This page will be updated with news regarding the search for the black boxes. Last updated 1:31 p.m.

The Emeraude, a French nuclear submarine, reached the Air France Flight 447 search site Wednesday to aid in the hunt for the missing plane’s cockpit recorders.

French military officials said the sub started surveying waters near the suspected crash site of‚  Wednesday morning.

France also sent two boats towing approximately 40 tons of recovery equipment, a surveillance ship, and the Nautile, a mini sub that will be sent to the ocean’s floor in case the black boxes are retrieved, CNN reports.

Plane debris was spotted about 600 miles of the coast of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha islands, which are in turn a 200 miles north-east of Brazil’s coast. It is here the sub will begin its search.

French military spokesman Captain Christophe Prazuck said the Emeraude will be able to cover about 13 square miles of ocean every day. While traversing tough waters, the ship will actively be searching for the downed plane using advanced radar equipment.

To help locate the emergency beacons attached to the flight’s data recorders, two French vessels will be outfitted with two high-tech U.S. acoustic search devices. The devices can detect emergency beacons emitting from up to 20,000 feet underwater. The average depth of the immensely large search area (77,220 square miles) is about 9,900 feet.

The first ship was outfitted with one device Wednesday. The second ship set to carry the other device won’t arrive until next week, CBC reports.

“There are big uncertainties about the accident site, the ocean floor is rugged… so it’s going to be very difficult”¦it’s going to be very complicated and we’re going to need a lot of luck” Prazuck told French radio, BBC reports.

The emergency beacons attached to the flight’s data recorders will only transmit a signal for about 20 more days.

If French searchers are able to locate the recorders, the Nautile, the same ship that explored the wreckage of the sunken Titanic, will be sent to down to recover them.

All wreckage will be taken back to France for investigation. All bodies found, of which there are currently 41, will be shipped back to Recife, Brazil for investigation and identification.

Click here for updates on bodies found and developments in the plane crash investigation.

Amid all the controversy and speculation surrounding the Flight 447 crash, Air France has sent a memo to its pilots informing them that speed measurement instruments will be replaced on all medium- and long-haul Airbus planes, AP reports.

For a few days investigators have been focusing on automated messages sent out during the plane’s final moments that indicate the jet may have been flying at an improper speed through bad weather. This suggests an issue with the plane’s speed reading instruments.

Flying at the correct speed is very important when going through a storm, especially one as severe as the one Flight 447 is thought to have encountered.

Meteorologists say the jet went through a storm with 100 mph updrafts that sucked up water from the ocean thousands of feet below. The damp air then rose up and froze quickly in the -40 F weather, causing major turbulence and possibly icing.

The airliner’s electrical systems then failed, and AP reports the plane most likely broke apart in air. It has been suggested that the plane’s speed readers may have been inadequate, and it was reportedly previously advised they be changed.

Air France will now replace the instruments, known as Pitot tubes, on all of its mid- and long-haul Airbus jets in the “coming weeks.” CNN reports the Pilots’ union claims Air France has said the sensors will be replaced within a few days.

The Alter union, a small union within Air France, is urging their pilots to wait until the tubes are replaced before flying their planes, CBC reports.

Pitot tubes are L-shaped and stick out from the wing or fuselage of the plane. “The pressure of the air entering the tube lets sensors measure the speed and angle of the flight, along with less vital information like outside air temperature” AP reports.

They are heated to prevent icing, though a theory suggests the Pitot tubes on Flight 447 were faulty, which could have caused them to ice over. Malfunctioning tubes would have fed incorrect speed readings to the plane’s computers, causing the plane to accelerate or decelerate dangerously.

A French agency investigating the crash has reports the plane’s pilots saw major turbulence and an inconsistency in speed readings before going down, according to Le Monde newspaper.

Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic last Monday just hours after taking off from Rio de Janeiro. All 228 passengers are believed to be dead. Thus far, sixteen bodies have been found.

Searchers are still looking for the flight’s cockpit recorders. Mini submarines will arrive this week to aid in the hunt.

Be sure to click here to follow the progress of the search for bodies, black boxes and pieces of the plane.

Scroll down for updates. Last updated June 10 at 12:30 p.m. This piece will be updated several times a day.

