Chances of finding survivors in Air France plane crash remote

The chances of finding any survivor of the Air France plane, which went missing earlier today and is being suspected to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after hitting air turbulence during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, is remote, the French government and the air carrier have indicated.




Flight AF 447, with 228 people on board, left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 2200 GMT and had been expected to land at Paris's Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday at 0915 GMT.
However, the plane, nearly four hours after taking off from Brazil, ran into stormy weather and Air France received an automatic message indicating electrical faults and a loss of cabin pressure. After some time, the transmission went dead and Brazilian and French governments, fearing the worst, had immediately dispatched military planes to hunt for the wreckage.
However, the region where the plane could have gone down is vast and while Brazil's military searched for the plane off its northeast coast, the French military scoured the Atlantic off the West African coast near the Cape Verde Islands. But till date, there were no reports of signs of any wreckage, the French government said, indicating that all hopes of saving lives have become nil.

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Nonetheless, the search and rescue parties expect to find the plane soon, because it has backup locators that should continue to function even in deep water.
"There are mainly Brazilians, between 40 and 60 French and 25 Germans on the files we have so far collected," French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, whose portfolio includes transport, said. There were also at least 5 Italians and 8 Chinese nationals on board the plane.
"It's an awful tragedy," Borloo said, adding that the possibility of a hijacking has been ruled out. "By now it would be beyond its kerosene reserves so unfortunately we must now envisage the most tragic scenario."


From: http://www.ibtimes.co.in/articles/20090602/chances-finding-survivors-air-france-plane-crash-remote.htm


An awful loss of a number of lives.... a real tragedy.





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