Race against time
June 11, 2009
The submarine "Emeraude" was sent to the area to hunt the flight recorders which may help explain the disaster and which are believed to lie on the ocean floor.
If it finds a signal, a deep-sea research mini-sub that was to arrive Thursday on board the French scientific ship "Pourquoi Pas" would be deployed to recover the boxes which hold data that could be key to discovering why the jet did not complete its journey.
However, the flight recorders only emit a locating signal for 30 days.
Meanwhile, the recovery of bodies and wreckage from the Atlantic continued, despite heavy weather.
A flotilla of five Brazilian navy ships and a French frigate had recovered 41 bodies by Tuesday, but none were found on Wednesday. Briefing reporters, Air Force Brigadier Ramon Borges Cardoso said visibility had been poor in the search areas.
Brazilian Air Force planes were preparing to fly the first 16 bodies found to Recife on mainland Brazil from the archipelago Fernando de Noronha off the northeast coast, where the search operations are based.
The 16 bodies had undergone preliminary identification procedures which would be continued in Recife.
Cardoso said the search for bodies would continue until around June 19, but could go on further if weather conditions and ocean currents were favorable.
Military planes expanded their search into airspace controlled by Senegal due to ocean currents that may have swept some bodies in that direction, Brazil's Air Force said, but searches there on Wednesday were interrupted by bad weather.
The Air France plane came down June 1 with 228 people on board as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
The cause of the disaster was not known, but speculation is focusing on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, which may have malfunctioned.
Airbus maintains A330s safe to fly
Airbus has written to clients to assure them its A330 planes were safe, including those with older versions of the sensors, known as "pitot probes," according to a spokeswoman in France.
Late on Wednesday, Airbus denied a report in an early edition of French daily newspaper Le Figaro that it was considering grounding its fleet of A330 and A340 planes following the crash.
"We are not considering grounding the fleet because it is safe to operate," Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath said.
Airbus and Air France say older pitot probes have been problematic on other Airbus A330s and A340s, and the airline has stepped up a program to install newer devices after pilots' unions threatened to refuse to fly.
The European air safety agency said Tuesday that Airbus models were "safe to operate," but added that a bulletin had gone out to remind airlines of what to do "in the event of loss of, or unreliable, speed indication."
There has been speculation that the A330's speed probes could have iced up during a storm at high altitude and supplied false airspeed data to the cockpit.
This, in turn, could have caused the pilots to fly too slow and stall, or too fast and rip the airframe apart, aviation experts say.
nda/afp/reuters
Editor: Sonia Phalnikar