SIX BODIES were pulled from the Atlantic Ocean by Brazil’s airforce over the weekend, all of them near the location where Air France Flight 447 went missing eight days ago. A helicopter recovered the bodies of two men on Saturday.
Authorities have not yet disclosed the sex of the four bodies found yesterday. Search aircraft have also located other bodies in the area and are directing ships on the surface towards them, said an airforce spokesman, though he would not say how many other bodies were spotted.
The spokesman said the bodies were not carrying documentation that could be used to quickly identify them.
The discovery on Saturday came just a day after Brazil’s airforce said it was increasingly unlikely that any bodies would be found, given the passage of time since the plane disappeared.
The Airbus 330-200 went missing four hours into its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. There were 228 people from 32 different countries on board, including three Irish doctors and two Aer Lingus employees.
The bodies were found about 75km from where the aircraft sent a series of automatic electronic messages which detailed a series of failures on board. Authorities say these culminated in it crashing into the ocean.
The area, some 1,000km from Brazil’s northeastern coast, is now the main focus of the search operation, which authorities say is prioritising the recovery of bodies.
All 228 people on board are presumed dead.
Those found over the weekend are now on board a Brazilian naval frigate and heading for the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.
From there they will be flown to the northeastern city of Recife, where police pathologists are waiting to identify them.
Some family members of passengers are already in Recife accompanying the search operation being co-ordinated from there.
At a press conference yesterday, airforce spokesman Lieut Col Henry Munhoz said that, in addition to the bodies, “hundreds of other objects” had been recovered from the ocean, including plane seats, oxygen masks and screens for showing films.
Also recovered were personal objects but details of these would only be released to families.
On Saturday, the airforce said it had recovered a laptop as well as a rucksack containing an Air France ticket. Col Munhoz said part of one of the aircraft’s wings was also pulled from the ocean.
Final confirmation that the debris pulled over the weekend is from the missing aircraft will only come when Air France matches serial numbers on the wreckage to it.
Last week, authorities announced that debris pulled from the ocean was from the aircraft, only to have to backtrack later, saying it was nothing more than sea rubbish. On Friday, poor weather complicated search efforts and, at one stage, searchers said they had lost sight of suspected aircraft debris they had been tracking since Tuesday.
Fourteen aircraft – 12 Brazilian and two French – are still combing the mid-Atlantic in the search for more bodies. Five Brazilian naval vessels are also involved in the operation.
Air accident investigators say it is still too early to say what caused the disaster.