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.

Divers from the Brazilian Navy recover a portion of the rudder of the missing Air France Flight 447.
AFP

RIO DE JANEIRO - A burst of automatic messages sent by Air France Flight 447 before it crashed includes one about a problem with a rudder safety device but lacks decisive clues as to what sent the jet plunging into the Atlantic Ocean two weeks ago, an aviation expert said on Saturday.

The industry official, who has knowledge of the Air France investigation, told AP that a transcript of the messages posted on the website EuroCockpit is authentic but inconclusive.

One of the 24 automatic messages sent from the plane minutes before it disappeared on May 31 with 228 on board points to a problem in the "rudder limiter", a mechanism that limits how far the plane's rudder can move. The flight was headed from Rio de Janeiro to Paris through an area of fierce thunderstorms.

The nearly intact vertical stabiliser - which includes the rudder - was fished out of the water earlier this week by Brazilian searchers.

"There is a lot of information, but not many clues," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to discuss the matter.

The official said jets like the Airbus A330 that crashed automatically send such maintenance messages about once a minute during a plane's flight. They are used by the ground crew to make repairs once a plane lands. If the rudder were to move too far while travelling fast, it could shear off and take the vertical stabiliser with it, which some experts theorise may have happened based on the relatively limited damage to the stabiliser.

The industry official, however, said the error message pertaining to the rudder limiter did not indicate it malfunctioned, but rather that it had locked itself in place because of conflicting speed readings.

Investigators have focused on the possibility that external speed monitors - called Pitot tubes - iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.

"The message tells us that the rudder limiter was inoperative," Mr Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant, said last week. "It does not give you any reason why it is not working or what caused it, or

what came afterward."

Unless the flight data and black boxes are found, the exact cause of the accident may never be known. AP

From TODAY, World –Monday, 15-Jun-2009

Image by Kevin Boydston via Flickr

June 9, 2009 -- Updated 1653 GMT (0053 HKT)

Story Highlights

• First bodies recovered from the crash of Air France 447 returned to land
  
• Air France agrees to replace within days speed sensors, pilots' union says
  
• Air France said it began replacing parts in April
  
• The location of the crash has not been determined
  

Brazilian military personnel on Tuesday carry the remains of one of the passengers of the Air France crash.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (CNN) -- Forty-one bodies have been recovered from the crash of Air France Flight 447, the Brazilian Navy Command and Aeronautical Command said Tuesday.

Sixteen bodies pulled from the Atlantic Ocean Tuesday were taken to Fernando de Noronha for transportation Wednesday afternoon by helicopter to the air base in Recife, Brazil.

The 25 bodies previously found were put aboard a Brazilian frigate.

Searches for the remaining bodies will continue overnight, the navy and aeronautical command said in a written statement.

The Airbus A330 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France, carrying 228 passengers and crew.

The first bodies were recovered about 320 kilometers (200 miles) northwest of the Brazilian archipelago of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; Tuesday's recoveries were 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. It was not clear whether the bodies had drifted in the 1-2 knot currents or whether their separation suggested that the jet may have broken apart in the air.

Recovery efforts have found several items confirmed to have come from Air France Flight 447.

Meanwhile, the French, who are leading the investigation, were increasing their naval efforts. The nuclear submarine Emeraude was expected to reach the search area Wednesday to search for wreckage, including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. And the French sent two tugs towing 40 tons of recovery equipment, a surveillance ship and a ship equipped for amphibious operations.

The United States is also sending equipment to help with the search.

Brazilian authorities said the plane debris will be taken to France for investigation but the bodies would undergo forensic tests in Recife.

The cause of the crash is not known, but investigators are looking at the possible role of airspeed sensors known as Pitot tubes, among other factors.

A boat from the Brazilian navy picks up debris Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean. Recovery efforts continued Monday.

Air France has agreed to replace the sensors on its Airbus A330 and A340 jets, a pilots' union said Tuesday.

The airline said Saturday that it began replacing its fleet's sensors last month.

Another Air France pilots' union, ALTER, has advised its pilots not to fly planes until their Pitot tubes are replaced. ALTER, the smallest of three Air France pilots' unions, would not say what percentage of the carrier's pilots it represents. Watch an explanation of what could have caused the crash »

The biggest union, SNPL, said Tuesday it has accepted Air France's assurances that no Airbus A330 or A340 will take off unless at least two of its three Pitot tubes have been replaced.

Union spokesman Eric Derivry added that there is no indication that the Pitot tubes caused the accident.

