It doesn't look good -- I feel so sorry for the family members and friends of the probable victims.

http://www.nytimes.com/20...ne.html?em
[Edited 6/1/09 5:10am]

i'm on a airfrance flight out of jfk on the 12th- i'm glad it'snot the 13th

oh god

A terrible, terrible thing, and such a torturous wait.

i know there are orgers from France and a lot of lurkers from France so i am sorry to hear that and hope there are some survivors

oh man

Was just reading this latest update.


'The Air France plane that disappeared between Brazil and France with 228 people on board today has almost certainly crashed, airline and government officials said.

If no survivors are found it will be the worst loss of life involving an Air France plane in the firm's 75-year history.

The officials believe the Airbus A330-200 aircraft crashed after running into lightning and thunderstorms causing turbulence over the Atlantic Ocean.'


RIP

I can't imagine the sadness.

I can't imagine them never being found.

Just sad! My heart and prayers go out to those on the plane and those who love them.

I just read this, SO crazy

this is extremely messed up.

so sad

That is sad.
So, the spot where they crashed is sort of like a bermuda triangle type of place?

Remind me of my dream last night,
I was falling from the sky and woke up when I hit the ground.



.
[Edited 6/1/09 15:26pm]

i'm not understanding how an aircraft can disappear- wouldn't debris be somewhere in the water?

Evvy said:

It would be, but to spot it is tough from above.
And there is so much ground to cover, hopefully they find it though.

brazillian, french and chinese people died here so i feel bad for all the families

186 people died in a 2007 plane crash in Brazil so this is even more bad news for Brazil

sad, they didn't find them yet...so there is still hope.

peacenlovealways said:

No hope.
There was nowhere for the plane to land and no one is equipped to survive in the water.

SUPRMAN said:

japanrocks said:

It'd definitely a terrible, terrible loss of life. I believe I've heard at least one Canadian was a known passenger, and some Brits were thought to be onboard as well.

That aircraft is gone and there won't be any survivors, finding the aircraft is like a needle in a haystack. The black box will eventually be found, it sends a signal and most likely they will need the navy sub to step in once the location is found. According to a pilot I spoke to today it may take years to piece together exactly what went wrong.

Very sad for the families of passengers and crew.

wildgoldenhoney said:

Not at all there is so superstition here it is impossible to know the precise location of the aircraft in such a large body of water. The impact alone would have smashed the plane into pieces. Air traffic control lost contact prior to acknowledgment of aircraft location.

PanthaGirl said:

And I think I've hear there was no distress signal, so whatever occurred happened suddenly and completely disabled them at once.

yes this is really so tragic to hear abt this !!!!!

but it seems like the bermuda triangle from my view of whats happenin here...
tht has happen b4 when a plane went missing.....same sort of story....makes u wonder...

Plane debris found in path Air France jet took
AP

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Why Did Flight 447 Disappear? Play Video ABC News – Why Did Flight 447 Disappear?

* Air France plane missing Slideshow:Air France plane missing
* Investigators ponder Air France flight's fate Play Video Video:Investigators ponder Air France flight's fate AP
* Vanished Airbus: search for wreckage Play Video Video:Vanished Airbus: search for wreckage Reuters

Relatives of passengers of the Air France flight 447 are pictured through a AP – Relatives of passengers of the Air France flight 447 are pictured through a glass door as they react …
By MARCO SIBAJA, Associated Press Writer Marco Sibaja, Associated Press Writer – 9 mins ago

BRASILIA, Brazil – Brazilian military pilots spotted an airplane seat, a life jacket, metallic debris and signs of fuel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday as they hunted for a missing Air France passenger jet that carried 228 people. They found no signs of life.

The pilots spotted two areas of floating debris about 60 kilometers (35 miles) apart, about 410 miles (650 kilometers) beyond the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, roughly along Flight 447's path from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, said Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral.

"The locations where the objects were found are toward the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted," Amaral said. "That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis."

Amaral said authorities would not be able to confirm that the debris is from the plane until they can retrieve some of it from the ocean for identification. Brazilian military ships are not expected to arrive at the area until Wednesday.

The discovery came more than 24 hours after the jet went missing, with all feared dead.

Rescuers were still scanning a vast sweep of ocean extending from far off northeastern Brazil to waters off West Africa. The 4-year-old plane was last heard from at 0214 GMT Monday (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday). If no survivors are found, it would be the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.

Investigators on both sides of the ocean are trying to determine what brought the Airbus A330 down, with few clues to go on so far. Potential causes could include violently shifting winds and hail from towering thunderheads, lightning or some combination of other factors.

The crew gave no verbal messages of distress before the crash, but the plane's system sent an automatic message just before it disappeared, reporting lost pressure and electrical failure. The plane's cockpit and "black box" recorders could be thousands of feet (meters) below the surface.

The chance of finding survivors now "is very very small, even nonexistent," said the French minister overseeing transportation, Jean-Louis Borloo. "The race against the clock has begun" to find the plane's two black boxes, which emit signals up to 30 days.

Borloo called the A330 "one of the most reliable planes in the world" and said lightning alone, even from a fierce tropical storm, probably couldn't have brought down the plane.

"There really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation," Borloo said on RTL radio Tuesday.

French police were studying passenger lists and maintenance records, and preparing to take DNA from passengers' relatives to help identify any bodies.

France's Defense Minister Herve Morin said "we have no signs so far" of terrorism, but all hypotheses must be studied.

Alain Bouillard, who led the probe into the crash of the Concorde in July 2000, was put in charge of France's accident investigation team.

President Barack Obama told French television stations the United States is ready to do everything necessary to find out what happened.

On board the flight were 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians. A lesser number of citizens from 27 other countries also were on the passenger list, including two Americans.

Among them were three young Irish doctors, returning from two-week vacation in Brazil. Aisling Butler's father John paid tribute to his 26-year-old daughter, from Roscrea, County Tipperary.

"She was a truly wonderful, exciting girl. She never flunked an exam in her life — nailed every one of them — and took it all in her stride," he said.

The Airbus A330-200 was cruising normally at 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) and 522 mph (840 kph) just before it disappeared nearly four hours into the flight. No trouble was reported as the plane left radar contact, beyond Brazil's Fernando de Noronha archipelago.

But just north of the equator, a line of towering thunderstorms loomed. Bands of extremely turbulent weather stretched across the Atlantic toward Africa.

France's junior minister for transport, Dominique Bussereau, said the plane sent "a kind of outburst" of automated messages just before it disappeared, "which means something serious happened, as eventually the circuits switched off."

The pilot had 11,000 hours of flying experience, including 1,700 hours flying this aircraft.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that if the debris is confirmed to be part of Flight 447, "This will allow us to better determine the search zone."

"We are in a race against the clock in extremely difficult weather conditions and in a zone where depths reach up to 7,000 meters," he told lawmakers in the lower house of French parliament Tuesday.

The legislature held a moment of silence to honor the victims and the French soccer team will wear black arm bands and hold a moment of silence ahead of a match against Nigeria on Tuesday night.

____

Associated Press writers Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro, Alan Clendenning in Sao Paulo; and Emma Vandore, Jean-Pierre Verges and Laurent Joan-Grange in Paris contributed to this report.
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