When I Was Young

Posted: 22 June 2009 0507 hrs

Crew members of a Brazilian Air Force Super Puma helicopter unload corpses of Air France airflight 447 passengers.

SAO PAULO: Eleven of the 50 bodies recovered from an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic three weeks ago have been identified by fingerprints and dental records, Brazilian officials said on Sunday.

The bodies were identified as "10 Brazilians and one foreigner," officials in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco said in a statement.

Five of the Brazilians were male, the other five were female and the foreigner was male, it added.

The officials, part of a task force that also includes Brazilian police and forensic specialists conducting autopsies in the city of Recife, did not give further details about those identified.

They said the families of the identified Brazilians had been visited personally on Friday and Saturday by police officers who broke the news.

The embassy of the foreigner who was identified was also notified.

A special morgue in Recife has received 49 of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash site 1,000 kilometres off Brazil's northeast coast. The 50th body was due to be delivered by ship on Monday.

There were 228 people from 32 countries onboard the airliner, which went down June 1 off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The cause of the disaster - the worst in Air France's history - was not known.

Seventy-two French citizens, 59 Brazilians, 26 Germans and passengers from 29 other countries were on the flight.

Identification was initially being attempted using fingerprints, scars, surgical or dental characteristics, and tattoos on the bodies.

If those failed, DNA tests were to be carried out in a Brazilian police laboratory in Brasilia based on samples taken from relatives.

After bodies were identified, they were to be released to the families for burial, the statement said.

The Brazilian officials said they were still waiting for records and other information to identify bodies of foreigners.

"The lack of pre-mortem data explains the small number foreigners identified," they said in the statement.

Brazilian authorities leading the search for bodies and debris have fading hopes of finding any more remains. On Saturday, a sophisticated plane with on-board radar that found the first traces of the downed plane was taken off the operation.

A separate French operation looking for the plane's black boxes was continuing, with a French military nuclear submarine scouring the crash zone.

It was trying to detect homing beacons that are expected to fade within a week. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 14 June 2009 0420 hrs

A partition with crew seats recovered with other wreckage

RECIFE, Brazil: Debris recovered so far from Air France flight 447 seems to indicate the jet plunged suddenly into the Atlantic Ocean and did not explode in the sky, Brazilian experts said Saturday.

Almost two weeks after the Rio-Paris flight disappeared at sea, former pilot Ari Germano told O Globo newspaper that he was "struck" by at least one of the photographs released Friday by the Brazilian Air Force.

According to Germano, who has written a book about air crashes, the images suggested that the Airbus A330 passengers were caught by surprise and the tragedy unfolded so rapidly that the crew did not have the time to react.

In the photographs, the seats in the crew area were folded with the seatbelts hanging down, which "suggests that the crew was moving about the passenger cabin. If there had been an alert or a warning about a pending risk, the crew would have been seated," he said.

"They did not have the time to do anything," added the former pilot, who also recognized an orange first aid kit that was left intact.

Dozens of pieces of debris recovered by the Brazilian Navy have been brought to an airport hangar in the northeastern city of Recife.

A French navy ship on Friday recovered six more bodies, bringing to 50 the number of bodies found in the wake of the crash of the plane, which went down over the ocean on the night from May 31 to June 1 with 228 people on board.

Captain Ronaldo Jenkins, a security consultant with the National Union of Air Carriers (SNEA), told Globo that he had identified a safety vest and part of the plane's internal covering, which showed no trace of fire or smoke, suggesting no explosion.

"On the photographs published in recent days, where we can see debris from the plane floating in the water and a restroom door, there were also no signs of fire," he added.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 09 June 2009 1330 hrs

Brazilian Air Force officer shows a picture during a press conference to announce the recovery of more bodies.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil: Brazilian and French officials have been preparing to identify the first 16 bodies recovered from an area in the Atlantic where an Air France jet crashed over a week ago killing all 228 people aboard.

A Brazilian navy ship was to bring the bodies close to Brazil's Fernando de Noronha archipelago, where they were to be transferred by helicopter early Tuesday.

From there, they were to be flown by plane to Recife, a mainland coastal city where a morgue had been set up to identify the remains using DNA samples from relatives and dental records.

Brazilian officials said late Monday they had recovered 24 bodies since Saturday from the crash zone 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) off Brazil's northeast coast.

