2 bodies found near Air France crash site

PARIS —  Brazilian military officials announced Saturday that they had found two bodies and some debris from the Paris-bound Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean with 228 passengers and crew aboard.

Two male bodies, a leather briefcase containing an Air France boarding pass, a numbered blue seat and a nylon backpack were fished out of the ocean about 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago off Brazil’s northern coast, Col. Jorge Amaral told reporters in the mainland city of Recife.

Brazilian officials were careful to make their announcement only after removing the findings from the water. They caused confusion several days after the crash by reporting that they had confirmed a sighting of signs of a crash, but then corrected themselves and said a piece of wood and an oil slick were not from the missing Airbus 330.

In Paris, French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said he couldn’t confirm that the bodies and debris were from Flight 447, which disappeared early Monday, until the Brazilian vessel carrying them reached shore and a closer investigation was completed.

Nevertheless, he said it was “extremely likely” that the objects and the bodies came from the crash because they were found near where the plane is believed to have crashed.

At a news conference earlier Saturday, officials of France’s accident investigation bureau, the BEA, said the plane had encountered an “incoherence” in its measured air speeds, but they could not conclude whether incorrect speed readings caused the crash.

Airbus had advised airlines to replace the device used to communicate flight speed, but Air France had not done so on Flight 447, according to BEA President Paul-Louis Arslanian.

Airbus and Air France are now working to replace the Airbus speed communicators, known as pitot tubes.

Arslanian added that “does not mean that without replacing the pitots that the A330 was dangerous.”

Pitot tubes, protruding from the wing or fuselage of a plane, feed airspeed sensors and are heated to prevent icing, the Associated Press reported. A blocked or malfunctioning pitot tube could cause an airspeed sensor to malfunction and cause the computer controlling the plane to accelerate or decelerate in a potentially dangerous way.

Air France replaced the devices on other Airbus models because of problems with the instruments icing over, according to the Associated Press, which obtained the information from an Air France safety report.

The French daily Le Monde reported Saturday that it had obtained a copy of a letter from Air France sent June 5 to its Airbus pilots explaining how to trouble-shoot cases in which the pitot tubes malfunctioned, and assured pilots that the company was “in the process” of replacing the devices.

Air France declined to comment on the letter.

Experts say that if pilots on the Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight could not determine the speed needed to fly through difficult weather conditions, or flew at an incorrect speed, a crash could have resulted.

Paris prosecutors Friday opened an initial judicial inquiry on possible “involuntary homicide,” but have not identified who might be responsible.

BEA officials said it seemed unlikely that the airplane had been brought down by an act of terrorism, but that hadn’t been ruled out.

Their investigation is focused on 24 malfunction messages that were automatically sent in the final minutes of the flight.

Despite earlier assumptions, “nothing indicates” that weather conditions were exceptionally dangerous at the time of the crash, Alain Ratier, the head of the French weather service, said Saturday.

Meanwhile, Arslanian said there was no guarantee that the homing devices used to find the voice and flight data recorders were still attached to the devices.

A French nuclear submarine and advanced acoustic locating technology on loan from the United States were added to the search this weekend.