The Air France flight 447 left Brazil on Sunday night and lost contact with air traffic controllers in the early hours of Monday morning during a severe storm. The search was continuing on Tuesday.
The Paris-bound airbus was carrying 216 passengers of 32 nationalities, including seven children and one baby, Air France said.
The aircraft flew into "a thunderous zone with strong turbulence" four hours after taking off from Rio de Janeiro and 15 minutes later sent an automatic message reporting electrical faults and loss of cabin pressure, the airline said.
Brazil's air force, which last had contact with the plane at 1:33am on Monday when it was 350 miles from Brazil's coast, sent six aircraft to look for it and the navy dispatched three ships to help. France also asked the United States to assist in locating the crash site using satellite data.
French and Brazilian military aircraft were continuing to patrol the Atlantic Ocean early on Tuesday, looking for any remains of the plane.
"We have to work as if it were possible to find survivors," Colonel Jorge Amaral of the Brazilian air force told media representatives.
Amaral said the authorities were investigating reported sightings of fire along the aircraft's route, spotted by pilots for the Brazilian airline, TAM.
Air France said a lightning strike could be to blame and that several of the mechanisms on the Airbus 330-200, which has a good safety record, had malfunctioned. The firm said the plane, which was powered with General Electric engines, went into service in April 2005 and last underwent maintenance in April.
But aviation experts commented that lightning strikes on planes were common and could not be the only cause of a disaster. Reuters news agency reported that flight data sent to the World Meteorological Organization reported that two Lufthansa jets passed through the same area of turbulence on Monday without incident.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said there was little chance of finding any survivors.
Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, expressed hope that "the worst hasn't happened", and said "we have to ask God" to help find survivors.
If no survivors are found, it would be the worst disaster in Air France's 75-year history.
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