LE BOURGET (France) - THE arduous mid-Atlantic search for the remains of Air France Flight 447 will go on as long as there is hope of finding the plane's black boxes, the French defence minister said on Tuesday.
Herve Morin and his Brazilian counterpart Nelson Jobim met at the Paris Air Show and shared notes on progress of the search, which includes the Brazilian military, a French submarine and Dutch ships towing two high-tech US Navy listening devices seeking sounds emanating from the Airbus A330's flight data and cockpit voice recorders - pings that will grow faint and die after two more weeks.
Later on Tuesday, Brazilian naval Captain Giucemar Tabosa Cardoso said another body had been found in the area of the accident, bringing the total to 50.
Mr Jobim said that after four or more days of not finding bodies, the search could perhaps be halted. The last bodies were believed to have been found on Friday by a French vessel, but that has not been confirmed.
At the search scene, a vast swath of the Atlantic northeast of Brazil, the weather was fine on Tuesday and ships sailed in a grid pattern, trying to find more debris and bodies.
Mr Jobim said the French will continue searching and helping to identify the bodies, but the entire identification process would take place in Brazil 'to avoid double autopsies, which would be a horrible thing for the families'.
Flight 447 crashed into the sea May 31 as it hit thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Experts say the evidence uncovered so far points to at least a partial midair break-up of the plane, with no signs of an explosion or terrorist act.
Without the black boxes, thought to be thousands of feet (meters) underwater, the probe into the disaster that killed 228 people has focused on the possibility that external speed monitors iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.
There is no hard evidence that the speed monitors - Pitot tubes - were to blame. However, pilots' union official said Air France had finished replacing air speed monitors on all its long-haul Airbus aircraft under pressure from pilots who feared they might be linked to the crash. The plane that crashed had older Pitot tubes.
Families of about 40 of the victims have created a new group to defend their interests in seeking information from the French government and Air France, which they say has treated them with 'a lack of humanity,' according to spokesman Christophe Guillot-Noel. -- AP
