An Air France jet carrying 228 people on a Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight was feared to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean yesterday after suffering an electrical failure while flying through a fierce storm, officials said.
Air France said the Airbus A330-200 jet was probably hit by lightning. The Brazilian and French air forces sent out search planes and other countries were on alert.
If it is confirmed that all 228 people were lost it would be the worst loss of life in Air France’s history and civil aviation’s worst disaster for more than a decade.
“We are without a doubt faced with an aviation catastrophe. The entire company is thinking of the families and shares their pain,” Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told reporters at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport.
French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo confirmed the plane had probably had some kind of accident as a hijacking had been ruled out.
“There’s nothing on Spanish radar, nothing on Moroccan radar, nothing on French radar. We can seriously envisage the worst,” Borloo said.
The minister said there were “powerful” tropical storms in the zone.
“It is the kind of jet made to handle this kind of circumstance, but there must have been a build up of circumstances,” he said.
Flight AF 447 sent an automatic error message reporting a fault in an electrical circuit at 2:14am, just over four hours after it left Rio, Gourgeon said.
“The most likely thing is that the plane was hit by lightning. The plane was in a stormy area with strong turbulence, which provoked problems,” Francois Brousse, Air France’s director of communications, said separately.
Borloo was among top French officials sent to Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, where relatives of the 216 passengers and 12 crew were being cared for by doctors and psychologists.
The passengers were made up of 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby, Air France said. There were nine flight attendants and three flight crew.
Five Italians were believed to be on the jet, Italian media said.
Flight AF 447 left Rio at about 7pm on Sunday night for the 9,145km flight, which would normally take 10 hours and 20 minutes.
The Brazilian air force said its planes had scrambled to search for the jet off its northeast coast. A French military reconnaissance plane also flew out of Senegal to take part in the search.
French authorities set up a crisis cell and President Nicolas Sarkozy was expected to go to Charles de Gaulle airport.
FOUR DESIGNATED AREAS: Notices were issued for live-fire exercises in waters south and northwest of Penghu, northeast of Keelung and west of Kaohsiung, they said The military is planning three major annual exercises across the army, navy and air force this month, with the navy’s “Hai Chiang” (海強, “Sea Strong”) drills running from today through Friday, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. The Hai Chiang exercise, which is to take place in waters surrounding Taiwan, would feature P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft and S-70C anti-submarine helicopters, the ministry said, adding that the drills aim to bolster the nation’s offshore defensive capabilities. China has intensified military and psychological pressure against Taiwan, repeatedly sending warplanes and vessels into areas near the nation’s air defense identification zone and across
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
SENATE RECOMMENDATION: The National Defense Authorization Act encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s navy to participate in the exercises in Hawaii The US Senate on Thursday last week passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026, which strongly encourages the US secretary of defense to invite Taiwan’s naval forces to participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, as well as allocating military aid of US$1 billion for Taiwan. The bill, which authorizes appropriations for the military activities of the US Department of Defense, military construction and other purposes, passed with 77 votes in support and 20 against. While the NDAA authorizes about US$925 billion of defense spending, the Central News Agency yesterday reported that an aide of US
RSS