Air France said over the weekend that it began to notice in May of last year that Pitot tubes sometimes briefly iced up at high altitude on A330s and A340s. That caused "a loss of airspeed data," according to the airline -- that is, the pilots didn't know the plane's speed.

Air France decided to replace all its probes starting April 27, following laboratory tests earlier in the year, the airline said. That is the program the pilots say the airline has promised to complete within days.

Wreckage hauled in from the Atlantic over the weekend includes pieces of the aircraft's wing section.

The location of the crash has not been determined, since ocean currents have moved the bodies and debris.

The ocean depth where the debris and bodies have been found varies, but averages about 3000 meters (nearly 9,900 feet) deep, according to the University of New Hampshire/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Joint Hydrographic Center. The search area covers 200,000 square km (77,220 square miles), nearly the size of Romania, Brazilian officials said.

Brazilian officials emphasized Monday that finding bodies was their main priority. The French are in charge of finding the voice and data recorders.

Fourteen aircraft -- 12 Brazilian and two French -- were participating, along with five Brazilian ships and one French frigate. The U.S. Navy will contribute two high-tech acoustic devices to listen underwater for the emergency beacons that are attached to the voice and data recorders.

The "towed pinger locators," which help search for emergency beacons on downed aircraft to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet -- will be placed aboard two French tugs that are part of the search efforts, the official said.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Image by Michael @ NW Lens via Flickr

By MARCO SIBAJA and GREG KELLER,Associated Press Writer

AP - 53 minutes ago

RECIFE, Brazil - Two Brazilian helicopters took off Tuesday morning from the islands of Fernando de Noronha to pick up 16 bodies of Air France crash victims, as airline chiefs at a conference insisted the Airbus A330 was one of the safest planes in the world to fly.

The bodies of those on Flight 447 were being brought in by a Brazilian navy ship, then were being flown by helicopter to Fernando de Noronha and by plane to the northeastern coastal city of Recife, where experts will try to identify them.

At an industry conference in Kuala Lumpur, Emirates Airlines President Tim Clark said the Dubai-based company has a fleet of 29 A330-200 planes that have been flying since 1998.

"It is a very robust airplane. It has been flying for many years, clocking hundreds of millions of hours and there is absolutely no reason why there should be any question over this plane. It is one of the best flying today," he said.

In a video posted Monday on a Web site, Brazil's air force revealed that search crews had recovered the vertical stabilizer from the tail section of Flight 447 _ which could provide key clues as to why the airliner with 228 people on board went down in the Atlantic and where best to search for the black boxes.

The tail section includes the vertical stabilizer _ which keeps the plane's nose from swinging back and forth _ and the rudder, which controls the side-to-side motion of an aircraft. The data and voice recorders are also located in the fuselage near the tail.

Eight more bodies also were found, bringing the total recovered to 24, Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said. The plane disappeared during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31 amid strong thunderstorms.

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said if experts can determine the identity of a body and know where that person was sitting, their injuries could offer clues into the crash.

The Air Force video showed the piece being tethered to a ship. The part had Air France's blue-and-red stripes, was still its original triangular shape and was not visibly burned.

William Waldock, who teaches air crash investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, said the damage he saw looks like a lateral fracture.

"That would reinforce the idea that the plane broke up in flight," he said. "If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces."

Crash theories being considered by investigators include the possibility that external speed monitors _ called Pitot tubes _ iced over and gave dangerously false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm.

The L-shaped metal Pitot tubes jut from the wing or fuselage of a plane, and are heated to prevent icing. The pressure of air entering the tubes lets sensors measure the speed and angle of flight. An iced-over, blocked or malfunctioning Pitot tube could cause an airspeed sensor to fail, and lead the computer controlling the plane to accelerate or decelerate in a potentially dangerous fashion.

Eric Derivry, a spokesman for the SNPL union, the main union for Air France pilots, told France-Info radio that all jets taking off on Tuesday would be equipped with two of the new Pitot sensors.

A memo sent to Air France pilots by the Alter union Monday and obtained by The Associated Press urges them to refuse to fly unless at least two of the three Pitot sensors on each planes have been replaced.

An official with the Alter union, speaking on condition of anonymity because the memo was not publicly released, said there is a "strong presumption" among its pilot members that a Pitot problem precipitated the crash. The memo says the airline should have grounded all A330 and A340 jets pending the replacement, and warns of a "real risk of loss of control" due to Pitot problems.

