Air France Flight AF 447 Status: Missing

Air France Airbus A330-200 jet, registration #F-GZCP, bound for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, disappeared off the radar screen at 1:33 a.m. ET.  According to Air France officials, the flight encountered electrical problems in stormy weather.

The flight from Rio de Janeiro, carrying 216 passengers and a crew of 12 is missing and presumed to have crashed.  The passenger roster lists 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby, in addition to the crew of three pilots and 9 flight attendants.   To assist families of AF 447, seeking access to the passenger list, several international phone numbers have been established - see below.

A search has been launched near the island of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean, 226 miles from the Brazilian coast.  Several Brazilian squadrons have been combing the waters for the doomed aircraft.

The AF 447 flight from Brazil to Paris took off at 6:00 p.m. ET with a scheduled landing of 5:15 a.m. ET.  The Airbus A330-200 sent automatic messages at 10:15 ET, signaling equipment failure as it hit turbulence early in the flight, according to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon at a news conference in Paris.

Gourgeon said that those operating the missing flight were a “particularly experienced crew”.   He also mentioned that the Airbus was a state of the art aircraft with extremely reliable CF6-80E engines made by General Electric.

The missing Air France A330-200 had 18,870 flight hours and had been in service since April 18, 2005.  The last maintenance check was undertaken on April 16, 2009.  The pilot has 11,000 flight hours, 1,700 of them in A300/A340’s.

A crisis center has been set up at Charles de Gaulle to aid relatives and friends of the Flight AF 447 passengers.

Telephone numbers have been established to aid families of Flight AF 447 in obtaining passenger list information:

In France: 0800 800 812

In Brazil: 0800 881 20 20

Outside France: 33 1 57 02 10 55

Air France is now able to confirm the nationalities of the passengers who were on board flight AF 447 on 31 May 2009, which disappeared between Rio de Janeiro and Paris-Charles de Gaulle. This list is based on the information provided by the Brazilian Authorities.

2 American
1 Argentinian
1 Austrian
1 Belgian
58 Brazilian
5 British
1 Canadian
9 Chinese
1 Croatian
1 Danish
1 Dutch
1 Estonian
1 Filipino
61 French
1 Gambian
26 German
4 Hungarian
3 Irish
1 Icelandic
9 Italian
5 Lebanese
2 Moroccan
3 Norwegians
2 Polish
1 Romanian
1 Russian
3 Slovakian
1 South African
2 Spanish
1 Swedish
6 Swiss
1 Turkish

Air France expresses its deepest sympathy to the relatives and friends of the passengers and crew who were on board this flight.

Air France is doing its utmost to provide support to relatives and friends: counselling with physicians and psychologists as well as specially trained Air France volunteers has been set up at the airports of Paris-Charles de Gaulle 2 and Rio de Janeiro.

Air France has also established a special toll-free number for the attention of relatives and friends of passengers who may have been on board. They can use this number to obtain information on whether or not a member of their family or friends was on board.

Phone number reserved for relatives and friends 0800 800 812 in France, 0800 881 20 20 in Brazil, and + 33 1 57 02 10 55 for calls from all other countries.

Air France will release further information as soon as it is available.

Brazil has launched a search and rescue operation off their coast along the last known radar positions near the Island of Fernando de Noronha after which the airplane had failed to establish required radio communication.

There have been no reports of an unscheduled landing anywhere on Atlantic Islands or airports surrounding the Atlantic. French Authorities report, that the airplane would have run out of fuel by now.

Last radio contact with the crew was about 4 hours into the flight at around 02:20Z. The crew reported flying through severe turbulence.

Brasilian government sources report, that the airplane also disappeared from military radars (primary radars), that do not depend on transponder signals.