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. -- PHOTO: AFP
FERNANDO DE NORONHA (Brazil) - BRAZILIAN and French officials were preparing on Tuesday 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 on Tuesday.
PARIS - AIR France warned its pilots in November about 'a significant number of incidents' linked to speed monitors on Airbus A330 jets like the one that crashed last week, according to a memo obtained by AFP.
The memo, dated Nov 6, 2008, said the incidents were linked to 'anomalies' in the Pitot probes - a device that measures air speed - on A330 and A340 models.
RECIFE (Brazil) - BRAZILIAN and French search teams in the Atlantic have recovered at least 24 bodies from an Air France jetliner that crashed in mysterious circumstances a week ago, Brazilian officials said on Monday.
At least eight bodies were found on Monday, after rescue teams hauled up 14 corpses on Sunday and two on Saturday, along with personal items and pieces from the plane including seats.
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 kilometres (700 miles) off Brazil's north-east 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 metres (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 on 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. -- AFP
