The Air Force Airbus A330 flight (flight no AF447) that went missing last Sunday night has now been declared as crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. Earlier Brazilian airforce planes had found life jacket, seats, etc. but now they have found two more important things - 23 Foot piece of the airplane and a 12 mile oil slick (shown in the picture).

Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim confirmed Tuesday that a 3-mile swath of wreckage, found more than 300 miles off the South American coast by military planes, came from the doomed flight. The Airbus 330-200 disappeared Sunday night in a lightning storm while cruising at 35,000 feet, carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The crew never sent a mayday message, and automated transmissions from the cockpit suggest loss of cabin pressure and electrical failure. Jobim said the hunt for the plane's so-called "black box" voice and flight data recorders will be extremely difficult considering the wide area of the search and the ocean's depth.

"It's going to be very hard to search" because the toaster-size black boxes are under up to 2 miles of water, Jobim said.

Search crews headed to the area with some of the most advanced military and commercial technology. A sonar- and radar-equipped U.S. Navy plane arrived in Brazil on Tuesday morning with 21 crewmembers to run low-altitude search flights over the ocean. A French ship headed to the site with unmanned submersibles capable of exploring depths of up to 19,600 feet.

Source: www.usatoday.com

Another Air France flight from Buenos Aires' Ezeiza Airport (Argentina) to Paris had a hoax bomb call 4 days before AF447. 

There has been some speculation over a bomb but there are some points against it -

• The airplane did enter a storm (very turbulent area)
• There has been no known threat against the flight

Black Box

A black box can last 30 days on its battery, sending out high frequency signals in different directions after it detects water. Currently the black box is assumed to be buried under the sea, hence a very difficult feat.

He also said he was "not optimistic" of recovering the aircraft's black boxes (cockpit voice and data recorders), which are believed to be buried under the sea.

If found, the plane's black boxes would provide many more clues about what happened. Experts said the black boxes emit pinging signals, although only for a finite period of time, in the water. With tracking beacons that activate when the boxes get wet, the black box radio signal works for about 30 days. But it won't be easy for search teams to pick up the signal and find a black box -- the size of the proverbial bread box -- in rocky terrain.

Source: abcnews.go.com

Search Operation

Today, 12 military planes, including one American plane and one French aircraft, and ships were engaged in an operation to recover the debris. A forensic scientist is also believed to be onboard one of the planes to help with the recovery operation.

A French search and exploration ship is also on its way to the crash site. It is equipped with tools to help recover debris, including robots that can plunge about 20,000 feet underwater. It could be a few days before the ship arrives where the debris has been spotted.

Source: abcnews.go.com

Weather Issues

Currently there are speculations that the tropical storm with lightning could have caused the crash, but nothing is certain till the Black box is retrieved.

AccuWeather's Ken Reeves said towering thunderstorms are common over that area of the Atlantic. He said planes typically fly at about 35,000 to 37,000 feet, and storms in the tropics can be as high as 50,000 feet.

The four-year-old Airbus jet did have sophisticated radar that should have helped the pilots try to skirt any violent weather.

Source: abcnews.go.com

A TAM crew saw orange spots in the sea in the area which might suggest burning plane, which in turn suggests that the plane might have broken up mid air.

Hope there are some survivors despite all reports suggest that is highly unlikely.