French officials later said at least another five bodies were on a French frigate helping the Brazilian navy recovery operation, bringing the total number of bodies so far recovered to 29.

A Brazilian navy ship recovered the tail fin of the Air France Airbus A330 on Monday and was bringing it to shore. That was seen as the most important piece yet recovered from the plane, which went down June 1 on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. No distress call was received from the pilots.

The plane's black boxes were mounted in the tail section, and the fin's location could narrow the underwater search for those devices by a French submarine expected to arrive in the zone on Wednesday.

The clock is ticking for finding the devices, believed to lie on the sea floor at a depth of up to 6,000 meters (19,700 feet). Their homing beacons will cease to operate in three weeks.

The US Navy said the first of two towable pinger locators would arrive Wednesday to try to locate the data and voice recorders.

A French nuclear submarine was due the same day to also conduct underwater sweeps for the beacons.

If the black boxes are found, a French research sub -- the same one that has explored the wreck of the Titanic -- will be deployed to recover them. That small sub, the Nautile, is also expected to arrive within days.

The disaster is the worst aviation accident since 2001, and unprecedented in Air France's 75-year history.

Early suspicions are focusing on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, which appear to have malfunctioned in the minutes before the catastrophe according to some of the 24 automatic data warnings sent by the plane.

Investigators are looking at whether the sensors, known as pitots, could have iced over, possibly leading the Air France pilots to fly into a storm in the zone that day without knowing their airspeed.

France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau has said that scenario could have led the pilots to set the plane at "too low a speed, which can cause it to stall, or too high a speed, which can lead to the plane ripping up as it approached the speed of sound, as the outer skin is not designed to resist such speed."

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 07 June 2009 2253 hrs

Brazilian Air Force plane searching for debris of Air France flight 447.

RECIFE, Brazil: Seventeen bodies have now been recovered from the debris of an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic nearly a week ago, as investigators probe whether a defective speedometer caused the tragedy.

Four more bodies were snatched from the waves 1,000 kilometres off Brazil's northeastern coast on Sunday, when search teams battled "unfavourable" weather conditions to recover other bodies spotted floating among seats and other plane debris, Brazilian military officials said.

The latest finds followed the recovery on Saturday of the first two bodies from Air France flight AF 447, which came down early June 1 with 228 people on board. The plane left from Rio de Janeiro to Paris a week ago, on May 31.

The sex of three of the four recovered bodies could not be determined, Brazilian air force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz said, suggesting how bad a condition they were in after seven days in the water.

"Their state will not be revealed because it's not in the public interest," he said.

A navy frigate was to take the bodies and items recovered on Saturday, including an Air France seat, a briefcase with an Air France ticket and a backpack, to the nearest port of Fernando de Noronha, a Brazilian archipelago 400 kilometers offshore.

Three more police experts arrived on the island for preliminary identification work to collect basic information, such as the state of the bodies and any clothing, according to air force spokesman Jorge Amaral. Five other police experts arrived on Saturday.

The ship was expected to dock on Monday. From there, the remains were to be flown to the mainland city of Recife, where search operations were being coordinated and a morgue had been set up to identify the bodies through DNA tests.

Munhoz said "some 100 objects" had been spotted in the crash zone, including other seats emblazoned with the Air France logo and oxygen masks. But the priority was the recovery of the bodies.

The black boxes from the plane have not yet been found.

A French navy frigate on Sunday joined the search effort. Two French military aircraft were already flying with the 12 Brazilian air force planes at work in the area.

Two French submarines, including one that explored the wreck of the Titanic and another, nuclear powered warship, were also on their way to hunt for the devices, which will stop transmitting their location in three weeks.

With clues still being pieced together over the crash, speculation is focusing on its airspeed monitors.

The doomed jet broadcast a series of 24 automatic error messages as its systems shut down one after the other in its final minutes, and French accident investigators say the cockpit was receiving conflicting speed data.

Following the crash, plane manufacturer Airbus warned pilots to review their procedure to cope with this problem.

Air France said on Saturday it had accelerated plans begun April 27 to replace the monitoring units in its jets after noticing problems with airspeed information on its Airbus A330s and A340s since May last year.

It insisted in a statement that this should not be taken as prejudging the result of the crash investigation.

