By Estelle Shirbon and Pedro Fonseca PARIS/RIO DE JANEIRO - 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. "All scenarios have to be envisaged," said French Defence Minister Herve Morin on Europe 1 radio. "We can't rule out a terrorist act since terrorism is the main threat to Western democracies, but at this time we don't have any element whatsoever indicating that such an act could have caused this accident," Morin added. Morin said none of the military aircraft flying over the zone where the passenger plane went missing had spotted any bright spots or anything to match the TAM crew's account. If no survivors are found, it would be the worst disaster in Air France's 75-year history, more deadly than the crash of one of its supersonic Concorde planes in 2000. Flight AF 447 was carrying 216 passengers of 32 nationalities, including seven children and one baby. Sixty-one were French citizens, 58 Brazilian and 26 German. Twelve crew members were also on board. Distraught relatives in Paris and Rio were tended to by teams of psychologists. 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. "This is a race against the clock," Borloo said on RTL radio. One element that baffled experts was the absence of any distress messages, either human or automatic, from the plane. No mayday message was picked up, nor were any signals received from emergency beacons that should have transmitted automatically. "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. "That would tend to indicate that something catastrophic happened." Brazil's air force last had contact with the plane at 0133 GMT on Monday when it was 565 km (350 miles) from Brazil's coast. The last automated signals were received at 0214 GMT. Brazil sent six jets to look for the airliner and the navy dispatched three ships. Morin said France had sent one jet from Senegal and two from France as well as two naval vessels. The United States agreed to assist in locating the crash site using satellite data. Air France said the plane, which was powered with General Electric engines, went into service in April 2005. It last underwent maintenance in a hangar in April this year Get easy photo sharing with Windows Live™ Photos. Drag n’ drop _________________________________________________________________ Live Search extreme As India feels the heat of poll season, get all the info you need on the MSN News Aggregator http://news.in.msn.com/National/indiaelections2009/aggregator/default.aspx --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""GLOBAL SPECULATORS"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalspeculators?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
