5 bodies found from crashed plane
- Source: The Global Times
- [07:35 June 08 2009]
- Comments
By Yu Miao
A forensics team of the Brazilian Federal Police arrives yesterday at Fernando de Noronha Airport to aid in the identification of the five corpses found in the Atlantic Ocean, presumably from the downed Air France flight 447. Photo: AFP
Ships and planes continued scouring the Atlantic Ocean yesterday after five bodies and debris were recovered in an area off the coast of Brazil where an Air France passenger jet went down nearly a week ago with 228 on board.
“As well as the bodies, there are various remains of the aircraft,” Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.
The first objects pulled from the sea included a blue plane seat, a nylon backpack containing a computer and vaccination card, and a leather briefcase with an Air France ticket inside.
The discoveries took place 450 kilometers northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands, about 370 kilometers from the mainland.
The precise spot was 70 kilometers northeast of the point of last communication with the plane, a series of automatically sent messages signaling multiple shutdowns of onboard systems.
The finds were being brought to the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, the closest inhabited spot to the zone where they were found, for initial inspection by five Brazilian forensics police.
Early speculation as to the cause of the crash focused on the storms that the jet was flying through, but Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of France’s air crash investigation agency, the BEA, said the weather conditions had not been exceptional.
He downplayed the idea that a bomb might have destroyed the plane, saying the error messages showed that the onboard electronic systems, including the autopilot, had shut down one by one.
But he did not formally rule out an attack, saying, “Really, that would be truly astonishing, but that’s not to say it is 100 percent impossible.”
Another suspicion is focusing on a possible malfunction of the Airbus A330’s air-speed sensors as it flew into the storm.
The device in question is the Pitot probe – usually affixed to the leading edge of a wing – which measures the force of the air through which an aircraft passes.
Combined with a pressure reading from a static port on the fuselage, it tells the flight crew how fast the aircraft is going.
Its malfunction may lead the pilot to fly the jet at the wrong speed, as going too fast in turbulent conditions risks damaging a plane’s structure, while going too slow can cause it to stall.
French investigators said the Air France airliner sent 24 automatic error messages just before the crash, and its autopilot disengaged immediately after ones showing conflicting speed readings given by sensors.
Air France said it was stepping up replacement of speed monitors on its Airbus A330s amid speculation that a faulty indication might have been a factor in the loss of the Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight.
Agencies contributed to this story