The device in question is the pitot probe, usually on the leading edge of a wing, which measures the force of the air through which an aircraft passes and thus calculates the speed of the plane.

France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau said it was too early for investigators to say what the most likely cause of the crash was, but confirmed that Airbus jets had experienced problems with speed monitors.

"There have been situations on Airbus planes, and perhaps on others, where these probes ice up in a very wet area, a deep depression, an area of storms, and no longer give the correct speed reading," Bussereau told France's RTL radio.

"It's obvious that if the pilots in the cockpit no longer have the correct speed ... that can lead to two bad consequences for the survival of the plane," he explained.

"Too low a speed, which can cause it to stall, or too high a speed, which can lead to the plane ripping up as it approached the speed of sound, as the outer skin is not designed to resist such speed." - AFP/so/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 07 June 2009 1500 hrs

Relatives and Air France employees outside the Notre-Dame cathedral during an ecumenical church service for relatives and families of the passengers of Air France's flight 447

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil: Ships and planes scoured the Atlantic Ocean Sunday after the first two bodies and debris were recovered from an area off the coast of Brazil where an Air France passenger jet went down nearly a week ago.

"As well as the bodies there are various remains of the aircraft," Brazilian Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.

"Plane seats, part of the wing and various other items were localised," he said.

The finds - the first from the crash - were being brought to the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, the closest inhabited spot to the zone where they were found, for initial inspection by five Brazilian forensic police.

From there, they were to be flown to the mainland city of Recife for further analysis by French officials leading the investigation into what sent Air France flight 447 plunging into the ocean June 1 with 228 people on board.

The two male bodies the Brazilian navy recovered in the zone earlier Saturday would be catalogued here and also flown to Recife, Munhoz said.

"Recife will be the final destination for the bodies as well as the debris from the aircraft," he said, adding that "details of the (personal) items collected will be divulged to the relatives and only to the relatives."

The spokesman added that "the state of the bodies will not be divulged."

Relatives of those aboard the Air France flight have already given DNA samples to help identify their loved ones.

Although the black boxes containing vital data on the flight's final minutes have not yet been located, early suspicions are focusing on a possible malfunction of the Airbus A330's air speed sensors as it flew into a fierce storm.

French investigators said Saturday the plane, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, suffered multiple systems failures in its final moments and that speed monitors had failed on other Airbus planes.

Airbus on Friday issued a notice urging all pilots of its jets to review a 2001 warning on the procedures to follow if speed indicators give conflicting readings and force the autopilot to cut out.

Meanwhile Air France said it was stepping up replacement of speed monitors on its Airbus A330s, amid speculation that a faulty indication might have been a factor in the loss of the Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight.

In a statement, Air France said that in May last year it began noticing "incidents of loss of airspeed information during cruise flight" on its twin-engine A330s and four-engine A340s, and informed Airbus of the problem.

The device in question is the pitot probe - usually affixed to the leading edge of a wing - which measures the force of the air through which an aircraft passes.

Combined with a pressure reading from a static port on the fuselage, it tells the flight crew how fast the aircraft is going through the air.

French submarines were on their way to help with the hunt for the black boxes, as experts scrutinised the debris found so far searching for clues.

On Saturday Brazilian Colonel Jorge Amaral told reporters in Recife that the air force was able to "confirm the recovery from the water of debris and bodies from the Air France plane."

A blue plane seat, a nylon backpack containing a computer and vaccination card, and a leather briefcase with an Air France ticket inside were the first objects plucked from the sea, according to Amaral and an official statement.

The discoveries took place 450 kilometres (300 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands, themselves 370 kilometres from the mainland.

The precise spot was 70 kilometres northeast of the point of last communication with the plane, a series of automatically sent messages signalling multiple shutdowns of onboard systems.

Air France was trying to confirm that the recovered seat came from the flight by checking the serial number, which Amaral gave as 23701103B331-0.

French investigators said the Air France airliner sent 24 automatic error messages just before the crash, and its autopilot was disengaged immediately after ones showing conflicting speed readings given by sensors.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 07 June 2009 0107 hrs

Brazilian air force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral speaks to the press

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil - Brazilian search teams on Saturday recovered two male bodies, a plane seat and other remains from an Air France jetliner that went down over the Atlantic nearly a week ago with 228 people on board, officials said.

The finds -- the first from the crash -- were to be taken to the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, the closest inhabited spot to the zone they were found, for initial inspection by five Brazilian forensic police.

