Air France plane feared to have gone down in Atlantic

The Air France flight on its way from Brazil to France has 228 people on board, Air France said on Monday.

The flight left on Sunday at 07.00 p.m. local time and was expected in Paris on Monday at 11.15 a.m. (10:15 a.m. British time), a spokesman said.

A source is Air France was reported to have said a search and rescue operation was launched off the coast of Brazil. A crisis centre has been set up in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

The people on board are 216 passengers and 12 crew.

"Air France regrets to announce that it is without news from flight AF 447," an Air France spokesman said.

Henry Wilson, a Brazilian air force spokesman, said planes had taken off from the island of Fernando de Noronha off Brazil's northeast coast to look for the Air France jet.

An Air France-KLM spokeswoman in Amsterdam said there had been no radio contact with the missing plane "for a while."

The families and relatives of the passengers on board are given special care in the airport itself.

The plane was an Airbus 330-200, according to the Paris airports authority website.

The Airbus 330 is a wide body two engine aircraft used by medium and long range commercial airlines. The Airbus has an exemplary safety record with the only two Hull-loss accidents with a total of 7 fatalities. If the Airbus AF 447, is confirmed to have gone down then it would be the first major commercial accident for the Airbus 330.

Brazil had two major plane crashes in 2006 and 2007, raising concerns about the safety of air travel in Latin America's largest country.

In July 2007, all 187 people on board and 12 people on the ground died when a TAM airline Airbus A 320 overshot a runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport.

In September 2006, a Gol airline passenger jet crashed in the Amazon jungle after it and a small private plane collided. All 154 people on board died.