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Remains of missing plane over Atlantic still in search

02 June 2009 10:26 (UTC +04:00)

Paris â€“ APA. Remains of the Airbus A330 missing on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1 over the Atlantic Ocean were not found so far. French government asked the US Defense Department to assist the search operations. President Nicolas Sarkozy asked the Pentagon to use its satellite and hearing equipments. â€œAt first, it needs to find the place of plane crashâ€. Sakozy said France sent warships and aircrafts to the zone of catastrophe. He said Spain also offered its support to the French forces. Brazilian air forces were searching for the plane remains throughout the night, but didnâ€™t get any result.
According to the preliminary reports, the plane crashed near Fernando de Noronha isles. The Airbus flew into a wall of tropical thunderstorms, encountering heavy turbulence and experiencing an electrical failure, shortly before disappearing, authorities said. The Airbus A330-200 left Rio at 7:03 p.m. local time Sunday. About four hours later, it was in the storm zone, and 14 minutes later the automatic alerts were sent, the Air France said in a statement.

The 216 passengers consisted of citizens of 24 countries, including 80 Brazilians, 73 French, 18 German, 9 Italians, 6 Americans, 5 Chinese, 4 Hungarians, two Spanish, two British, two Moroccans, one Turkish, Russian, Argentine, Angolan, Iceland, Norwegian, Polish, Romania, Belgian, Slovakian, Sweden, Philippines and Swiss citizen, were on board.