Forty-one bodies have been found in the Atlantic thus far, two on Saturday, 14 on Sunday, eight on Monday, and 17 on Tuesday, all confirmed to have been on Air France Flight 447, Brazilian officials said Wednesday. Four have been confirmed male and four female.

The first set of bodies were found about 200 miles off the coast of the Saint Peter and Saint Paul archipelago. Tuesday’s findings were discovered 50 miles away.

Sixteen of the 41 bodies found will reach Recife today. The remains will be shipped to the Legal Medical Institute in Brasilia for investigation and identification, CNN reports. DNA samples must be taken from the relatives of the deceased to help with the investigation

The bodies of the other 25 found victims will go through the same process on Thursday, CNN reports.

Investigators hope they can use dental records and DNA samples to identify each of the found bodies.

Officials say the location of the found remains is not an indicator of the crash site, since the current in the area is very strong the bodies would no doubt have drifted far away since Monday. They are however unsure exactly how far the bodies drifted.

Just days before the first bodies were discovered, officials told families the possibility of finding any remains were extremely low. Relatives are now increasingly hopeful they will at least be reunited with their lost kin.

One CNN reporter noted that the bodies looked bloated after days of floating in the ocean.

Other items were recovered as well, about 700 miles off the coast of Brazil. They include part of the plane’s wing and tail, two seats, luggage, a life vest and a leather bag with a Flight 447 boarding pass still inside, according to CNN.

An oxygen mask was also found, which could reinforce the automated message’s claim that the plane was losing cabin pressure.

Brazilian officials say their number one priority is to find as many bodies as possible and to return them to grieving families. They are also placing much importance on finding pieces of the plane, which they say will aid in the crash investigation.

French nuclear sub arrives

France deployed a nuclear sub, the Emeraude, to help find the sunken black boxes. The sub arrived Wednesday and is actively searching for the downed plane.

Also, two American acoustic devices are to be placed aboard two French ships. The devices will try to pick up signals from the plane’s sunken recorders, still pinging at the bottom of the ocean.

The devices can search for the beacons to a maximum of 20,000 feet.

Improper speed could be plane crash culprit

Air France and French officials are in charge of finding out what caused the Air France plane to plunge into the Atlantic without any manual warning. It is currently being speculated that the plane broke up in flight.

However without the black boxes, investigators may never know for certain why the plane crashed.

The plane sent out four minutes of automated messages before going down. The messages suggest the plane may have been flying at an improper speed through a heavy storm, possibly due to malfunctioning Pitot tubes. Air France will soon replace Pitot tubes on all of its medium- and long-haul Airbus jets.

Malfunctioning Pitot tubes could have caused the Air France airliner to decelerate and accelerate too rapidly for a storm of such magnitude. The storm faced by the plane, reportedly, sucked up water from the ocean below with 100 mph updrafts. The wet air then rapidly froze at the plane’s high altitude, causing major turbulence and possibly resulting in the Pitot tubes sending improper speed readings to the jet’s on board computers.

Air France told its pilots’ unions that no Airbus A330 or A340 will take off unless two of three Pitot tubes have been replaced, CNN reports.

Plane may have broken up in-air

CBC reports the Brazilian navy has found a large piece of the tail of Flight 447. The navy revealed the vertical stabilizer – which forms part of the tail -was recovered whole in the ocean.

William Waldock, an air crash investigation professor told the Associated Press that piece has what looked like lateral damage. This would reinforce the theory that the plane broke up in-air.

“If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces,” said Waldock, CBC reports. Further examining the piece can indicate from which direction the force that caused the stabilizer to detach from the Airbus came.

As questions about Airbus A330 safety arise, several airlines have rushed to its defense.

“It is a very robust airplane. It has been flying for many years, clocking hundreds of millions of hours and there is absolutely no reason why there should be any question over this plane. It is one of the best flying today,” said Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, at a conference in Kuala Lumpur.

However on Wednesday, an Airbus A320 flying from the Canary Islands to Olso, Norway had to make an emergency landing after the pilot detected a “problem with the engine.” There were reportedly 189 passengers on board, none of whom were injured. All are expected to take another flight, though many will perhaps inquire about the make and model of their new plane.

Scroll down for updates. Last updated on June 6 at 12:01 a.m.