Air France said it began replacing the Pitot tubes on the Airbus A330 model on April 27 after an improved version became available, and will finish the work in the "coming weeks." The monitors had not yet been replaced on the plane that crashed.

David Epstein, Qantas Airways General Manager for Government and Corporate Affairs, said two companies manufacture the Pitot monitors for the A330 planes _ France's Thales Group and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Goodrich Corp.

The Air France plane uses sensors made by Thales while Qantas uses those by Goodrich for its 28 A330 planes, he said.

Goelz said the faulty airspeed readings and the fact the vertical stabilizer was sheared from the jet could be related.

The Airbus A330-200 has a "rudder limiter" which constricts how much the rudder can move at high speeds. If it were to move too far while traveling fast, it could shear off and take the vertical stabilizer with it.

"If you had a wrong speed being fed to the computer by the Pitot tube, it might allow the rudder to over travel," Goelz said.

Asked if the rudder or stabilizer being sheared off could have brought the jet down, Goelz said: "Absolutely. You need a rudder. And you need the (rudder) limiter on there to make sure the rudder doesn't get torn off or cause havoc with the plane's aerodynamics."

The discoveries of debris and the bodies also are helping searchers narrow their hunt for the cockpit voice and flight data recorders, commonly known as the "black boxes," perhaps investigators' best hope of learning what happened to the flight.

The wreckage and the bodies were found roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, and about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from where the jet was last heard from.

Searchers must move quickly to find the recorders because acoustic beacons, or "pingers" on the boxes begin to fade 30 days after crashes.

Some high-tech help is on the way for investigators: two U.S. Navy devices capable of picking up the pingers to a depth of 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).

The listening devices are 5 feet (1.5 meters) long and weigh 70 pounds (32 kilos). One will be towed by a Brazilian ship, the other by a French vessel, slowly trawling in a grid pattern across the search area. The devices will be dropped into the ocean near the debris field by Thursday, Berges said.

The French nuclear attack submarine Emeraude, arriving later this week, also will try to find the acoustic pings, military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said.

France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved in the crash.

___

Marco Sibaja reported from Recife and Bradley Brooks from Rio de Janeiro. AP Writers Alan Clendenning and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo; Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur; and Cecile Brisson, Angela Charlton, Emma Vandore and Greg Keller in Paris, contributed to this report.

From Yahoo! News; 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: 09 June 2009 0242 hrs

Handout picture released by the Brazilian Navy showing divers recovering a huge part of the rudder.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil: Brazil's navy on Monday recovered the tail fin from an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic a week ago, and was transporting 16 bodies to shore for identification.

The recovery of the fin was seen as important to the search for answers as to what knocked the Airbus A330, flight AF 447, out of the sky on June 1 as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board.

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.

Brazilian officials meanwhile were preparing to receive the 16 bodies plucked from amid the floating debris over the weekend.

Those remains, and dozens of the plane's structural components which have also been picked up, were expected to arrive in the Brazilian archipelago Fernando de Noronha early on Tuesday.

From there the bodies would be flown to the mainland coastal city of Recife, a navy spokesman in Recife, Captain Guicemar Tabosa told reporters.

Brazilian police forensic teams have been set up to identify the bodies using dental records and DNA from relatives.

Tabosa said navy crews had not yet confirmed information given by families on the doomed flight that it appeared two more bodies had been spotted on Monday.

Brazilian and French officials said there was no hope of finding survivors from the downed plane.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in his weekly radio address on Monday that "everything was being done... so that we can find, if possible, all the bodies, because we know how much it means for a family to receive their lost loved one."
Brazilian and French teams continued to scour the crash zone 1,100 kilometres off Brazil's northeast coast for more bodies and pieces of wreckage.

The clock is ticking for finding the black boxes, believed to lie on the sea floor at a depth of up to 6,000 metres. Their homing beacons will cease to operate in three weeks.

The US Navy said on Sunday it would send two towable pinger locators and a crew of around 20 to the scene later this week to join the hunt for the devices.

"The first ship should head to the scene on (June) 10th," Pentagon spokesman and US navy commander Jeffrey Gordon told AFP. "They can be used for locating submarines or anything under the water that can emit a sound."

If the voice and data recorders 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.

No distress call was received from the flight crew of the doomed plane.

Early suspicions are focusing on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, which appeared 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.

Such a scenario could have resulted in "two bad consequences for the survival of the plane," France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau told French radio on the weekend.

They were, he said: "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/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Image by MATEUS_27:24&25 via Flickr

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.