An 11-year-old prep school pupil was among the five Britons on the airliner which vanished over the Atlantic, it has been announced.
Alexander Bjoroy, who attended Clifton College preparatory school in Bristol, was one of 228 people aboard the missing Air France Airbus A330.
As Brazilian and French planes continued to scour the Atlantic searching for the plane, aviation experts stressed the importance of finding the aircraft's "black box" flight data recorder.
The experts also pointed out that it was by no means certain that the plane, flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had been struck by lightning.
Oil worker Graham Gardner, 52, from Gourock, Renfrewshire, was among the passengers, his employers said. Three Irish women, all in their 20s, were also on the plane, which had 12 crew. The 216 passengers included a baby and seven children.
One of the British passengers on the flight is believed to be Arthur Coakley, from near Whitby, North Yorkshire. His wife Patricia broke down in tears as she described the devastating impact that the loss of the 61-year-old had had on their family.
The Irish women on the plane were named locally as Aisling Butler, of Roscrea, Co Tipperary, Jane Deasy, of Dublin, and Eithne Walls, originally from Belfast.
The aircraft had run into stormy weather with strong turbulence around four hours into the flight which had left Rio at around 11pm UK time on Sunday.
About 15 minutes after the turbulence message, an automatic message was received from the plane - AF447 - indicating a failure in the electrical circuit.
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Kieran Daly, editor of internet news service Air Transport Intelligence, said it was "absolutely imperative" that the black box flight recorder was found. He went on: "If it's not recovered we may never know exactly what happened and the implications of this would be enormous."