French authorities are urging searchers to show “extreme prudence” before identifying wreckage found in the Atlantic as being from Air France Flight 447, after Brazilian workers incorrectly publicized they had found debris from the missing plane Thursday.

New reports indicate that Brazil’s declaration that debris from the missing Airbus A330 had been found was premature, and as of yet no official evidence has been retrieved from the missing plane, CBC reports.

French Transportation Minister Dominique Bussereau said he regretted Brazilian search teams had publicized a recovery of debris from the plane Thursday. The recovered wooden cargo pallet was never on the plane, officials said. They’ve referred to the pallet as “sea trash,” of which there is a lot floating around in the ocean.

“It has been verified that the material did not belong to the plane,” said Ramon Borges Cardoso, general director of the Brazilian Aerospace Control Department, in Recife, Brazil, CNN reports. “It is a pallet of wood that is utilized for transport. It is used in planes, but on this flight to Paris, there was no wooden pallet.”

Bussereau later expressed the need for caution. “French authorities have been saying for several days that we have to be extremely prudent,” he said. “Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing.”

Earlier in the week searchers found two trails of wreckage, about 56 miles from one another. The debris included a life vest, pieces of metal, a jet seat, a 12 mile oil slick and what is believed to be a 23-foot piece of the plane. The items were picked up by helicopters and dropped onto three Brazilian naval vessels.

It has not yet been confirmed that any of these materials are from the missing plane, though it has been confirmed, by Cardoso, that the oil slicks are not. He said the slicks are too big and the quantity of oil found exceeded the amount on the plane, according to CNN.

“No material from the airplane was picked up,” he later added.

Probability of finding bodies low

Cardoso said Brazilian teams are focused on finding the bodies of the Flight 447 victims, though the likelihood of retrieval has decreased. “With every moment, the probability of finding the bodies decreases because more than 100 hours have passed since the accident and that possibility is more remote each time,” he said.

The black boxes have not yet been found. Without them investigators may never know exactly what happened to the plane and whether it was weather, electrical failure, foul play, or a combination that brought down the missing plane.

Currently, Bussereau said, French teams are focused on finding the underwater wreckage and the recorders. He added that with each passing day, the wreckage underwater will continue to sink into the mountainous underwater terrain and spread out as currents in the area are very strong.

Two mini-submarines will be deployed next week to aid in the investigation, one of which, the Nautile, was used to search the wreckage of the Titanic.

Speculation surrounding crash intensifies

A French agency investigating the crash cited brutal turbulence and an inconsistency in the speed readings as a probable factor in the crash, CBC reports.

Le Monde newspaper released a report yesterday claiming that the pilots of Flight 447 may have been flying at an incorrect speed through violent weather. According to the agency’s investigation, a plane must be flying at just the right speed through harsh conditions, too slow and the pilot could lose control, too fast and the plane could break apart.

However, it is not known at which speed the plane was traversing through the storm. The French Accident Investigation Agency said Thursday that the automated messages transmitted by the plane did not indicate speed, but did show conflicting readings on board, CBC reports.

Airbus recently issued reminders to pilots explaining what to do when on-air instruments give conflicting read-outs. They said the reminder in no way indicates that improper speed was the official cause of the Air France crash.

It is not officially known what caused the plane to crash and what role, if any, weather played in the tragedy.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared early Monday after submitting four minutes of automated messages that indicated electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure. It is believed the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people on board.

Updates:

CBC reports meteorologists say Air France Flight 447 entered a storm with 100 mph updrafts. The updrafts acted like a vacuum, sucking water up from the Atlantic, thousands of feet below. The moist air then quickly rose up to the plane’s altitude and immediately froze in the -40 F conditions.

The intense updraft would have also caused brutal turbulence.

Investigators are reportedly now checking whether the plane’s external probe that measures air pressure may have froze over, possibly because of the updraft, CBC reports.

Cardoso said debris believed to be from the plane has been spotted (the two wreckage trails found earlier) but cannot yet be retrieved or verified due to poor visibility and conditions, CBC reports.

“Aircraft are making visual recognitions on the different contacts but currently I am not sure that those contacts are really part of the aircraft,” said French air force Colonel Thierry Bon, reinforcing Cardoso’s claim.

