Debate rages over fate of AF447

President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni attended a memorial service in Notre Dame cathedral yesterday for the victims of Air France flight 447 which disappeared over the Atlantic on Monday morning, with 228 passengers and crew aboard.

As family and friends lit candles for the victims, and a message of condolence from Pope Benedict was read to the congregation, a disagreement was developing as to whether the plane might have been the target of a terrorist bomb.

A former Air France long-haul pilot, speaking anonymously to the French press, said a midair bomb blast was the only logical explanation for the pilot - named yesterday as 58-year-old Marc Dubois - failing to send a mayday call. He said: "The chances of an electrical fault seem unfeasible to me. There are five electricity supplies on the plane and they would all have to fail."

The unidentified pilot was speaking after Air France admitted that a flight from Buenos Aires in Argentina was delayed by a telephoned bomb threat only last Wednesday. A search of the plane was carried out and the flight eventually took off and reached Paris without incident.

However, Brazilian air experts say the 12-mile oil slick discovered yesterday suggests that the Airbus did not explode or catch fire in midair but plunged into the sea with its fuel tanks intact.

In France, defence experts say the fact that no terrorist organisation has yet claimed responsibility goes against the terror speculation. However, Herve Morin, the Defence Minister, had to admit that with no other evidence, "We cannot, by definition, exclude a terrorist attack, because terrorism is the main threat for all Western democracies."

As The First Post reported on Monday, the chances of the mystery ever being solved are slim - and remain so. There were two 'black box' flight recorders on board and both are now presumably sitting on the bottom of the ocean. Paul Louis Arslanian, head of France's air accident investigation agency, said: "I am not totally optimistic. We cannot rule out that we will not find the flight recorders."

The best hope of clues will come from pieces of debris spotted floating on the ocean's surface, which the Brazilian military were due to begin collecting today.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this item was posted, Brazilian military investigators announced later on June 4 that the debris discovered floating in the Atlantic is not from AF447. A wooden pallet thought to have been used in the Airbus A330 cargo hold actually came from a passing ship. No debris from the Air France jet has been found.