Seventeen bodies found at Air France crash zone

Seventeen bodies have been recovered from the Atlantic where an Air France jet came down a week ago as French submarines head to the remote zone in search of the black boxes, which are key to confirming what happened before the fatal accident.

Bodies and dozens of structural components from the plane plucked from the waves were expected to arrive in the Brazilian archipelago Fernando de Noronha on Tuesday.

From there the bodies would be flown to the mainland coastal city of Recife for identification using dental records and DNA from relatives, air force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz told reporters late Sunday in Recife.

"Hundreds of items are being found and being stored until we know where they should go," Munhoz said.

Brazilian and French teams continued to scour the crash zone 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) off Brazil's northeast coast for more bodies and pieces of wreckage.

A French military nuclear submarine was expected to arrive in the area on Wednesday to hunt for the elusive black boxes from Air France flight 447, which came down on June 1 with 228 people on board as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Homing beacons on the data devices, believed to lie on the sea floor at a depth of up to 6,200 meters (19,700 feet), will cease to operate in three weeks.

Finding black box

The U.S. Navy said on Sunday it would send two towable pinger locators and a crew of around 20 to the scene later this week, in the hope of finding the data recorders.

"The first ship should head to the scene on (June) 10th," Pentagon spokesman and U.S. navy commander Jeffrey Gordon told AFP. "They can be used for locating submarines or anything under the water that can emit a sound."

The equipment can track sounds down to a depth of 20,000 feet.

France has also sent a nuclear-powered submarine that should arrive on Wednesday to search for the black box flight data recorders that will be crucial to understanding why the modern plane fell from the sky as it passed storms on Monday.

Hundreds of items are being found and being stored until we know where they should go

Brazilian spokesman

The Emeraude is equipped with powerful sonars to help detect the black box's beacons that active for 30 days.

If the voice and data recorders 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.

Brazilian and French officials said there was no hope of finding survivors from the downed plane.

The disaster is the worst aviation accident since 2001, and unprecedented in Air France's 75-year history.

Speed sensors

Early suspicions are focusing on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, which appeared to have malfunctioned in the minutes before the catastrophe according to some of the 24 automatic data warnings sent by the plane.

Investigators are looking at whether the sensors, known as pitots, could have iced over, possibly leading the Air France pilots to fly into a storm in the zone that day without knowing their airspeed.

Such a scenario could have resulted in "two bad consequences for the survival of the plane," France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau told French radio.

They were, he said: "Too low a speed, which can cause it to stall, or too high a speed, which can lead to the plane ripping up as it approached the speed of sound, as the outer skin is not designed to resist such speed."

Too low a speed, which can cause it to stall, or too high a speed, which can lead to the plane ripping up as it approached the speed of sound, as the outer skin is not designed to resist such speed

Investigators speculate

Known problem

The problem with the pitots had been known for some time, possibly since 1996, according to the French weekly newspaper the Journal du Dimanche.

Air France said it had begun the switchover of speed sensors five weeks before the crash, but only after disagreeing with Airbus over the plane maker's proposal to carry out tests before replacing them.

Air France said it had first noticed in May 2008 that ice in the sensors was causing lost data in planes like the A330, but that it failed to agree with Airbus on steps to take.

According to Air France, Airbus offered to carry out an in-flight test on new sensors this year but the airline decided to go ahead and started changing them anyway from April 27.

It did not say whether the crashed plane had the new sensors but its last maintenance hangar visit was on April 16.

Some of the A330's 50 or so other operators defended the plane's safety record at an airlines meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, saying the crash was an isolated incident.

But Airbus has faced problems with the speed sensors dating back to at least 2001, forcing changes in equipment as well as the pilot's flight manual, according to online filings.

In 2001, France reported several cases of sudden fluctuation of A330 or A340 airspeed data during severe icing conditions and Airbus was ordered to change the cockpit manual, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.