Air France jet missing

*On board 228 passengers

*Worst disaster in Air France history

An Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris is believed to have crashed into the Atlantic on Monday after suffering an electrical failure in a fierce storm.

Air France said the Airbus A330-200 jet was probably hit by lightning. The Brazilian and French air forces sent out planes to scour a vast area of ocean, but officials held out little hope of finding survivors.

If, as expected, it is confirmed that all 228 people were killed it would mark 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.

At Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, tearful relatives were ushered to a private area to await news and be counselled by a team of psychologists.

President Nicolas Sarkozy and several senior officials were also on hand.

French Environment 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, whose portolio includes responsibility for transport, told AFP.

“There are mainly Brazilians, between 40 and 60 French and 25 Germans on the files we have so far collected,” he said, breaking down the nationalities of the missing passengers. Separately, officals from other countries said it was believed that there were six Danes, five Italians, three Moroccans, two Lebanese, two Slovaks and a Portuguese among the passengers.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had earlier expressed concern that there may be British citizens on board.

Air France said that among 216 passengers, there are 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby. The crew was made up of 12 members, including nine cabin crew, it added.

Flight AF 447 hit fierce turbulence at about 0200 GMT Monday about four hours after it left Rio, and 14 minutes later sent an automatic error message reporting a fault in an electrical circuit, 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,” said Francois Brousse, Air France’s director of communications. 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. Airbus said the A330 has a good safety record — there have never been fatalities on a commercial flight — but in 1994 one crashed during a test flight in southern France, killing seven people on board. Air France shares slipped after the news.

AFP