Investigators were scouring the Atlantic for wreckage last night after an Air France airliner plunged into the ocean during a violent storm. All 228 people aboard are believed to have died.

The only clue to the disappearance of the Airbus 330, which was on a night flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, was an automated transmission from the aircraft reporting sudden electrical and cabin pressure failures.

Five Britons were on board, with 61 French, 58 Brazilians and 26 Germans among the 33 nationalities represented. One of the British victims, a woman from Wales, was travelling with three Irish women, who were doctors. They were named locally as Aisling Butler, of Roscrea, Co Tipperary, Jane Deasy of Dublin and Eithne Walls, originally from Belfast.

Dr Butler’s father said that she had turned 26 just over two weeks ago. “We know Aisling is gone, we are sure of that,” he said.

Dr Walls was a member of the Riverdance troupe and performed on Broadway before beginning six years of medical studies at Trinity College Dublin. While studying, she continued dancing as part of Riverdance’s “flying squad”, performing in China, Qatar, Germany and France.

French ministers initially ruled out sabotage or hijacking and said that Air France’s worst disaster had probably been caused by lightning, but that it was too early to draw conclusions.

Air France said that Flight 447, with a crew of 12, vanished after flying into a line of severe tropical storms at about 2am GMT. Among the missing was the Latin American chief of the Michelin tyre group. The airline said that the area of the likely crash had been narrowed down to a few dozen square miles midway between Brazil and northwest Africa.

Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the airline’s chief executive, said that the jet’s automated link had sent out a “succession of a dozen technical messages . . . indicating that several systems had broken down . . . indicating a completely unheard-of situation”.

The Airbus is equipped with locator beacons that should transmit over a narrow range from under water.

The pilots made their last position report after leaving the coast of Brazil at 1.30am. The aircraft was flying normally at 35,000ft (10,600m).

Since there is no radar cover over the ocean, the crew, which included a senior captain with 11,000 flying hours, had been due to check in with the next oceanic control at 2am. Air France said that it entered “a thunderous zone with strong turbulence” at that time.

The last communication was the data link message at 2.15am reporting a failure of electrical power, pressurisation and other systems. This suggested that the aircraft was already out of control and possibly breaking up.“Something catastrophic happened on board,” ” Chris Yates, an analyst for Jane’s Aviation, said. “Potentially it went down so quickly that the pilot didn’t have a chance to make that emergency call.”

Airline pilots speculated that the airliner could have flown into one of the powerful, towering storm cells that are strong enough to turn a big aircraft on its back and that are usually avoided. The area was something of a graveyard for European and South American aircraft in the pioneering days of air transport in the 1930s.

Airbus A330 airliners have never before had a fatal crash during a commercial flight. Introduced a decade ago, they are respected workhorses. However, the crash is bound to renew suspicions among some airline pilots about the highly automated systems that run the Airbus family.

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