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Brazil's air force is looking at sending special aircraft fitted with electronic sensors to continue its search for a missing Air France plane overnight, a spokesman said late Monday.
"At night there are no visual searches, but there can be electronic and radar searches," the official, who declined to be identified, told reporters at the air force command center in Brasilia.
He said a decision on whether to deploy the special aircraft would be made at 8:00 pm (2300 GMT).
During daylight hours Monday eight air force aircraft and three navy vessels were dispatched to sweep the area of the Atlantic where Air France flight AF 447, an Airbus carrying 228 people, was believed to have come down.
The zone is located 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) off the coast of northeast Brazil, nearly halfway across the Atlantic Ocean to the African continent.
The area is beyond the reach of fixed radar and near where the Airbus emitted his final communication, an automatic data message signaling multiple failures of its electric and pressurization systems.
Flight AF 447 disappeared around there four hours into its 11-hour voyage to Paris from Rio de Janeiro.
Air France said it believed the aircraft could have been struck by lightning -- a relatively common occurrence that modern commercial jetliners are built to withstand.
The zone where the flight disappeared is known for its storms and violent winds, though pilots are accustomed to picking a safe passage through them.