From there, they were to be flown to the mainland city of Recife for further analysis by French officials leading the investigation into what brought down the Air France flight 447 on June 1.

Relatives of those aboard the Air France flight have already given DNA samples to help identify their loved ones.

Although the black boxes containing vital data on the flight's final minutes have not yet been located, early suspicions are focusing on a possible malfunction of the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors as it flew into a fierce storm.

Air France employees stand outside a cathedral in Paris during an ecumenical church service for relatives and families of the passengers of Air France's flight 447.

French investigators said Saturday the plane, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, suffered multiple systems failures in its final moments and that speed monitors had failed on other Airbus planes.

Airbus on Friday issued a notice urging all pilots of its jets to review a 2001 warning on the procedures to follow if speed indicators give conflicting readings and force the autopilot to cut out.

French submarines were on their way to help with the hunt for the black boxes, as experts scrutinized the debris found so far searching for clues.

"We confirm the recovery from the water of debris and bodies from the Air France plane," Colonel Jorge Amaral told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.

He said the two bodies, the first recovered from the downed flight, were those of men.

A blue plane seat, a nylon backpack containing a computer and vaccination card, and a leather briefcase with an Air France ticket inside were the first objects plucked from the sea, according to Amaral and an official statement.

The discoveries took place 450 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands, themselves 370 kilometers from the mainland.

The precise spot was 70 kilometers northeast of the point of last communication with the plane, a series of automatically sent messages signaling multiple shutdowns of onboard systems.

Air France was trying to confirm that the recovered seat came from the flight by checking the serial number, which Amaral gave as 23701103B331-0.

French investigators said the Air France airliner sent 24 automatic error messages just before the crash, and its autopilot was disengaged immediately after ones showing conflicting speed readings given by sensors.

The head of France's BEA air investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, confirmed to reporters in Paris that the downed jet had a problem calculating its speed and that other Airbus jets have reported similar problems.

"There is a programme of replacement, of improvement," he said.

He added that planes that have not yet replaced speed monitors were not necessarily dangerous, and that in the other cases pilots had regained control.

Arslanian said it was impossible to tell from the signals whether the doomed crew had shut off the autopilot or whether it cut out.

He also said the storm the plane flew into was not exceptional.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 03 June 2009 1132 hrs

A French military aircraft joins the search off Cape Verde.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil: Navy ships are due to arrive Wednesday at a zone in the Atlantic off Brazil's coast where an Air France plane carrying 228 people crashed this week, as investigators focused on finding answers to the tragedy.

The first of the Brazilian navy vessels is to arrive early Wednesday, joining three cargo ships from France and the Netherlands that were rerouted to the area on Monday after debris from Air France flight AF 447 was spotted.

A Brazilian air force plane fitted with night-vision sensors conducted overnight sweeps of the zone, located around 500 kilometres (300 miles) northeast of Brazil's Fernando do Noronha archipelago, itself 400 kilometres from the mainland, officials said.
Another three air force aircraft were to be deployed after dawn, when visual sweeps would also be made for any sign of bodies.

Defence Minister Nelson Jobim on Tuesday confirmed that the spot in Brazilian waters was the crash site of the Air France Airbus A330.

"There are no doubts" a five-kilometre strip of floating debris - including cables, plane components and fuel slicks - marked the spot where the full flight went down, he told reporters.

The evidence extinguished any lingering hopes of finding survivors and confirmed the worst civil aviation accident since 2001, when an American Airlines jet crashed in New York killing all 260 people on board.

Brazil on Tuesday announced three days of national mourning for those who perished on the Air France plane. Catholic and Muslim services were to be held in Paris on Wednesday, including one in Notre-Dame cathedral to be attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Flight AF 447 was four hours into its 11-hour voyage from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it suddenly issued a series of automated data alerts indicating multiple electrical and pressurisation failures and ceased contact with controllers.

The pilots did not issue any mayday distress call, leaving the accident a mystery - one that only the plane's black boxes can elucidate, if they can be found in Atlantic waters as deep as 6,000 metres.

Brazil's air force said France's Bureau of Investigations and Analyses (BEA) was responsible for the investigation into what was Air France's worst accident in its 70-year history.

A team of BEA officials were already at work in Brazil, it said.

