More Bodies Found in Air France Search

June 7, 2009 — -- Searchers have recovered additional bodies in the quest for remains of Air France Flight 447, which vanished over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris last Sunday, bringing the total number of bodies recovered to 17 as of early Sunday evening, officials said. There were 228 people on board.

Hundreds of items believed to be from the missing airplane have been found, said officials, including apparent seats and parts of the wings, and personal passenger items that officials did not detail.

Searchers also saw from the air what appeared to be additional bodies and plane debris in the same area, Brazilian navy Capt. Giucemar Tabosa Cardoso told reporters. They are sending ships to recover the bodies.

After finding no confirmed items from the plane for nearly a week, Brazilian Navy and Air Force search crews early Saturday morning recovered the first two male bodies and other personal items. They included a suitcase containing a plane ticket and laptop backpack with a name tag.

The discovery was made approximately 450 miles northeast of the Fernando De Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast. The Brazilian navy will photograph the bodies and take them to the mainland for forensic tests.

Officials have collected blood, hair and saliva's samples from passengers' family members gathered in Rio de Janeiro.

Investigators have yet to recover the plane's two black boxes, but key details are emerging in the mystery surrounding the crash that killed all 228 people on board.

One key focus is the plane's speed sensors. Inconsistencies in air speed were among the 24 automated messages Flight 447 sent in its final minutes. Incorrect air speed readings could cause the pilots or jet's computer to fly the jet dangerously slow or fast.

Airbus recently had issued a recommendation to all its airline customers to replace the pitot tubes on all Airbus A330 jetliners, said Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the French investigation agency. Air France started doing so in April, but had not replaced the sensors on the accident plane.

The automated messages also indicated confusing reports concerning the autopilot. It is not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots, or automatically shut down because of compromised air speed readings.

Accurate air speed readings are critical because flying too slow can cause the plane to stall. Flying too fast can compromise the structure of the plane, even cause it to break apart in midair.

Investigators said Saturday it was too early to draw conclusions.

"The sensors had not been replaced," Arslanian said Saturday at a briefing outside Paris. "But that doesn't mean that without them the plane was dangerous."

He was careful to note that it also does not mean similar models currently operating are unsafe.

The plane encountered a tropical storm including thunder and lightning, but two Luftanza flights safely flew the same route both before and after Flight 447 without incident.

The head of France's weather service, Alian Ratier, said Saturday that "nothing indicates" that the Air France flight encountered a "stormy mass of exceptional intensity" for the month of June.

Only the plane's two black boxes, still missing, can provide investigators with definitive answers. The U.S. is sending sophisticated acoustic devices to the area being searched for debris and a French submarine is already en route.

President Barack Obama said Saturday that the he has authorized all of the U.S. government's resources to help investigate the crash.

The black boxes send signals for 30 days and operated 20,000 feet underwater. But deep ocean ridges and varying temperatures at the bottom of the ocean could make them impossible to recover.

Renata Araujo, Maeva Bambuck and Michael S. James contributed to this report.