I saw a woman who had to announce to his grandchildren (4 and 9 years old) that they'll never see their parents again ... I just wanted to cry ...

Thank you all for your kind words. He is obviously still so upset, but he has decided to go to Germany at the end of the week to be with one of his friends' family members and classmates from his uni. He was thinking of either going there or to Brazil to be with his other friends' family, but I think it just wasn't possible to do that. It is so sad though. I just really hope that they find out what went wrong and it doesn't up being unsolved.

It's so sad and creepy....I feel so sorry for all the relatives esp. of the 26 german people...:sad:

Yes, it's so sad :( I hope they find the other missing parts of the plane to know what happened

This was awful, it may have been an explosion :confused:

It's so sad and creepy....I feel so sorry for all the relatives esp. of the 26 german people...:sad:

 

Why? Cos German deaths matter more?

Brazilian authorities released images of the pallet they later called "sea trash"

 

Debris recovered from the Atlantic by Brazilian search teams is "sea trash" and not from a lost Air France jet, a Brazilian air force official has said.

 

Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered".

 

Teams found buoys and a wooden pallet and spotted a fuel slick, and are now searching for an airline seat and a chunk of metal seen earlier this week. Relatives have been told that there is no hope of survivors being found.

 

In Paris, Air France Chief Executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon and Chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta briefed passengers' relatives in a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport where they have been waiting for news. Mr Gourgeon said the Airbus A330 jet, which was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, broke apart either in the air or when it hit the sea.

 

What is clear is that there was no landing," said a support group representative who was at the meeting. "There's no chance the escape slides came out," Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc said.

 

In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of people gathered at a memorial service attended by the French and Brazilian foreign ministers. "Those who are missing are here in our hearts and in our memories," French minister Bernard Kouchner told mourners. A memorial service was held in Paris on Wednesday.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8083474.stm

:( Just as we thought they might have found the plane and perhaps get a little closer as to understanding why it crashed.

But WHERE is that plane ? :disappointed:

R.I.P. to the dead.

 

Unless the plane crash landed and the passengers are all on a uncharted island controlled by a megalomaniac.

But WHERE is that plane ? :disappointed:

 

They have NO idea!:\

Bodies 'found' from missing plane

 

 

Bodies and debris have been found from the Air France plane which went missing over the Atlantic last Monday, the Brazilian air force has said.

 

The remains were taken from the water at 0814 Brazilian time (1114 GMT), said spokesman Jorge Amaral.

 

Experts on human remains are on their way to examine the find.

 

All 228 passengers and crew on board AF 447 are believed to have been killed when the plane disappeared during its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8087303.stm

Two passengers on doomed Air France jet had names linked to Islamic terror groups

 

By Peter Allen

Last updated at 5:38 PM on 10th June 2009

 

 

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British engineer Arthur Coakley: Some of his belongings have been recovered from the crash site

 

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on board the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it emerged today.

 

French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.

It has also emerged that the laptop and boarding pass of British oil executive Arthur Coakley have been found in the wreckage of the jet.

Flight AF447 crashed in mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.

While it is certain that there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.

Soon after news of the fatal crash broke, agents working for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), the French equivalent of MI6, were dispatched to Brazil.

It was there that they established that two names on the passenger list are also on highly-classified documents listing the names of radical Muslims considered a threat to the French Republic.

A source working for the French security services told highly-repected Paris weekly L’Express that the link was ‘highly significant’.

 

Agents are now trying to establish dates of birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections.

 

More...

 

 

• Air France rushes to refit speed sensors which could have caused crash of Flight 447
  
• Pictured: The heartbreaking moment passengers of lost Flight 447 finally reached land as searchers pull 24 bodies from ocean
  
• Plane forced to make emergency landing moments after take-off due to engine trouble
  

 

 

There is a possibility that the name similarities are simply a ‘macabre coincidence’, the source added, but the revelation is still being ‘taken very seriously’.

France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan.

 

 

Security chiefs have been particularly worried about airborne suicide attacks, similarly to the ones on the U.S. on September 11th 2001.

 

Recovery: Part of the plane's tail fin is plucked from the water as recovery operations continue

 

French investigators today confirmed that that terrorism has not been ruled out, with an Air France spokesman adding that ‘all the indications’ are that the Airbus suffered some kind of catastrophic equipment failure.

A total of 41 bodies have so far been recovered from the zone 700 miles off Brazil's north-east coast where the plane came down.

Brazilian and French officials are using DNA samples from relatives and dental records to identify the remains.

On Monday, a Brazilian crew recovered the tail fin from the plane - considered significant because it could narrow the area underwater where the black boxes are.

The cause of the disaster is not known, but initial suspicions are focusing on the plane's airspeed sensors which were giving faulty readings, according to automatic data alerts sent by the plane in its final minutes in the air.

A French nuclear submarine, the Emeraude, and a naval vessel containing robot submarines have reached the crash site today and begun combing the massive area for the black boxes.

 

 

But a large amount of material has already been recovered, including possessions belonging to Briton Mr Coakley.

Enlarge Operation: A Brazilian Navy ship carries debris of Flight 447 back to land

 

His wife Patricia said a local police liaison officer called at the family home in Sandsend, near Whitby, North Yorks, to say her husband's laptop and boarding pass had been found.

 

'I just want to remember him smiling and laughing. He was a wonderful man,' she said.

 

'We are just in limbo and still waiting for the phone call we will get from the authorities, but don't want.

 

'We cannot plan anything at this time until we get more news. But I don't want to fly out to Brazil.'

 

Mrs Coakley had spoken to her husband by phone shortly before he boarded the plane.

 

He had planned to take an earlier flight, but it was fully booked. He should have been in Brazil for two weeks on business and home on May 19, but was delayed.

She has been married to her husband for 34 years and the couple have three children Dominic, 31, Patrick, 29 and Mise, 25.

 

Mr Coakley, 61, was a structural design engineer and partner in the PD&MS firm based at Aberdeen.

 

He had many working contacts on Teesside and was also a director at Wilton Engineering Services based in Middlesbrough.

Tragic cargo: One of the bodies recovered from the Atlantic is carried from a military helicopter