PHILIDELPHIA – The FBI charged a US Airways employee with helping his roommate get a concealed, semiautomatic handgun onto a plane departing Philadelphia early Thursday.

Customer service agent Roshid Milledge switch black carry-on bags with passenger Damien Young at the gate so Young could board the 7am flight to Phoenix with the unloaded 9mm weapon, the FBI said in an affidavit.

Young, 29, was moving to Phoenix asked Milledge about the procedures for transporting guns. Milledge, 38, instead agreed to carry the bag through an employee entrance so it would not be screened by security.

An alert fellow passenger saw the switch and, sensing that Milledge seemed “fidgety”, raised concerns. Young, already on the plane, allegedly denied to a US Airway manager that he had switched nags with anyone. The plane then started to taxi, but was soon called back to the gate so Young could be removed.

He then admitted the bag was his and both men gave statements, the FBI said. Milledge told agents he had grabbed the wrong laptop bag from their Philadelphia home that morning and was switching it back.

US Airways Flight 1195 departed Philadelphia several hours later. In a statement, the Tempe, Arizona based airline said only that additional passenger screening took place “after a concern was raised about a carry-on bag.”

“We are cooperating with investigators fully and take security considerations very seriously,” said the statement issued by spokesman Morgan Durrant.

PORTSMOUTH, Va – Coast Guard watch standers at the Rescue Coordination Center in Portsmouth assisted officials at the Rescue Coordination Center in Gris Nez, France, with the search for Air France Flight 447 by providing information to help locate the plane’s fuselage.

The Coast Guard uses a “reverse drift” program, called the Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System that generates a simulation based on the location where floating wreckage is found. This enables Coast Guard search planners to develop optimal search plans, maximizing the probability of successfully locating a search object.

By entering information – when and where debris is found – the SAROPS works backward using the weather, wind and sea conditions over a specified period of time to estimate the probable location of the plane. Based on this position, underwater efforts can be targeted to find the plane’s flight data recorder, commonly known as the “black box”.

“This is cutting-edge technology that the Coast Guard recently developed”, said Geoff Pagels, the Search and Rescue Specialist for the Fifth Coast Guard District in Portsmouth. “We know it’s a crucial element to determine historical positions where distress may have occurred.”

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A U.S. Navy aircrew joined the international search June 2 for survivors and debris from an Air France aircraft that went missing off the Brazilian coast, U.S. Southern Command officials announced.

A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion and its 21 crew members reported to Augusto Severo Airfield in Natal, Brazil, June 1 and joined search operations for Air France Flight 447, officials said.

The crew deployed from its forward operating location in Comalapa Air Base, El Salvador, where it was supporting regional illicit trafficking detection and reporting operations, officials said.

U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) dispatched the aircraft and crew after Brazilian officials accepted the command’s offer to assist with the search.

SOUTHCOM also directed a combat rescue officer from Joint Task Force-Bravo, located at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, to Recife, Brazil. There, he will help the Brazilian Rescue Coordination Center coordinate rescue assets, officials said.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Air France Airbus A330-200 aircraft during a severe lightning storm after takeoff from Rio de Janiero. The aircraft, bound for Paris, disappeared with 228 passengers aboard.

A Brazilian air force crew reported June 2 that they had spotted debris floating in the South Atlantic that could have come from the aircraft.

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The Air France Airbus A330 jetliner with 228 people on aboad went missing on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. It was carrying 216 passengers of 32 nationalities, including seven children and one baby, Air France said. Sixty-one were French citizens, 58 Brazilian and 26 German. Twelve crew members were also on board.

It was presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Monday after hitting heavy turbulence. Air France said the Airbus flew into stormy weather four hours after its scheduled take-off from the Brazilian city and shortly afterwards sent an automatic message reporting electrical faults. Company spokesman Francois Brousse said several of the plane’s mechanisms had malfunctioned, preventing it from making contact with air traffic controllers.

The airliner might have been hit by lightning, he said. The Brazilian Air Force said the plane was far out over the sea when it went missing. France and Brazil sent military planes and ships to try to locate wreckage between Brazil and West Africa.

“We will search all night long and keep going through dawn,” said Colonel Jorge Amaral of the Brazilian Air Force. “We have to work as if it were possible to find survivors.”

If none are found, it would be the worst disaster in Air France’s 75-year history, more deadly than the crash of one of the company’s supersonic Concorde planes in 2000.

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