RECIFE, Brazil: Searchers found two bodies and a briefcase containing a ticket for Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean close to where the jetliner is believed to have crashed, a Brazil military official said yesterday.
The French agency investigating the disaster, meanwhile, said the airspeed instruments on Flight 447 were not replaced as the maker recommended before the plane crashed in turbulent weather nearly a week ago.
The French accident investigation agency, BEA, found the doomed plane received inconsistent airspeed readings by different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm on its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard.
Airbus had recommended to all its airline customers that they replace speed-measuring instruments known as Pitot tubes on the A330, the model used for Flight 447, said Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the agency. “They hadn’t yet been replaced” on the plane that crashed, said Alain Bouillard, head of the French investigation. Air France declined immediate comment.
Arslanian of the BEA cautioned that it is too early to draw conclusions about the role of Pitot tubes in the crash, saying that “it does not mean that without replacing the Pitots that the A330 was dangerous.” He told a news conference at the agency’s headquarters that the crash of Flight 447 also does not mean similar plane models are unsafe.
The two male bodies were recovered in the morning about 70 km south of where Flight 447 emitted its last signals — roughly 640 km northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast.
Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said an Air France ticket was found inside a leather briefcase. “It was confirmed with Air France that the ticket number corresponds to a passenger on the flight,” he said.