The French navy announced it will be sending a nuclear submarine, the Emeraude, to aid other French and Brazilian vessels in the search. French Defense Minister Herve Morin said the Emeraude is equipped with surveillance apparatus that may help find the crashed plane’s recorder, according to CBC.

The sub isn’t expected to arrive on the scene until next week.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s Air Force flew some of the victims’ families from Rio to Recife so they could take a tour and ask any questions they may have had. Any remains found will be taken to the base in Recife, a northeastern Brazilian city.

Much has been made of French prosecutors opening a manslaughter probe into the case. This is a routine occurence when French citizens die overseas.

Evening:

CNN reports a huge development. Apparently at least 12 planes traversed the sky along with Air France Flight 447, around the same time and in the same area, and none reported any seriously foul weather conditions.

Officials are now speculating that mechanical errors were the main cause of the crash, though weather is still thought to have played a part. One of the main crash theories is that the plane flew through bad weather at an improper speed, even though none of the dozen aircraft reported serious weather problems.

Aviation officials say that weather could still have played a part in the crash since patterns change very suddenly in the region and vary through short distances.

It has not yet been reported whether any of the other planes, besides the Air Comet plane headed by two Spanish pilots, saw Air France plunge into the Atlantic early Monday morning. Aviation officials also say that no single issue could have caused the crash of such a major airliner. Many things would have had to have taken place both on board and in the plane’s surroundings for it to die out and crash so suddenly.

The other planes landed safely at their destinations.

The mystery surrounding Air France Flight 447 continued to grow Thursday as conflicting reports from Spanish pilots and Brazilian experts regarding the cause of the plane’s crash emerged, CNN reports.

Two Spanish pilots say they witnessed an “intense flash” in the area where AF447 plunged into the Atlantic, while a Brazilian minister has all but ruled out a mid-air explosion.

Brazil’s defense minister says the oil slick in the ocean is evidence the plane did not break up until it hit the water. That would rule out the possibility that the plane split in half or exploded before crashing.

According to the two pilots who were flying an Air Comet flight from Lima to Lisbon, “”¦we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds.”

A report in France’s Le Monde newspaper suggests yet another possibility, that the pilots were not flying the correct speed while navigating through the intense storm. Airbus had recently sent out recommendations to pilots of A330 jets with new advice on how to traverse bad weather conditions. The pilots may not have followed this advice.

The number of conflicting reports adds nothing but uncertainty and frustration to an investigation that is already being viewed as hopeless by many officials.

Brazilian ship arrives as search continues

While experts were speculating, the first Brazilian ship arrived on the crash site. Planes still circling the area say they found more, larger debris, but have yet to see any bodies or remains. All 228 passengers and crew are believed to be dead.

The 23-foot piece of plane that was discovered yesterday is believed to be part of the fuselage or tail, BBC reports. CNN reports that because of the distance between debris findings, the search area has been widened to 300 miles.

Officials are still not optimistic that the recorders, which could be buried more than a couple miles below water, will ever be found. Their beacons can only transmit signals for 30 days.

Deep water submarines – key to the discovery and recovery of the black boxes – are not expected at the suspected crash site until next week.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared early Monday on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Reports came in on Wednesday that a bomb threat was called in on an Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris a few days earlier. The threat was deemed fake and, at this time, there seems to be no connection between the AF447 crash and the threat.

French officials have invited the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to aid in the investigation, CNN reports. The NTSB accepted.

Messages give some clues

The missing plane sent a number of electronic messages before disappearing off radar. According to Air France, the plane first sent a message saying it was entering thick black clouds, which are normally associated with lightning and high winds. According to U.S. transportation experts these conditions are not uncommon off the Brazil coast.

Ten minutes later automatic messages were sent indicating that the autopilot had been disengaged and that a main computer on the plane was switched to alternative power, signaling electric failure.

Next, according to the messages, stabilization controls were damaged, the pilots could no longer see information like altitude or even speed (which could corroborate French testimony) and an alarm sounded, indicating the situation was getting much, much worse.

The flurry of messages ended with one indicating a loss of air pressure throughout the A330 and mass electrical failure.

The plane then crashed.

