Air France employees stand outside the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris during an ecumenical church service for relatives and families of the passengers of Air France's flight 447 that vanished Monday over the Atlantic Ocean. --PHOTO: REUTERS
FERNANDO DE NORONHA (Brazil) - AIR France has told families of passengers on Flight 447 that the jetliner broke apart and they must abandon hope that anyone survived, a grief counselor said on Thursday as military aircraft tried to narrow their search for the remains of the plane.
Air France's CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told the families in a private meeting that the plane broke apart either in the air or when it slammed into the ocean, according to Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel family members and was at the Wednesday meeting with Air France.
BRAZIL'S Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with some 230 kilometres separating pieces of wreckage they have spotted. The overall zone is roughly 640 kilometres northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, where the ocean floor drops as low as 7,000 metres below sea level.
The floating debris includes a seven-metre chunk of plane, but pilots have spotted no signs of survivors, Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said.
The plane, carrying 228 people, disappeared after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris on Sunday night.
Investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms.
'What is clear is that there was no landing. There's no chance the escape slides came out,' said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who heads an association founded for victims of UTA flight 772, shot down in 1989 by Libyan terrorists.
Mr Gourgeon told families there were no survivors, according to Denoix de Saint-Marc. That would make this Air France's deadliest plane crash, and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001.
Military rescue planes were trying to narrow the search zone on Thursday as ships headed to the site to recover wreckage. Brazilian military planes located new debris from Air France Flight 447 on Wednesday, after spotting an airline seat and oil slick on Tuesday.
But French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said on Thursday that French planes had made six missions over the area and have yet to spot any wreckage.
'As of today French planes have not found any debris that could have come from the Air France Airbus that disappeared. There have been radar detections made by the AWACS (radar plane) ... and each time these signals have not corresponded to debris,' he said.
He said French teams have been searching in different places and at different times from the Brazilian search teams, which may be why they have not been able to identify the seats and other debris that the Brazilians picked up. Three more French overflights were planned for Thursday, Mr Prazuck said. A US Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane has also joined Brazil's Air Force in trying to spot debris. -- AP
