Air France flight AF447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The fight was carrying 228 people in all, including 216 passengers and 12 crew members. Of these, 72 people were French, 60 were from Brazil, and the remaining 26 were Germans.

At first it had seemed that Airbus 330-200 had just disappeared mid-air. Since then there have been many speculations about the cause of the unfortunate disaster.

It is a period of national mourning for France with this being the worst disaster affecting a commercial flight in the last few years. Fragments of the airbus have been found in the Atlantic Ocean and an official investigation has been started.

One of the likely reasons seems to be lightening. The plane might have been steered into a very stormy zone near the Equator, known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Though jets are usually designed to withstand lightening but why this particular plane could not do so remains a mystery. The service for the dead is being held at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and it will be attended by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and other members of the government.

Other possible causes are also being probed. These include turbulent weather, technical failure and even terrorist activity. Without the black box it is impossible to find the extent to which technical snags were responsible for the crash. That there was some amount of technical malfunction has been clearly established, but whether it was a fault by itself or the side effect of some other problem remains to be seen.