Air France flight AF447 with 228 on board (216 passengers and 12 crew members) lost contact near Brazil's coast while making the 11 hour journey between Brazil's Rio de Janerio Airport and France's Charles de Gaulle Airport. Brazil's airforce has launched a rescue operation to find the flight from archipelago of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean, 365 km (226 miles).

An official with the French government's transport agency said contact with the plane was lost at 0220 GMT Monday (10:20 p.m. EDT Sunday). The official was not authorized to be named according to agency policy.

Barrand said the airline installed an information center at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport for the families of those aboard.

"Air France regrets to announce that it is without news from Air France flight 447 flying from Rio to Paris," she said. "Air France shares the emotion and worry of the families concerned."

Source: www.google.com

The flight lost contact at around 10:30 pm local time after being in flight for around 3.5 hours.

Update - This flight is supposed to have "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence" And the last message recieved was "signalling electrical circuit malfunction"

French minister Jean-Louis Borloo said the plane had probably had an accident and ruled out hijacking. He said: "By now it would be beyond its kerosene reserves so unfortunately we must now envisage the most tragic scenario."

With French president Nicolas Sarkozy expressing his concern at the incident, Air France spokeswoman Brigitte Barrand said: "We share the emotion and worry of the families concerned."

Source: www.mirror.co.uk

The airplane is an Airbus A330 and has never been involved in a crash.

I sincerely hope that we find the aircraft and people all fine.