Two operations would be conducted in parallel, Jobim said: the recovery of the debris, and the search for bodies.

Any human remains would be taken by ship to Fernando de Noronha, where they would be flown out on air force aircraft.

More than half of those travelling on the Air France jet were either French or Brazilian. The others came from 30 countries, mostly in Europe.

The 216 passengers included 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby. The crew comprised 11 French nationals and one Brazilian.

The 58-year-old French captain had been flying for Air France since 1988 and had a great deal of experience, the airline said.

Air France has suggested the four-year-old plane could have been struck by lightning - a fairly common hazard that by itself should not knock out a modern airliner, but coupled with other problems such as violent turbulence it could be dangerous.

Other theories advanced by experts include pilot error, mechanical defects or even the remote possibility of terrorism.

"No hypothesis is being favoured at the moment," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday.

"Our only certainty is that there was no distress call sent by the plane, but regular automatic alerts sent over three minutes indicated the failure of all systems," he said.

A French ship was on its way to the zone, carrying two mini-submarines capable of operating at depths of 6,000 metres (19,700 feet), which is also the limit aircraft black boxes can survive for up to 30 days.

But any recovery would be extremely tricky, not only because of the depth, but also because of powerful currents and storms in the zone.

"To find the plane, you'll need ships equipped with a special sonar, and possibly also rescue submarines - it's an enormous undertaking," Commander Ronaldo Jenkins, safety coordinator for Brazil's airline association, told

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Updated 1 hour, 2 minutes ago

Story Highlights

• NEW: Pilots' failure to issue mayday "ominous sign," former NTSB spokesman says
  
• NEW: Memorial service to be held Wednesday at Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral
  
• 2 debris fields found about 400 miles northeast of Fernando de Noronha Islands
  
• Flight 447, traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, was carrying 228 people
  

A French search and rescue crew scans the Atlantic for wreckage Tuesday.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CNN) -- Debris located early Tuesday in the Atlantic Ocean off the northeast coast of Brazil is wreckage from the Air France jet that disappeared Monday, Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said.

No survivors have been found, he said.

Jobim made the announcement after meeting with relatives and friends of Brazilians who were among the 228 people aboard Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, France.

Two debris fields were found about 650 km (400 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil -- or at latitude 2 north, longitude 30 west, the Ministry of Defense said on its Web site.

One of the fields was 5 km (3 miles) long and that both lie near the flight path between Rio de Janeiro and Paris.

Among the wreckage was an airplane seat, metal debris, an orange float, a drum and an oil spill, the posting said.

Brazilian air force planes spotted the debris field Tuesday morning, but it was not until a French commercial vessel arrived on the scene that the debris' origin was confirmed. The planes searched 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles) of ocean throughout the day and will continue to search for more debris overnight, the Brazilian Air Force Said.

Two Netherlands-flagged vessels were expected to arrive in the area later in the day; a Brazilian navy ship was expected to arrive Wednesday, officials said. Brazilian air force jets were continuing to comb the area for other debris, and a U.S. P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft was assisting as well.

The searchers also want to find the cockpit voice and data recorders, which might shed light on what caused the jet to disappear before any of the three pilots was able to issue a mayday.

"That really is an ominous sign," said former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Managing Director Peter Goelz. "It means, whatever happened, it happened so quickly that the pilots were not able to radio out. It probably indicates a catastrophic failure at altitude."

He said that meteorologists have been checking weather data over the area "to see if there was some phenomenon that was taking place -- so far, we haven't seen it."

The Airbus A330 encountered heavy turbulence early Monday, about three hours into what was supposed to be an 11-hour flight, according to the airline.

The plane carried 216 passengers -- 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby -- and 12 crew members, Air France said.

The majority of the people on the flight came from Brazil, France and Germany. Other victims were from 29 other countries, including three from the United States. Of the crew, 11 were French, and one was Brazilian.

A team of approximately 20 Air France staff members, including two doctors and a nurse, arrived Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro to assist families of the victims, the airline said.

An inter-religious ceremony is to be held Wednesday afternoon inside Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral for family and friends of the victims. Though it will be closed to news media, a sound recording of the ceremony will be broadcast into the square outside.

An official list of victims by name was not available Tuesday afternoon, but two Americans on board -- Michael Harris, 60, and his wife, Anne, 54 -- were identified by the couple's family and his employer.

