msnbc.msn.comBrazil: Bodies found near Air France crash site
Plane crashed into Atlantic earlier this week, killing all 228 aboard.
Brazilian search crews found two male bodies and debris in the Atlantic Ocean Saturday near the area where an Air France jet is believed to have crashed, an air force spokesman said. The first bodies from the crash were found early in the morning, said Jorge Amaral, the spokesman.
The bodies were picked up about 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast. Searchers also found a suitcase containing a plane ticket for the flight, he said.
"It was confirmed with Air France that the ticket number corresponds to a passenger on the flight," he said.
In earlier reports, the agency investigating the crash of Flight 447 said Air France had not replaced instruments that measure air speed on the plane, which the manufacturer had recommended.
Agency head Paul-Louis Arslanian said some problems had been detected with the instruments on the Airbus A330, the model that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean on May 31.
Airbus had recommended that airlines replace the instruments on the A330, Arslanian said. The head of the crash investigation said Air France had not changed the instruments known as Pitot tubes on the plane that crashed.
Investigators said that signals sent by the jet before it disappeared show its autopilot was not on.
"We also saw messages that show the automatic pilot wasn't working," probe chief Alain Bouillard added.
However, it was not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings. Arslanian said investigators are analyzing 24 messages sent automatically by the plane during the last minutes of the flight.
Plane manufacturer Airbus says the investigation found the flight received inconsistent readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm.
'Damaged systems'
Arslanian warned against jumping to conclusions. He said planes can be flown safely "with damaged systems."
An Air France memo Friday said it is replacing Pitot tubes on all medium- and long-haul Airbus jets. Investigators are searching a zone of several hundred square miles for the debris.
Arslanian said is is vital to locate a beacon called a "pinger" that should be attached to the cockpit voice and data recorders, now presumed to be deep in the Atlantic, he said.
"We have no guarantee that the pinger is attached to the recorders," Arslanian said.
Investigators are trying to determine the location of the debris in the ocean based on the height and speed of the plane at the time the last message was received. Currents could also have scattered debris far along the ocean floor, he said.
"You see the complexity of the problem," he said.
Laurent Kerleguer, an engineer specialized in the ocean floor working with the investigation team, said the zone seen as the most likely site of the debris was 15,112 feet at its deepest point and 2,835 feet at its shallowest.
Water salinity and temperature can affect the distance that the beacon's signal can travel, Kerleguer said.
The Airbus A330 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared nearly four hours after takeoff on Sunday night, killing all 228 aboard. It was Air France's deadliest plane crash and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001