Update:

The Brazilian navy began retrieving pieces of Air France Flight 447 today. CNN reports helicopters were lifting debris and dropping them onto three Brazilian vessels.

“The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear,” said French military spokesman Christopher Prazuck, CBC reports. “That’s the priority now, the next step will be to look for the black boxes.”

The Porquoi Pas, a French research ship carrying mini-submarines, won’t arrive until June 12, Prazuck said. One of the subs, the Nautile, was used to explore the underwater wreckage of the Titanic.

Not much is happening today. No remains have been reported as of yet, though CBC reports soldiers at Fernando de Noronha airport were seen unloading body bags and a refrigerator truck from a military helicopter. Any remains, if found, would be taken there.

The biggest development came out of France today, when a report in French newspaper Le Monde reported the plane may have been flying at an improper speed through the storm. This is a possibility since electrical failures reportedly knocked out many of the planes measuring instruments.

Still, experts can only speculate until the black boxes are found. If they ever are.

Scroll down for updates.

French investigators say they are not optimistic the black box recorders from Air France Flight 447, now buried deep in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, may ever be found, CBC reports.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France’s accident investigation agency, told reporters that planes in the area had not yet picked up any signals from the beacons attached to the recorders. The beacons can only transmit electronic indicators for 30 days.

“We may be unable to find the black boxes due to circumstance and logistics,” said Arslanian, citing the underwater area’s mountainous landscape.

“This catastrophe – which is the worst that our country has witnessed in terms of aviation, took place in a very difficult region… so the investigation will not be easy… but we are not giving up” he added later, CBC reports. Experts say the underwater terrain could make this one of the most difficult recovery missions cine the Titanic.

French and Brazilian forces have deployed ships to survey the area. France has sent a research ship equipped with two mini-submarines that will be used to recover the wreckage from the ocean’s floor, in what is now being called a navy operation. Four Brazilian Navy ships carrying recovery equipment and divers will reach the site today. The ships are traversing rough waters to reach the site.

A U.S. navy surveillance plane is also aiding in the search.

CBC reports the accident agency will submit a report by month’s end, according to Alain Bouillard, who is leading the exploration. The report will be submitted regardless of whether the black boxes are found.

Experts explore possibilities

According to several experts it is highly unlikely the recorders were destroyed, as they are designed to survive high impact and intense underwater pressure and conditions.

Arslanian said the end result of the investigation could however prove to be disappointing. “I cannot rule out the possibility that we might end up with a finding that is relatively unsatisfactory in terms of certainty,” he said.

Understanding exactly what caused the plane to crash will be very difficult without the recorders, which, if found, will hopefully provide some clues as to what happened on board. Without the recorders however it is possible the cause of the crash may never be revealed.

Arslanian also told reporters that a team is currently studying the Airbus’s maintenance records and there are so far no indications that anything was wrong with the jet before it took off.

Investigators are still speculating about the conditions under which the plane plunged into the Atlantic. They have not yet decided whether the plane hit the water intact or broke up in air before impact.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared Monday while on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after sending out a series of automated messages indicating electrical failures. No manual distress signals were sent by the pilot.

On Tuesday it was confirmed the plane crashed in the ocean after investigators spotted a trail of plane debris in the water 400 miles off the coast of the Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha islands. The debris was later confirmed to have belonged to the missing plane.

It is believed that all 228 people on board Flight 447 died in the crash. A memorial service took place Wednesday at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni were in attendance.

Click here to read yesterday’s developments.

Updates:

Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral says search planes have located more debris, including an approximately 23-foot long piece of the plane, BBC reports.

The site, about 56 miles south of the other field of wreckage, contains 10 metal objects scattered in a three mile radius and an oil slick that has spread about 12 miles, Amaral said.

Soon after that announcement, French officials provided their first update at a press conference that took place at an airport north of Paris. Arslanian said signals from the black boxes have not yet been picked up.

In order to find the capture the low frequency signals he says the team will have to narrow their search to a very limited range. Officials are still not hopeful the recorders will ever be found.

BBC reports Brazil has taken charge of the search for the wreckage, while France will focus on the crash investigation. French and Brazilian ships, struggling to navigate through high seas, have not yet arrived at the site.