Prince Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, a member of Brazil's non-reigning royal family, was also on the flight, his family said Monday. Pedro Luis was 26.

Also on the flight were two executives of the French tire company Michelin: Michelin Latin America President Luiz Roberto Anastacio and Antonio Gueiro, director of informatics. Read more about victims on Air France Flight 447

The jet was 4 years old and had last undergone routine maintenance April 16.

The Air France plane has built-in homing devices, said Greg Feith, a former investigator with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

Homing devices such as "pingers," which are underwater locator beacons attached to flight data and cockpit voice recorders, can transmit signals from as deep as 14,000 feet, about the maximum depth of the waters in the area.

The average depth of the Atlantic Ocean is about 12,000 feet: more than 2 miles.

"They're water-activated, so if they're sitting at the bottom of the ocean, of course, then the military assets will have to go in there with listening devices and try and home in on those particular signals," Feith said.

Shortly before it disappeared, the plane's automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating that "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down," Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said Monday.

The jet, which was flying at 35,000 feet and at 521 mph, also sent a warning that it had lost pressure, the Brazilian air force said.

There was no contact with the crew during or after the time that the automatic messages were sent, Gourgeon said.

"It was probable that it was a little bit after those messages that the impact of the plane took place in the Atlantic," he added.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 03 June 2009 0537 hrs

A French military crew flying over the Atlantic Ocean in search of a missing Air France jet.

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil's government confirmed late on Tuesday that debris spotted by aircraft in the Atlantic Ocean came from a missing Air France flight that had been carrying 228 people when it vanished without a trace.

Defence Minister Nelson Jobim told a media conference in Rio de Janeiro "there are no doubts" that jet fuel slicks and debris, including a seat from a plane, were from flight AF 447, which had been flying from Rio to Paris on Monday when it went missing.
The debris was scattered over a five-kilometre area, he said, "confirming that the plane fell at this spot."

Jobim said three merchant vessels were in the debris zone and the first of several Brazilian navy vessels would arrive on Wednesday.

"They will start the work to recover these items that were spotted" on Tuesday by Brazilian air force planes, he said.

If any bodies were found, they would be transported by ship to the nearest airport, on Brazil's archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, 460 kilometres away. From there, they would be flown out on air force planes, he said.

Jobim made the announcement after visiting relatives of those on board the flight who were being looked after in a Rio hotel by teams including psychological and medical personnel. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 03 June 2009 0233 hrs

A French military personnel checking with binoculars the Atlantic Ocean for the missing Air France jet.

PARIS: A French research ship equipped with two mini-submarines is on its way to a stretch of the Atlantic where an Air France flight carrying 228 people vanished, officials said on Tuesday.

The "Pourquoi Pas" ("Why Not") will join the hunt currently being carried out by French and Brazilian air force jets hundreds of kilometres off the Brazilian coast, the ecology ministry said in a statement.

The mini-subs it carries can work at depths of up to 6,000 metres. The ocean area where the plane disappeared has maximum depths of 4,700 metres, French naval experts said.

The black boxes aboard the missing Air France jet can survive as deep as 6,000 metres underwater and emit a signal for one month, according to French air disaster investigators.

But none has ever been found this deep in the ocean, they said.

A French military spokesman meanwhile said he believed that aircraft debris found by the Brazilian air force "appeared to be a very serious lead."

The items include a seat from a plane, bits of white material, an orange buoy, a barrel and fuel slicks, according to the air force, which said it could not be immediately confirmed that the debris was from the Air France flight. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 02 June 2009 2044 hrs

A Brazilian couple, relatives of a passenger onboard the ill-fated Air France flight 447.

BRASILIA - Search aircraft on Tuesday found a seat and other debris from a plane in a remote stretch of the Atlantic where an Air France flight carrying 228 people disappeared, Brazil's air force said.

The "small remains" were discovered around 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) off northeastern Brazil, some 650 kilometres northeast of Brazil's Atlantic island of Fernando do Noronha.

The items included a seat from a plane, bits of white material, an orange buoy, a barrel and some oil and kerosene slicks, grouped in two floating patches 60 kilometers apart, according to an air force statement.

It could not immediately be confirmed that the debris was from Air France flight AF 447, the spokesman, Colonel Jorge Amaral, told reporters.

