Brazil finds two bodies from Air France crash

Brazil's air force on Saturday recovered two male bodies and debris from an Air France jetliner that came down over the Atlantic nearly a week earlier with 228 people on board, a spokesman said.

The first bodies from the crash were found along with debris that came from the doomed flight, spokesman Jorge Amaral told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.

"This morning at 8:14 a.m., we confirmed the rescue from the water of pieces and bodies that belonged to the Air France flight," Amaral said.

He said the two bodies, the first recovered from the downed flight, were those of men.

Among the debris retrieved on Saturday was a seat with a serial number that matched the missing flight, a rucksack, and a case with an Air France ticket inside, rescue officials said.

It was the first find from the aircraft in six days of searching the open Atlantic.

Objects recovered from the sea on Thursday turned out not to be part of the crash, as searchers battled days of terrible weather conditions -- with rain limiting the visibility and waves of up to 1.8 meters (6 feet).

The discoveries took place 450 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of Brazil's Atlantic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, itself 370 kilometers from the mainland.

We confirmed the rescue from the water of pieces and bodies that belonged to the Air France flight

Brazil Air Force Spokesman Jorge Amaral

Search goes on

Several Brazilian navy ships have also arrived in the area, but fears have grown that many bodies sank or were devoured by sharks.

It was the world's deadliest air disaster since 2001 and the worst in Air France's 75-year history.

Investigators are still trying to work out what caused the tragedy of flight AF 477.

French investigators said Saturday the Air France Airbus A330 suffered multiple systems failures in its final moments and had speed monitors that had failed on other planes.

Twenty-four automatic error messages sent by the plane just prior to the crash showed its autopilot was disengaged after conflicting speed readings were given by sensors, the head of the French air accident investigation agency BEA said.

Technical failure

Airbus has urged all pilots of its jets to review a warning issued in July 2001 on the procedures to follow if speed indicators give conflicting readings and force the autopilot to cut out.

"We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330," BEA director Paul-Louis Arslanian told reporters in Paris.

Arslanian confirmed that the missing jet had had a problem calculating its speed on the flight from Rio de Janiero to Paris.

"There is a program of replacement, of improvement," he said, adding that planes that have not yet replaced speed monitors are not necessarily dangerous, and that in other cases pilots had regained control.

Arslanian said the error messages sent in its final moments showed the autopilot and other systems shut down.

It was impossible to tell from the signals whether the doomed crew had shut off the autopilot or whether it cut out, he added.

Early speculation as to the cause of the accident focused on the storms that the jet was flying through, but Arslanian said the conditions had not been exceptional.

We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330

BEA director Paul-Louis Arslanian