Air France has said it received a bomb threat directed towards a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Paris on May 27, just a few days before Flight 447 went missing, The Economic Times reports. There seems to be no connection between the threat (which was rendered fake after teams searched the plane) and Flight 447′s disappearance.

Experts still speculate that several factors contributed to the plane’s crash, since being struck by lightning alone would not have been enough to bring down the Airbus. Hail, cyclonic weather patterns and severe winds could have all potentially played a part in the disaster.

Some are also wondering whether the chief pilot was flying the plane when the problems arose, since pilots on long-distance flights take turns in order to stay alert and focused.

Memorial service begins

Back in Paris, hundreds of mourners gathered at Notre Dame Cathedral for today’s private memorial service. The cathedral’s bell tolled 228 times, once for each victim of the tragic Flight 447 crash.

The CBC reports French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke with the victims’ family members in private at the ceremony. Sarkozy reportedly said arrangements will be made for the families to fly over the debris and suspected crash site if it is something they feel necessary during the grieving process.

The Pope sent a message of condolence to the mourners. It was played at the memorial service.

]]> http://blastmagazine.com/the-news/world-news/flight-447s-black-boxes-may-never-be-found-investigators-say/feed/ 0 http://blastmagazine.com/the-news/world-news/wreckage-found-as-searchers-look-for-missing-plane/ http://blastmagazine.com/the-news/world-news/wreckage-found-as-searchers-look-for-missing-plane/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:45:55 +0000 Sachin Seth http://blastmagazine.com/?p=15873

Scroll down for updates.

Brazilian forces scouring the Atlantic Ocean for Air France 447 have spotted the plane’s wreckage 400 miles north-east of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha islands, UPI reports.

Plane seats and other items were discovered in the ocean near the islands, which are 220 miles off the coast of Brazil. It was recently confirmed that the debris is in fact from Air France 447, the airliner that mysteriously went missing just a few hours after its departure from Rio de Janeiro early Monday.

Brazil Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral previously told BBC search crews spotted the seats, white debris and metallic remnants of what could be kerosene and oil early Tuesday along the flight path the airliner would have taken.

“The search is continuing because it’s very little material in relation to the size [of the Airbus A330],” he said.

Last night crews narrowed their search to an area halfway between Brazil and west Africa. They are hoping to pick up faint signals from the plane’s beacons, though the signals could be neutralized because of the plane’s suspected location – at the bottom of the ocean.

French Defense Minister Herve Morin believes it is necessary to keep all possibilities of what caused the crash open. “We cannot, by definition, exclude a terrorist attack, because terrorism is the main threat for all Western democracies,” he said.

The ambitious search may yield no definite discovery since the exact location of the flight at the time of its crash is unknown. Also, the Atlantic, the average depth of which is about two miles, could easily have already engulfed the plane in its icy waters for good.

Still, the recent findings do provide some hope of finding out what happened to Air France 447.

Click here to read all of yesterday’s developments.

Updates:

Brazil’s Defense Minister has confirmed the debris found is from Air France flight 447, CBC reports. At a press conference he said the wreckage was “without a doubt” from the Airbus A330.

French Transportation Minister Jean-Louis Borloo says it is now a “race against the clock” to find the black boxes, which transmit underwater beacon signals for only 30 days.

Authorities are getting ready to take DNA from passengers’ relatives to be able to identify any found remains. No lifeboats, bodies or remains have been found as of now, and French officials say there is a very minimal chance of finding an survivors.

The first debris was found in the early morning, before light. After the sun rose, another aircraft said it spotted plane debris about 37 miles away from the first site, which was about 50 miles from the flight path.

Ten Brazilian aircraft, along with Spanish, French, Senegalese and American planes are conducting the sweep of the perceived crash site.

Two cargo ships are expected to arrive at the site where the major debris was found. France has sent a research ship with two mini-submarines to search the area as well.

The mini-subs, BBC reports, can operate as deep as 6,000 feet. The area being searched has a maximum depth of 4,700 feet so the subs should be able to search the ocean floor with ease. The size of the debris field, CBC reports, will help to indicate whether the plane plunged into the Atlantic in one piece or broke apart before hitting the ocean.

Col. Amaral said planes spotted‚  an orange buoy, a plane seat, white debris, an airplane turbine and oil, which we now know belonged to Flight 447.

