Air France plane crashes, 228 feared dead

It's almost certain now that 228 people have died in what seems to be a mysterious plane crash.  An Air France Airbus was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, suddenly there was radio silence and nothing was heard from the pilot or the plane after that.

If it is confirmed that all 228 people were killed it would be the worst loss of life in Air France's history and civil aviation's worst accidental 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.

The French authorities have ruled out terrorism but it's still not clear why the plane disappeared form the skies.

French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said hijacking had been ruled out and that the plane had probably had some kind of accident.

"There's nothing on Spanish radar, nothing on Moroccan radar, nothing on French radar. We can seriously envisage the worst," Borloo said.

The minister told AFP there were "powerful" tropical storms in the zone.

Worried friends, relatives and officials waited with bated breath at the Paris airport. This was soon after news that the Air France flight from Rio had disappeared.

For hours nobody was sure whether it disappeared off the Brazilian coast or off the Moroccan coast. Four hour later it flew into a thunderstorm, which is nothing unusual.

Except that, this plane sent out an automatic warning about an electrical circuit malfunction.

A little bit later, at around 4 o'clock Paris time, it got into an area of strong turbulence and storm. 15 minutes later at around 0415, Paris time, a certain number of automatic maintenance messages were transmitted by the plane, indicating failure in some components.

The crash is mystifying experts, for one this is the first crash of this type of aircraft, an Airbus a 330-200. And the Air France jet was only four years old.

The wreckage of the plane has still not be found.

There's little hope of finding any survivors and officials say they will be lucky if they find black box, the equipment which could explain how and why flight AF-447 went down? (With inputs from AFP)