As several ships trawled the debris site in the Atlantic, Brazil's defense minister said a 20-kilometer (12-mile) oil slick near where the plane, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, went down indicated it probably did not break up until it hit the water.
In May 1998, a Peruvian air force plane, a Boeing 737, on charter to an American oil company crashed near the Ecuadorian border, killing more than 80 people.
Without cheap, plentiful oil the world will have trouble producing enough food to sustain its burgeoning population, and plane travel will be the least of our concerns.