Thaindian News

The crew of a French freighter have spotted debris floating on the Atlantic Ocean in an area where missing Air France flight AF447 is suspected of crashing.

The sighting by the crew of the Douce France was said to be in the same area off the coast of Senegal where a pilot with Brazil’s TAM airline reported having seen “orange-colored spots” on the ocean surface around the same time as the Paris-bound flight disappeared.

Air France’s flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris went missing Monday morning with 216 passengers and 12 on board. There was no distress signal.

The company said it received a succession of a dozen automatically generated technical messages sent by the jet warning of multiple electric and pressurization failures over four minutes after it hit a fierce storm mid-flight.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and others have warned distressed relatives there is very little hope of survivors – making this the worst loss of life in Air France’s history and the worst civilian air accident since 2001.

Officials have identified a zone some 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) off Brazil’s northeastern coast based on the last signal from Air France flight AF 447 and a large air and sea search is continuing.

A daytime search yesterday by eight Brazilian air force aircraft doing visual sweeps did not turn up anything.

The search continued overnight with a transport aircraft fitted with equipment to detect the plane’s emergency beacon and another with onboard radar and infrared gear that could detect bodies in the water.

US President Barack Obama today pledged his country’s help in the search for the missing aircraft, which only joined the Air France fleet in April, 2005.