Relatives hold on to hope for crash victims

New Delhi: Hundreds of lives are shattered, with that tragic crash of the Air France airliner. Friends and family of the 228 passengers on board Flight 447 are being counselled but it's still going to be a long wait for answers on what exactly went wrong.

As the governments of Brazil and France hunt for the aircraft and its passengers or the remains, relatives and friends of those on board the flight hope for miracles.

The wife of passenger Arthur Coakley Patricia Coakley said, “Maybe today, I'm realising he might not come back. But I kept phoning him on his mobile and he's pretty useless with mobiles, he hates them. You know, he'd like a tin of Heinz baked beans and a bit of string. But he never has his switched off, on rather. But his is switched off and I haven't tried it today, but yesterday it was ringing so maybe they're not at the bottom of the sea. That's my hope but I think it's maybe fading today."

Patricia Coakley's hope to see her husband again is fading away.

61 year old Arthur Coakley was one of the 228 passsengers on board the fateful Air France Flight 447 which went missing in the Atlantic Ocean on Monday. Debris of the plane was located by the Brazilian Air Force on Tuesday evening.

Arthur a British engineer from North Yorkshire was helping with a survey in Brazil. He had booked himself onto an earlier flight but was bumped onto the doomed jet as the first flight was full. Patricia isn't alone grieving the loss of her loved one, there are many more whose lives have been shattered by the incident.

Aine Rooney finds it hard to cope with the potential loss of friend Eithne Walls:

“The shock is just unbearable to be honest. I think the more you think about it and the more you talk about it it's kind of hitting home for everybody, her family, friends. It's just non-stop contact about her and everybody is just absolutely demented, nobody knows what's happening and it's frightening to be honest, it really is frightening,” Aine confessed.

A gentleman Kamel Faroukh whose son-in-law was on board the flight said, “They told us that his name was on the list from the plane and the plane was disappeared, they do not know what happened to it and they are searching for it."

While the authorities are still searching for the jet's black box to find out the cause of the mishap, the loved ones of the 228 passengers including 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians continue to pray for hope and deliverance for their loved ones.

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