Two bodies found near Air France crash site

RECIFE – Investigators were combing a huge swath of ocean yesterday in search of more evidence of the doomed Air France Flight 477 after finding the bodies of two passengers and a briefcase.

The French agency investigating the disaster said on Saturday that airspeed instruments on the plane had not been replaced as the maker recommended, but cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions about what role that may have played in the crash.
Brazilian officials are focusing on the recovery of victims and plane wreckage, not the plane’s black box data and voice recorders, which could reveal why the jet crashed. Finding the black boxes is the mission of the French government, with help from the United States.
But the Brazilian investigators’ recovery on Saturday of the bodies of two male passengers and a briefcase could help establish a more precise search area for the black boxes.
Brazilian investigators searching a zone of several hundred square miles kilometres for debris recovered the bodies of two male passengers on Saturday morning about 70 kilometres south of where the flight emitted its last signals – roughly 640 kilometres northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast.
Brazilian air force spokesman Colonel Jorge Amaral said an Air France ticket was found inside a leather briefcase. The ticket number ‘corresponds to a passenger on the flight,’ he said.
The discovery of the bodies and debris gave relief to some family members, many of whom gathered in a hotel in Rio, where they’ve received constant updates about the search.
Others, however, refused to give up on the chance for survivors.
The French accident investigation agency, BEA, found the plane received inconsistent airspeed readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm, agency officials said Saturday.
The investigation is increasingly focused on whether external instruments may have iced over, confusing speed sensors and leading computers to set the plane’s speed too fast or slow – a potentially deadly mistake in severe turbulence.
Airbus recommended that all its airline customers replace instruments that help measure speed and altitude, known as Pitot tubes, on the A330, the model used for Flight 447, said Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the agency.
‘They hadn’t yet been replaced’ on the plane that crashed, said Alain Bouillard, head of the French investigation.
Arslanian of the BEA cautioned it was too early to draw conclusions about the role of Pitot tubes in the crash, saying ‘it does not mean that without replacing the Pitots that the A330 was dangerous.’
– Nampa-AP