Airbus A330 flight from Brazil to Paris with 228 people on board, disappeared today from both military and civilian radar screens over Atlantic. world’s agencies report. Seams it has almost certainly crashed with no survivors, according to airline and government officials.
The Reuters news agency reported Air France as saying the pilot sent a message at 3.14am BST reporting an electrical short-circuit after the plane had flown through a stormy area with strong turbulence.
Brazilian air force planes are searching the Atlantic for flight AF447, an Airbus A330-200 that left Rio de Janeiro at 7pm local time (11pm BST) yesterday. It had been expected in Paris at 11.15am today .
Jean-Louis Borloo, the second most senior figure in the French cabinet, said: “By now it would be beyond its kerosene [aviation fuel] reserves so unfortunately we must now envisage the most tragic scenario.”
A former pilot told France Info radio he believed it was the first Airbus A330 crash. The model is known as having a good safety record.
The plane was carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew. The Italian press agency Ansa reported that five Italians were on board.
According to the French media, Paris airport authorities were told by their Brazilian counterparts that the aircraft had vanished from radar screens.
France Info radio quoted an airport authority source as saying it was possible but extremely unlikely that the radar drop-out was caused by a transmitter failure.
Chris Yates, an aviation expert, told the BBC: “There is not radar coverage across the Atlantic because it is too far from radar stations.
“But the fact [the plane] has not appeared on radar when it neared land gives me cause for concern.
“Normally, aircraft crossing the oceans are in constant contact with traffic control, updating them with details of their route information or location.
“If there is an emergency on board, they declare that. So it is somewhat surprising that there doesn’t appear to have been a warning.”
He said that “if we are talking about an aircraft coming down over the ocean … then survivability is quite limited”.
David Gleave, another aviation expert, told the BBC: “We are running out of time for the plane to reappear, given the amount of fuel it had on it.
“Had it been a communication problem, it would have appeared now on Spanish or French radar or Brazilian, had it turned around.
“The first thing is to find out where it is. It may have been reporting its position by satellite. It is very unusual that there is no location information.”
The A330-200 model has not had any fatal accidents involving passengers. In June 1994 an A330 owned by Airbus on a test flight simulating an engine failure on take-off crashed shortly after leaving Toulouse, killing all seven on board.
In October last year a Qantas A330 flying from Singapore to Perth reportedly experienced a sudden change in altitude. The crew issued a mayday call before diverting the aircraft. About 36 passengers and crew members were injured, more than a dozen seriously.
What happend?
At 3.10am, the messages show the pilot was presented with a series of major failures over a four-minute period before catastrophe struck, according to automatic data signals cited by the Sao Paulo newspaper, le Jornal da Tarde.
At this time, the automatic pilot was disconnected – either by the pilot or by the plane’s inbuilt security system, which flips to manual after detecting a serious error.
It is unclear whether the pilot wanted to manually change course to avoid a dangerous cloud zone – an extremely difficult manoeuvre at such high altitude.
At the same moment, another message indicates that the “fly-by-wire” electronic flight system which controls the wing and tail flaps shifted to “alternative law” – an emergency backup system engaged after multiple electricity failures. This system enables the plane to continue functioning on minimum energy but reduces flight stability. An alarm would have sounded to alert the cabin crew to this.
Two minutes later, another message indicates that two essential computers providing vital information on altitude, speed and flight direction ceased functioning correctly.
Two new messages at 3.13am report electricity breakdowns in the principal and auxiliary flight computers.
At 3.14am, a final message reads “cabin in vertical speed”, suggesting a sudden loss of cabin pressure, either the cause or the consequence of the plane breaking up in mid-air.
Air France crash survivor dies in car accident
An Italian woman who did not board the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic, killing all its 228 passengers, has died in a car accident.
Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from the northern Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen, and her husband Kurt missed the June 1 Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after arriving late at the airport.
Johanna and Kurt Ganthaler were vacationing in Brazil, when they missed the ill-fated Air France flight and were forced to catch a different flight later that day.
Just days later after returning to Europe, Johanna lost her life when their car went off the road near the Austrian city of Kufstein.