight from Singapore to Perth had to be diverted for an emergency landing near the Australian town of Exmouth after suddenly losing altitude. Dozens of passengers and crew members were injured.

Brazil’s air traffic control system has been in crisis since 2006, when a Gol passenger jet collided with a private plane above the Amazon, killing all 154 people on board. In the wake of the crash, air traffic controllers launched strikes and slowdowns to protest their low pay, high stress and poor working conditions.

Just 10 months, after that disaster, a TAM jet slid off the runway at São Paulo’s city airport and skidded across a busy highway. Some 199 people died in what became worst air crash disaster.

Although the two crashes were not directly related, Brazil’s air traffic control system and oversight of it were implicated in both. The system is run by the military, but questions were raised about the capacity, training and above all, the English-language abilities of the controllers.

The Gol crash reflected “systematic shortcomings in emphasis on positive air traffic control concepts,” the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board said in its final report on the disaster.

Air France said that people in France seeking information about the flight could telephone 0800-800-812. For those calling from abroad, the number is 33-1-57-02-10-55.

Caroline Brothers reported from Paris and Sharon Otterman from New York. Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from Buenos Aires, Micheline Maynard from New York and Brian Knowlton from Washington.

Purplelizard2006

Jun 1 2009, 12:09 PM

Maybe they ran into the Bermuda Triangle... or..... is there another LOST?