There were no signs of survivors, he said.

"The search is continuing because it's very little material in relation to the size" of the Air France Airbus A330, he said.

He added that officials needed "a piece that might have a serial number, some sort of identification" to be sure that it came from the missing airliner.

However the items were found near where the Air France plane sent its final message: an automatic data signal telling of multiple electric and pressurization failures.

Air France flight AF 447 disappeared mid-Atlantic on Monday, four hours into an 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

A Brazilian air force statement said the debris was discovered at 0300 GMT Tuesday by an Embraer R-99 AWAC plane fitted with onboard radar that detected metallic and non-metallic items floating in the ocean.

After homing in the search to that locale, other air force planes at 0949 GMT spotted the patches of floating debris.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

June 2, 2009 -- Updated 1229 GMT (2029 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Air France Airbus A330-200 encountered heavy turbulence
  
• CEO: "Several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down"
  
• Some experts have said that a lightning strike was a possible cause
  
• Flight 447, traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, was carrying 228 people
  

An airliner is struck by lightning strike at Washington's Dulles airport last year.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The mysterious disappearance of Flight AF 447 over the Atlantic Ocean has fueled speculation among aviation experts about what caused the state-of-the-art airliner to come down.

According to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the Airbus A330-200 encountered heavy turbulence about 02:15 a.m. local time Monday (10:15 p.m. ET Sunday), three hours after the jet carrying 228 people left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for Paris, France.

At that point, the plane's automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down."

The jet, which was flying at 35,000 feet and at 521 mph, also sent a warning that it had lost pressure, the Brazilian air force said. Its last known contact occurred at 02:33 a.m., the Brazilian air force spokesman added.

The assumption is that these electrical problems led to a catastrophic failure of the aircraft's controls.

Some experts have said that a lightning strike was a possibility, particularly since the plane disappeared in a storm-prone area along the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence zone (ITCZ). This is where the trade winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres converge. The intense sun and warm water of the equator heats the air in the ITCZ, raising its humidity and making it buoyant. Aided by the convergence of the trade winds, the buoyant air rises, releasing the accumulated moisture in an almost constant series of thunderstorms.

According to CNN's Mari Ramos, these storms can reach altitudes of 52,000 ft -- way beyond the capacity of commercial airliners to fly over.

Retired airline pilot John Cox told CNN that modern aircraft receive a constant stream of real time weather data which allows them to plot a course around storms. "Because safety is the paramount concern, airliners don't fly into storms. They fly around them," he said.

"The ITCZ is no different. Planes fly through it every day.

"At 8 miles per minute, modern jets can easily fly around storms. Even if they encounter turbulence, they're designed to absorb it."

When lightning strikes a plane, the bolt typically hits a sharp part of it, such as a wing tip. Huge amounts of energy surge through the aircraft before exiting out of another sharp point, such as the tail. But sometimes high voltages can cause electrical damage if components are not well-grounded.

Unlike other aircraft where the pilot's controls are manually attached to the flaps and rudders, Airbus 330 airliners are equipped with a "fly by wire" system that sends electronic signals from an onboard computer to move key control surfaces.

Experts say that it is possible for this system and its back-up computers to be disabled by lightning. "If you have a massive electrical problem it's possible that you could cut off all the commands out to the control surfaces," said aeronautics expert John Hansman.

However, Kieran Daly, from the online aviation news service Air Transport Intelligence, told CNN that this scenario, while not impossible, is inconceivable. "It's more likely that lightning would cause a fire or punch a hole through the aircraft structure," he said.

"It could be significant that the jet reported a loss of pressure."

He added that the aircraft would be able to continue without the fly-by-wire system. The "trim tab," which enables the pilot to manually manipulate controls such as the rudder, would allow the crew to fly the aircraft safely. "Pilots are routinely trained for these kinds of events in a simulator," he said.

Former Airbus pilot John Wiley said on average every airliner is hit by a strike once a year. "They don't go down," he said.

According to Air France, the captain of Flight AF 447 had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340 aircraft. Of the two first officers, one had flown 3,000 flight hours (800 of which on the Airbus A330/A340) and the other 6,600 (2,600 on the Airbus A330/A340).

The aircraft had totaled 18,870 flight hours and went into service on 18 April 2005. Its last maintenance check in the hangar took place on 16 April 2009.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.