Brazilian and French rescue teams continued to search Tuesday for the passengers of an Air France jet that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean as details of Flight 447 began to emerge. The Airbus A330 encountered heavy turbulence about 02:15 a.m. local time Monday (10:15 p.m. ET Sunday), some three hours after the jet carrying 228 people left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for Paris, France, on an 11-hour flight, according to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Bourgeon. At that point, the plane's automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down," he told reporters. During that time, there was no contact with the crew, Bourgeon said. "It was probable that it was a little bit after those messages that the impact of the plane took place in the Atlantic," he added. The Airbus A330 was off radar and probably closer to Brazil than to Africa at the time, he said. Two squadrons from Brazil's air force launched a search near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean, about 225 miles (365 kilometers) from Brazil's coast, an air force spokesman told CNN. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France sent ships and planes to the area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Brazil. Watch latest report on missing aircraft » "Our Spanish friends are helping us, Brazilians are helping us a lot as well," he said.
