Searchers sight debris from Air France plane
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Daily News with wires
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Haziran 03, 2009 00:00
BRASILIA - Search aircraft yesterday found a seat and other debris from a plane in a remote stretch of the Atlantic where an Air France flight carrying 228 people disappeared, said Brazil's air force, adding what brought down the plane remains a mystery.
The material was found as searchers focused on an area about 650 kilometers off the coast of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha Island, Col. Jorge Amaral told reporters in Brasilia. The find came after spotter planes, helicopters and navy vessels were dispatched by Brazil and France to locate the Airbus A330-200, which dropped from radar screens after hitting turbulence as it flew to Paris from Rio de Janeiro on Monday.
“It could not immediately be confirmed that the debris was from Air France flight AF 447,” Amaral was quoted by Agence France-Presse news agency as saying. There were no signs of survivors, he added.
He added that officials needed "a piece that might have a serial number, some sort of identification" to be sure that it came from the missing airliner. But the items included a seat from a plane, bits of white material, an orange buoy, a barrel and some oil and kerosene slicks, grouped in two floating patches 60 kilometers apart, according to an air force statement.
All systems break down
As investigators puzzled over a series of error messages sent by the flight after it hit a fierce storm, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said yesterday that all systems failed on an Air France jet, but adding it is still too soon to say what caused the disaster.
"No hypothesis is being favored at the moment," he told the National Assembly. "Our only certainty is that there was no distress call sent by the plane, but regular automatic alerts sent over three minutes indicated the failure of all systems," he said. The French government said there’s no evidence so far that points to terrorism.
Air France said it does not rule out a lightning strike on the aircraft, which reported an electrical-circuit breakdown and sent 10 automated distress messages before it vanished. “That’s the kind of message you receive from a dying, breaking-up airplane,” John Nance, a pilot who runs an aviation-consulting business, said in an interview with Bloomberg from Seattle.
“Lightning strike is one hypothesis among others, but one can’t imagine that would be the cause of the plane going down,” French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said in an interview on French radio station Europe One. “It could be days, weeks or months” before anything is known about the cause of the crash, he said.
The French government, meanwhile, has accepted a U.S. offer to supply data gathered by the Pentagon’s network of military satellites that might yield information on where the plane had gone down, Bussereau said. The U.S. Defense Department said it sent a reconnaissance aircraft and search and rescue team to join the effort.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who met with relatives of the missing passengers, told reporters at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris that the “chances of finding any survivors are very slim.” Sarkozy meets the families regularly to keep them up to date with efforts to find the remains of the plane. Air France said it has assembled 15 physicians to give family members medical care and psychological counseling at the Paris and Rio airports.
“It could not immediately be confirmed that the debris was from Air France flight AF 447,” Amaral was quoted by Agence France-Presse news agency as saying. There were no signs of survivors, he added.
He added that officials needed "a piece that might have a serial number, some sort of identification" to be sure that it came from the missing airliner. But the items included a seat from a plane, bits of white material, an orange buoy, a barrel and some oil and kerosene slicks, grouped in two floating patches 60 kilometers apart, according to an air force statement.
All systems break down
As investigators puzzled over a series of error messages sent by the flight after it hit a fierce storm, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said yesterday that all systems failed on an Air France jet, but adding it is still too soon to say what caused the disaster.
"No hypothesis is being favored at the moment," he told the National Assembly. "Our only certainty is that there was no distress call sent by the plane, but regular automatic alerts sent over three minutes indicated the failure of all systems," he said. The French government said there’s no evidence so far that points to terrorism.
Air France said it does not rule out a lightning strike on the aircraft, which reported an electrical-circuit breakdown and sent 10 automated distress messages before it vanished. “That’s the kind of message you receive from a dying, breaking-up airplane,” John Nance, a pilot who runs an aviation-consulting business, said in an interview with Bloomberg from Seattle.
“Lightning strike is one hypothesis among others, but one can’t imagine that would be the cause of the plane going down,” French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said in an interview on French radio station Europe One. “It could be days, weeks or months” before anything is known about the cause of the crash, he said.
The French government, meanwhile, has accepted a U.S. offer to supply data gathered by the Pentagon’s network of military satellites that might yield information on where the plane had gone down, Bussereau said. The U.S. Defense Department said it sent a reconnaissance aircraft and search and rescue team to join the effort.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who met with relatives of the missing passengers, told reporters at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris that the “chances of finding any survivors are very slim.” Sarkozy meets the families regularly to keep them up to date with efforts to find the remains of the plane. Air France said it has assembled 15 physicians to give family members medical care and psychological counseling at the Paris and Rio airports.