Thyssenkrupp Executive On Board Air France Flight 447

Eric Heine was the chairman of ThyssenKrupp's Brazilian unit CSA.

By: Jamie Burch | WKRG
Published: June 01, 2009

A Thyssenkrupp executive was one of the 216 passengers on board Air France Flight 447 that disappeared over the Atlantic ocean

A spokesman for the German steelmaker tells News 5 Erich Heine, chairman of Companhia Siderurgica do Atlantico and a member of ThyssenKrupp Steel's executive board, was on the flight.

The flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris vanished after it ran into a towering wall of thunderstorms about three and a-half hours after takeoff. The Brazilian Air Force is searching a huge expanse of ocean off Brazil's northeast coast and near Africa's Cape Verde Islands for the plane.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the "prospects of finding survivors are very small." But he's offering a slim ray of hope, saying "no hypothesis" is being excluded.

Heine was in Mobile in February to give Governor Bob Riley a tour of the company's new terminal at Pinto island.

ThyssenKrupp AG in Duisburg, Germany and ThyssenKrupp Steel USA in Mobile are expected to release a statement on Tuesday.