Brazilian Air Force Searching for Missing Plane Finds Wreckage

The wreckage of an Air France plane after it crashed at the Toronto Pearson International Airport in August 2005.

Brazilian Air Force planes searching for an Air France Airbus that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean with 228 people on board found floating wreckage including a plane seat, oil and other debris.

The material was found as searchers focused on an area about 650 kilometers (400 miles) off the coast of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha island, Colonel 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 yesterday. The French government said there’s no evidence so far that points to terrorism.

Air France said it isn’t ruling out a lightning strike on the aircraft, which reported an electrical-circuit breakdown and sent 10 automated distress messages before it vanished. Amaral said the wreckage was found away from the flight path and that the plane may have attempted to turn back.

“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 from Seattle.

The plane probably ran into a 300-kilometer-wide wall of thunderstorms and broke up before pilots could issue a mayday call, said Denny Fitch, a retired United Airlines pilot and consultant. “Whatever it was, it happened very quickly,” he said.

The Brazilian Air Force handed over its findings to the French accident investigator, a French Transport Ministry official said in a telephone interview today. The official, who cannot be named because of internal rules, declined to comment further.

Air France Jet Disappearance: Hunt Intensifies.

The missing Plane

Bolanle Talabi.

LoveWorld Newsroom.

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009.

In the wake of its mysterious disappearance, search aircraft have stepped up the hunt for an Air France jet that vanished over the Atlantic with 228 people on board.

The authorities fear that everyone on board has died but are still trying to determine what caused the accident.

Colonel Jorge Amaral, a spokesman for Brazil’s air force, said that a commercial aircraft pilot had spotted what appeared to be fire in the Atlantic along the route of the missing Airbus A330-200 jet.

The Pentagon said on Monday it had dispatched a surveillance aircraft and a search and rescue team to help Brazilian and French aircraft as the hunt for Flight AF447 continued in the dark. France has also asked Washington to use its spy satellites and listening posts to help with the search.

Airline officials had earlier said the plane was probably hit by lightning, but Pierre-Henry Gourgeon, Air France’s chief executive declined to make a direct link between weather conditions and the error messages.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, told relatives waiting for their loved ones at the airport that “the prospects of finding any survivors are very slim”.

If confirmed that all 228 people on board are dead, it would be the worst loss of life in Air France’s history and civil aviation’s worst accident for more than a decade.

Air France said the 216 passengers from 32 countries comprised 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby. There were also 12 French crew members on board.

Death Toll Rises To 61 In Illegal Gold Mine In South Africa

 

 

The death toll in an illegal mine in South Africa has hit 61 as 25 more bodies were found on Tuesday, according to reports here.    The reports said the bodies of another 25 illegal miners had been retrieved.     Harmony Gold Mining Co. said on Monday that the illegal mining left 36 people dead in an underground fire.     Illegal miners managed to retrieve 36 bodies at its Eland shaft in central Free State province, said Harmany, one of the top gold producers in the world.     In its statement, the company described the 36 victims as “criminal miners,” saying their bodies “have been brought to surface at the shaft during the past weekend by fellow criminal miners, reportedly following an underground fire in an abandoned area.”     The dead miners apparently suffocated in an underground fire at a disused gold mine, where noxious gases collect, according to the company.     Underground fire already killed 23 illegal miners in 2007, also in Free State province.     In another development, the company reported 294 criminal miners were arrested in a two-week crackdown on illegal mining.     Police said the detainees include South African miners and those from neighboring Lesotho and Mozambique. Sourced from Chinaview