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How Can Such a Modern Jet Simply Vanish?

Tuesday, June 2, 20095:20 AM

Breaking News:

PARIS, June 2, 2009

•An Air France jet, flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, disappeared over the Atlantic ocean during a thunderstorm with 228 passengers and crew on board. Air France announced Monday that victims aboard the airplane were from 32 countries, including 58 Brazilians, 61 French, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians. French officials emphasized that they had no clear explanation for what happened to the plane. And chances of finding any survivors are definitely very slim.

•The plane took off from the international Airport of Rio do Janeriro on Sunday and it was flying to Paris, France.

•The plane found a turbulence zone after leaving the Brazilian aerial control area at 11 p.m. local time, and its last contact with ground was at 11:14 p.m. Brazil's time.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy :Chances are slim for survivors aboard the mising jet.

•One can expect that they will find some elements on the sea, but unfortunately as of now, they have found nothing. On the other hand , junior transport minister Dominique Bussereau warned that the search for flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris could take a long time. Separately, French officials and airline pilots noted that the plane could have fall hard and fast directly into the water or flown on for hundreds of miles, making the search zone a long, broad path across the ocean between northeast Brazil and far western Africa. In fact, Bussereau said in a separate radio interview that the incident will certainly take a long investigation if it went down in the mid-Atlantic, since the mid-oceans are one of the remotest parts of the world. Given the enormousness of the ocean and the doubtness about where the plane went down, some experts said, the crash site might never be define. But a growing number of countries, including Brazil, France and Spain, contributed ships and planes to the search for debris, and the Pentagon dispatched a surveillance aircraft and an Air Force search-and-rescue team. French officials reportedly asked the Obama administration whether U.S. spy satellites or listening posts might provide clues to the fate of the jetliner.

grieving realtives of missing jet victims

Source: The Washington Post

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