BRAZIL’S NAVY recovered the first pieces of Air France Flight 447 from the mid-Atlantic yesterday afternoon.
A Lynx helicopter attached to a naval frigate pulled a 2.5 square metre piece of the baggage hold and two buoys from the water, 550km from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando do Noronha.
The piece will now be examined for a serial number to confirm it comes from the Airbus 330-200, missing since Sunday night when it was four hours into its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Brazil’s defence minister has said there is no doubt the debris spotted almost 1,000km off Brazil’s northeastern coast comes from the missing jet.
The flight had 228 people from 32 different countries on board, including three Irish doctors and two Aer Lingus employees.
Brazilian air force search aircraft spotted more debris floating in the water yesterday morning, including what the air force has called “internal airplane parts”. The wreckage is spread out over several hundred square kilometres of ocean. The air force says there are at least 15 different concentrations of wreckage floating in six distinct areas of the search zone. So far no bodies have been spotted.
“We are prioritising [the search] for bodies, but as we have not encountered any, we cannot wait any more time to collect the debris.Therefore we are going to start doing the two things at the same time,” Brigadier Ramon Borges Cardoso, director of the department of airspace control, told Brazilian television.
In total, 11 aircraft from Brazil, France and the US are involved in the search. Brazil expected to have a third naval vessel reach the search zone late last night.
Meanwhile the French newspaper Le Mondesaid the plane's maker, Airbus, was preparing to issue a recommendation advising airlines that fly the A330 of optimal speeds during poor weather conditions.
Airbus declined to comment, and the French air accident investigation agency, which has to validate any such recommendations, was not available for comment.
Pilots often slow down when entering stormy zones to avoid damaging the aircraft, but reducing speed too much can cause an aircraft’s engines to stall.
An ecumenical service was held in Rio de Janeiro yesterday morning for the passengers on board Flight 447. Over 500 people attended the service in the historic Candelária church, among them Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner.
A cousin of Silvio Barbato, the former artistic director of the symphonic orchestra at Rio’s National Theatre, who was on board the flight, said many relatives still believed that there might be survivors.
Air France has, however, discounted the chances of finding any passengers alive.
French air crash investigators have said that the cause of the accident might remain a mystery, as it was unlikely that the plane’s black boxes – the cockpit voice and data recorders – would be recovered.
The aircraft was lost over waters with depths greater than three kilometres.
– Additional reporting: Reuters