JET MAY HAVE BEEN HIT BY LIGHTNING! 228 PEOPLE MISSING!

Lightning may have knocked an Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris out of the sky, officials said Monday.

The airliner was flying over the Atlantic when it disappeared, and France fears "the worst," chief Air France spokesman Francois Brousse said.

"It is possible" that Flight 447 was hit by lightning, Brousse said as worried and weeping relatives of those on board met with government ministers at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his "extreme worry." Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane about 190 miles northeast of the coastal Brazilian city of Natal, 1,500 miles northeast of Rio.

The plane, an Airbus A330, was carrying 12 crew members and 216 passengers, including one infant, seven children, 82 women and 126 men, officials said. It was not immediately announced whether any Americans were on the flight.

In Washington, a Pentagon official said there have no indication that terrorism or foul play was involved. The flight left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time and was supposed to arrive in Paris at 5:15 a.m. on Monday.

About four hours later, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said. The Brazilian air force launched a search for the missing plane.

There is "real pessimism at this hour," said France's minister in charge of transport, Jean-Louis Borloo. Aviation experts said it was clear the plane could not in the air any longer, due to the amount of fuel it would have been carrying.

"There has been no receipt of a mayday call," Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates told The Associated Press. "The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened. I would suggest that potentially it went down very quickly and so quickly that the pilots on board didn't have a chance to make that emergency call."

"It's going to take a long time to carry out this search," Douglas Ferreira Machado, head of investigation and accident prevention for Brazil's Civil Aeronautics Agency, reported. "It could be a long, sad story. The black box will be at the bottom of the sea."

The plane entered service in 2005 and last underwent maintenance April 16, officials said. with News Wire services