By Murray Williams, Sapa and Associated Press
Search planes scoured the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean early on Tuesday, looking for the remains of an Air France jetliner that disappeared in a severe storm with 228 people on board.
The family of a South African father of three are among the thousands grieving after the plane disappeared off the coast of Brazil on Monday.
Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral has decreed three days of mourning - an indication of the slight chances of finding survivors.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said there was little chance of finding anyone alive.
The plane was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it vanished from radar screens early on Monday morning, about 500km off the north-eastern coast of Brazil.
France and Brazil sent military aircraft and ships to try to find wreckage on the high seas between Brazil and west Africa.
In Joburg on Monday, 702 Eyewitness News was contacted by the South African man's brother, who confirmed that his brother's name had appeared under the list of German passengers.
"He held both a South African and German passport, because he has worked in Germany for the past three years," he said.
The man asked that both his and his brother's identities be kept private, for the moment.
"It's very difficult at this stage. Everyone is in shock. At this stage the family's just trying to regroup," he said.
His brother was married with three children - a five-year-old, who's turning six in a week's time, and twin four-year-olds.
A top South African airliner specialist told the Cape Argus on Tuesday that was technically possible for an aircraft of that size to make a belly landing in the ocean.
"It would just depend on the conditions. We had it on January 15 on the Hudson River, and several years ago we had the ditching of the Boeing 767 in the Indian Ocean off the Comoros - an Ethiopian Airline aircraft that had been hijacked and ran out of fuel. There were quite a few fatalities, but also a number of survivors," the industry expert said.
"But to accomplish a safe belly landing, you have to have all the factors in your favour - calm seas, near-perfect visibility."
If any passengers had survived a sea-crash, all lifejackets on the aircraft would have had personal emergency locator beacons. "So the minute you put on that lifejacket you would activate these. But a search aircraft or search ship would have to be searching in the right area."
The first military ship wasn't expected to reach the area where the plane disappeared until tomorrow.
Sources pointed out that the SAA aircraft, the Helderberg, which crashed in November 1987, was found only several months later.
Linden Birns, speaking for Airbus, told the Cape Argus today: "The aircraft type - an Airbus A330-200 - had had an impeccable service record since it entered service in 1994. This would be the first accident resulting in fatalities in airline service. This particular aircraft, delivered in April 2005, had logged 2 500 flights and 18 800 flight hours."
The plane disappeared in an area of the Atlantic Ocean not covered by radar. Brazilian, African, Spanish and French air traffic controllers tried in vain to establish contact.
Brazilian aircraft equipped with sensors to peer through the night were sweeping the remote part of the ocean today, officials said.
An air force Hercules C130, searching for a signal from the Air France plane's emergency beacon and an Embraer P-99 AWAC jet with onboard radar and infrared gear able to spot bodies in water were flying over an area 1 100km off Brazil's north-eastern coast.
That zone, deep in the Atlantic Ocean about halfway between South America and Africa, was determined by the last signal from Flight AF447: an automatic signal telling of electric and pressurisation failures.
A search all day on Monday involving eight Brazilian air force aircraft and two French military aircraft operating from Africa failed to find any trace of Flight AF447.
"We will search all night long and keep going through dawn," said Brazilian air force spokesperson Colonel Jorge Amaral. "We have to work as if it were possible to find survivors."
If none is found, it would be the worst disaster in Air France's 75-year history and the deadliest since the Concorde crash in 2000.
The plane was carrying 216 passengers of 32 nationalities, including seven children and one baby, Air France said. Sixty-one were French citizens, 58 Brazilian and 26 German. Twelve crew members were also on board.