some additional thoughts:
- "why Brazil air force bothering to fly out if incident happened off African coast" ? well to me its clear: its a methodical tracing of the route followed, as for the moment and until debris is spotted, we actually have no idea apart from loss from radar and reports of electrical faults
- AF pioneering South Atlantic routes - absolutely agree and some of you will remember that AF's first SSC service was not to Washington or NY, it was to Rio ! so a very important and historical route for AF
- AF quality; let no one criticise AF's protocols and maintenance quality, as they are equal to BA and LH and better than most other Euro airlines (to be honest when I heard the news and before the company was announced, my instinct was to think this was a TAM flight...); last big crash from AF was the Concorde crash, now known to be caused by a chunk of metal falling off a preceding CO....