Logo

An Air France plane that disappeared Monday with 228 people aboard is likely the victim of a "huge catastrophe," the airline's CEO said.

The plane was experiencing electrical problems and turbulence before it vanished, said Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the CEO of Air France.

It lost contact with air traffic control between Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the airline said Monday.

The plane sent out an automatic signal just after 4 a.m. Paris time warning of the electrical problems as it flew over an area "far from the coast," said a spokeswoman, who declined to be identified. It had just entered a stormy area with strong turbulence, she said.

The plane was carrying 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby, in addition to the crew, Air France officials in Brazil told CNN.

There has been speculation it was struck by lightning, but that should not bring down a modern airliner, former Airbus pilot John Wiley told CNN.

Brazil's air force launched a search near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean, 365 km (226 miles) from Brazil's coast, a spokesman for the air force told CNN.

Two Brazilian squadrons are searching for the plane, although it disappeared after it left the country's radar space, said the officer, who declined to be named.

The flight, AF 447, took off shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday local time (6 p.m. Sunday ET) for the 11-hour flight, with 216 passengers and 12 crew members. It was scheduled to land in Paris at 11:15 a.m. local time (5:15 a.m. ET).

The last known contact with the plane was at 1:33 a.m. GMT (8:33 p.m. Sunday night ET), the Brazilian Air Force spokesman said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his "very deep concern" and asked the government "to implement every effort to find the plane," according to a statement from his office.

The French ambassador to Senegal told BFMTV that French military aircraft had been dispatched to search around Cape Vert or Green Cape off the coast of Senegal.

Airline officials said they will release further updates through Agence France-Presse (AFP), France's largest news organization.

"We are very worried," an aviation official told AFP. "The plane disappeared from the screens several hours ago. It could be a transponder problem, but this kind of fault is very rare and the plane did not land when expected."

The airline set up a crisis center at the Paris airport. It listed two numbers for families to call -- 0 800 800 812 for people in France and 00 33 1 57 02 10 55 for families outside France.

Somber members of the families could be seen entering a special terminal set aside for them at Charles de Gaulle airport.

The missing aircraft is an Airbus 330 -- a state-of-the-art plane and only about four years old, the airline said.

Its last maintenance check was on April 16, the airline said.

The crew of 12 consisted of 3 pilots and 9 cabin crew, including a captain with 11,000 hours of flying experience. Some 1,700 of those hours are on the A330 and A340. There are two co-pilots, one with 3,000 hours of flying experience and the other with 6,600 hours. The aircraft had done 18,870 hours of flying.

The model is "capable of communicating in several different ways over quite long distances even if they are out of radar coverage," said Kieran Daly of the online aviation news service Air Transport Intelligence.

Airbus has opened a crisis room and their flight safety team is in place, a company spokesperson told CNN. Airbus is working closely with authorities and Air France, he said, declining to comment further.

Source: times leader