“The locations where the objects were found are towards the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted,” the BBC reports he told reporters in Rio. “That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis.”

Accident workers say they need to recover parts of the plane and the flight and cockpit voice recorders if they are to have any definite idea of how the plane went down. Right now, those materials could be at the bottom of the Atlantic, but the plane had underwater homing beacons attached to its recorders that can transmit signals from up to 14,000 feet underwater, CNN reports.

“They’re water-activated, so if they’re sitting at the bottom of the ocean, of course, then the military assets will have to go in there with listening devices and try and home in on those particular signals,” said Greg Feith, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigator, CNN reports.

Still, authorities say it could take more than a week to find beacon signals and they only transmit for 30 days.

Still a Mystery

Pilots flying a commercial airliner from Paris to Rio yesterday said they saw what they thought was fire in the ocean along 447′s flight path, the Daily Mail reports.

Two Lufthansa planes that were in the same suspected area as Air France 447 half an hour before the disappearance could provide helpful insight into weather conditions as well, BBC reports the UN weather agency said.

The two airliners recorded information on prevailing wind patterns and temperatures in the area. Because the exact location of the plane at the time of its crash is still unknown, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) official Herbet Puempel told Reuters it is “extremely difficult to say how close they [the Lufthansa jets] were. But the observations will certainly be used by the investigating group.”

The exact cause of the plane’s disappearance and suspected crash is a mystery. The flight transmitted no distress calls, just a succession ten automated error messages‚  starting around 10:14 p.m. EST, showing that several electrical systems had broken down.

A BBC corespondent and several experts are reporting that the plane would have had to have undergone several “traumas” to have fallen from the sky. The absence of a distress signal from the experienced pilot suggests that whatever happened to the plane happened very, very quickly.

BBC reports that it is possible the “fury of an equatorial storm” brought down the airliner. Some pilots believe that the type of storm that is being reported would not have been strong enough to bring the Airbus down by itself.

Air France CEO says the plane most likely plunged into the Atlantic shortly after the automated signals were sent out, Bangkok Post reports.

If no survivors are found it would be the deadliest plane crash since the American Airlines disaster in 2001 and the worst in Air France’s 75-year history.

In an effort to perhaps underscore the seriousness of the tragedy and label the search mission as not a rescue but a fact-finding one, Air France has announced a memorial service will take place at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral Wednesday for the victims of the plane crash. All family and friends are welcome.

Past investigations into ocean plane crashes have taken years. CNN reports that due to the amount of unknown information surrounding the disappearance and the fact that is plunged into an ocean that is on average two miles deep, finding out exactly what happened to this airliner and the people on board could take a similar amount of time.

Updates will be available at the bottom of the page as they come in.

Air France flight 447 carrying 228 passengers and crew vanished over the Atlantic Ocean after reporting a short circuit caused by a possible lightning strike, the BBC reports.

The plane was traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. At about 10:14 p.m. EST, just four hours after taking off from Rio, the plane sent an automatic message reporting electrical problems as it flew through a storm. When the plane lost contact it was nearly 190 miles off the coast of the north-east Brazilian city of Natal, well over the Atlantic.

Since the plane went missing over the ocean, rescue forces must search an encompassing chunk of sea, making the task much more difficult.

Brazil’s Air Force confirmed that it had deployed planes to search for the missing Airbus 330-200 around 6:17 a.m. EST. The Air Force’s spokesman, Col. Henry Munhoz, told Brazilian TV the last radar contact with the flight was just after it passed over the Fernando de Noronha islands, about 220 miles off the coast of Brazil, around 9:33 p.m. EST.

A half hour later, according to Air France, the plane jetted through a “thunderous zone” and experienced strong turbulence. Fifteen minutes later, at 10:14 p.m. EST, the plane sent out an automated message reporting electrical circuit malfunction.

Five hours passed before the situation was deemed serious by Air France, just two hours before the flight was scheduled to land in Paris. A crisis center was set up at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport and at 5:35 a.m. EST, the plane was announced missing by Air France officials.

The search began shortly after, off the coast of the Fernando de Noronha islands, and it is now being speculated that the electrical failure was caused by a possible lightning strike.

French Ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo ruled out hijacking as a possibility. He also said that if the plane had survived the lightning strike and electrical failures to stay in flight, the Airbus would have, by now, run out of fuel somewhere over the Atlantic.

A lightning strike should not, technically speaking, be able to cause the crash of a modern Airbus.

“We must now envisage the most tragic scenario,” he said.

ONGOING UPDATES: Air France has set up a call center for those who need it: 0800 800 812 in France and +33 157021055 internationally.

France’s ambassador to Senegal told CNN that French military aircraft has been deployed to search the coast of the west African nation.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to a statement from his office, asked his government to “implement every effort to find the plane.”

Airbus 330-200′s are commonly requested because of their versatility. The planes boast advanced engines made by General Electric.

According to the Times Online, no commercial flight has been lost because of lightning in more than 40 years. The Times believes that “brutal freak turbulence,” not lightning, was the most probable cause of the flight’s problems.

According to a recent U.S. study, every commercial airliner is struck by lightning at least once a year, the Times reports.

Click here to see BBC’s visual representation of the flight’s path.

There were 126 men, 82 women and seven children, including one baby, on board the flight. According to ABC, hope is now fading for the successful rescue of any of the passengers or crew.

AP conducted an interview with aviation expert Chris Yates who believes”potentially [the plane] went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilots on board didn’t have a chance to make that emergency call.”

He also said that the likely conclusion to be drawn in this situation is “that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion.”

According to USA Today, an Air France spokesman has confirmed to Voice of America that the plane hit heavy turbulence and transmitted a number of automatic messages before vanishing. He added, “around 7:00 [a.m.] Paris time, it was clear that the plane was in deep trouble.”

The CBC acknowledges conflicting information regarding the presumed location of the missing plane. They report that while Brazil’s forces believe it to be near the Fernando de Norenha islands about 220 miles off the coast of Brazil, other reports suggest that the plane may have been deeper into its flight path. French rescue aircrafts are looking for the lost plane off the coast of Dakar, Senegal.

David Learmount, safety editor of “Flight International” told Bloomberg he suspects contributing events took place on the airliner before it vanished.

“Modern airliners do not just go missing. They were en route and should have been fine,” he said. “The question is, what happened after the electrical fault, because a short circuit in itself should not bring down a plane. That would be different if there was a fire, for example.”

The following revised list of numbers and countries was released by Air France and includes all passengers and crew on board: 71 France, 59 Brazil, 26 Germany, nine Italy, nine China, six Switzerland, five Britain, five Lebanon, four Hungary, three Norway, three Slovakia, three Sweden, two Spain, two Morocco, two U.S., two Poland, and single passengers from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Gambia, Iceland, Holland, Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa and Turkey.

As time progresses, chances of recovery or survival are fading. “We can fear the worst,” said France’s transportation minister, Dominique Bussereau.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is also coming to terms with the tragedy. He met with press at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport after talking to familes of the lost passengers.

“I told them the truth, which is that the prospects of finding any survivors are very slim,” he said.

Various sources are confirming that the chances of there being any survivors of Air France flight 447 are slim at best. The last time 200+ people were killed in a plane crash was on November 12, 2001, when an American Airlines jet crashed in Queens, New York, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.

Strangely, if you type “Air France 447″ into Google, it says the flight is on schedule to arrive at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport at 11:15 a.m.

EVENING: BBC reports that rescue teams have narrowed their search area to a few nautical miles. At this time, nearly 24 hours after the plane’s disappearance, there is a very, very slim chance of any survivors.

The accident apparently took place in a turbulent area known as the Intertropical Convergence zone near the equator. The zone is actually feared by sailors and aviators, and is commonly known as the “pot au noir” or “murky cauldron.”

BBC spoke with meteorologist Pierre Lasnais who said the area “is prone to storms and lightning, but also to mini-cyclonic phenomena, which create extremely strong up currents, as well as hail stones that can be bigger than tennis-balls.”

“It’s possible for a plane to be exposed to lightning, and at the same to be caught in an up current which can reach speeds of 200 km/h,” he told BBC. “You can imagine the effect that has on a plane – complete depressurisation of course, almost uncontrollable.”

Air France CEO acknowledges that planed probably crashed in Atlantic due to heavy turbulence, CNN reports.

Click here for June 2 updates.