Air France Plane Presumed to have crashed in Atlantic

Search planes have located debris 400 miles off the Northern Coast of Brazil.

WASHINGTON (Catholic Online) - Planes from the Brazilian Air Force have sighted debris in Ocean 400 miles off the northern coast of the country, speculating that they may have found wreckage from Air France flight 447, which was lost on Sunday.
Naval vessels are heading to the area, hoping to confirm whether or not the metal objects and plane seats that had been spotted belong to the lost aircraft.

Air France chief executive, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, told a news conference on Monday: "We are probably facing an air catastrophe."

"The whole company shares the anxiety of the families," Gourgeon went on to say. "We are doing everything possible to get information through, little by little, as it comes through."

Approximately four hours into the flight, the aircraft encounter thunderstorms and heavy turbulence while over the Atlantic Ocean. The only contact with air traffic controllers was an automatic alert regarding electrical failures on board.

François Brousse, an Air France spokesman, told the news conference, "It is probably a combination of circumstances that could have led to the crash." He indicated that several of the plane's mechanisms had malfunctioned, which prevented the crew from making contact with air traffic controllers.

Flight AF 447 left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. (2200 GMT) with 228 people on board and had been expected to land at Paris's Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday at 11:15 a.m. (0915 GMT).

Radar coverage over the mid-Atlantic is spotty as it is too far from land-based radar stations. When the plane did not appear on radar when it was scheduled to be near land raised serious concerns. The exact location of the disappearance, however, could not be established.

This will be the first crash of an A330-200 model involving passengers. In June 1994, an company-owned A330 was on a test flight simulating an engine failure on take-off when it crashed shortly after leaving the airport in Toulouse near their headquarters. All seven people on board died in the crash.

Officials with Air France stated that the aircraft, which entered service in April 2005, had flown 18,870 hours. Its last engineering overhaul took place in April of this year.

They also reported that the captain was an experienced pilot with 11,000 hours in the air, of which 1,700 of them on an Airbus 330, making him a highly experienced pilot. Of the two co-pilots, one had 3,000 hours of flight time and the other 6,600 hours.

When confirmed, this will be the first fatal loss for Air France since the fatal crash of a Concorde jet just after take-off in 2000 with 113 people on board. In August of 2005 an Air France A340 skidded off the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport and burst into flames. Everyone on board survived.

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Randy Sly is the Associate Editor of Catholic Online. He is a former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal church who laid aside that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

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