The latest guests at a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris are not there for any kind of holiday. It has been set aside for the families of the passengers who went missing on Air France flight 447.

Doctors and psychologists are on hand to help them deal with the growing reality that their relatives will not be coming home. But it is not just the loss they are having to accept. The lack of information about the fate of the passengers is proving almost as hard to deal with. In the Gironde region of south-west France, one family has been waiting for any scrap of information on what happened to the Air France jet. Liliane Pawlak, the mother of one of the passengers was asked if she had been calling the foreign office helpline. “All day long, all day long,” she replied, “without anyone answering us. You don’t know. They tell us nothing.” Sandrine Artiguenave’s step-father, Serge Pawlak said: “Obviously, there’s no list. The foreign office said to call Air France to get the names on the list, but we’re still waiting. They gave us a confirmation, but only by stepping-up our personal inquiry, so it’s really really tough.” The Brazilian government has announced three days of official mourning. And in Paris, the Assembly and the senate held a minute’s silence.More about: Air France, Airbus, Brazil, France

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