US Navy technology to help on recovery of Air France 447

New efforts to find AF447 black boxes.

By MARCO SIBAJA and ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writers Marco Sibaja And Alan Clendenning, Associated Press Writers – 40 mins ago

RECIFE, Brazil – A U.S. Navy team was flying to Brazil on Monday with high-tech underwater listening devices to help the search for the black boxes from an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Brazilian and French military ships, which have so far recovered 17 bodies and large amounts of plane wreckage from the sea, resumed their search amid the floating debris.

What caused the Airbus A330 to crash May 31 with 228 people on board will remain a mystery unless searchers can locate the plane's black box flight data and voice recorders, likely buried deep in the middle of the ocean.

Two U.S. Navy devices that can detect emergency beacons to a depth of 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) are being flown to Brazil with a Navy team, according to the Pentagon. They will be delivered to ships that will then listen for transmissions from the black boxes, which are programmed to emit signals for at least 30 days.

Seventeen bodies were recovered Saturday and Sunday about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from where the jet sent out messages signaling electrical failures and loss of cabin pressure.

Authorities also announced that searchers spotted two airplane seats and debris with Air France's logo, and recovered dozens of structural components from the plane. They had already recovered jet wing fragments, and said hundreds of personal items believed to from passengers were plucked from the water.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said his nation's military would do all it can to retrieve bodies and return them to relatives.

"We know how significant it is for a family to recover their loved one," Silva said Monday on his weekly radio show. He added: "During this painful time it's not going to resolve the problem, but it is an immense comfort to know they can bury their loved ones."

France is leading the investigation into the cause of the crash, while Brazilian officials are focusing on the recovery of victims and wreckage from Flight 447, which likely broke up in midair in turbulent weather the night of May 31 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The grim task continues...

Brazilian Navy races to crash site to begin retrieval operations.

The grim task of recuperating the bodies and piecing together what happened to AF 447 begins today.

By Alonso Soto – 2 hrs 53 mins ago
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazilian navy divers rushed on Wednesday to reach the wreckage of an Air France jet and start pulling debris from the Atlantic Ocean, where the plane with 228 people went down in the airline's worst disaster in its 75-year history.
Four navy ships with recovery equipment and a tanker were headed to a 3-mile strip of water strewn with plane seats, an orange buoy, wiring, hunks of metal and jet fuel stains about 745 miles northeast of the coastal city of Recife.
Rear Admiral Domingos Nogueira said the navy was battling tough weather as officials predicted the hardest task would be finding the flight data and voice recorders that hold clues to why the plane fell out of the sky during a severe storm in the middle of the night.
Distraught relatives who had prayed for a miracle gave up hope as experts were certain that all aboard died on the flight, which left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday night bound for Paris.
"I just want to find my son's body so that he can have a dignified burial," said Aldair Gomes, the father of Marcelo Parente, who was the head of the Rio mayor's cabinet.
So far no bodies have been sighted on flyovers by the air force, which spotted evidence of the catastrophe on Tuesday, allowing the navy to mount a retrieval operation.
"The ships are equipped to arrive and pick up pieces of the Airbus," Nogueira said. "Each ship has two divers on board and smaller ships to throw into the ocean to try and get pieces."
Helicopters would then be used to take wreckage of the Airbus A330 from the ships to a base on the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, 430 miles from the crash site.
On Wednesday, armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck told Reuters that the French army had no doubt that the debris belonged to the stricken plane.

Brazil confirms Air France plane went down in the Atlantic. Wreckage is found!

The sad news were confirmed about 5 minutes ago.

By FEDERICO ESCHER and ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writers Federico Escher And Alan Clendenning, Associated Press Writers – 1 min ago

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil – Brazilian military planes found a 3-mile (5-kilometer) path of wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean, confirming that an Air France jet carrying 228 people crashed in the sea, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said Tuesday. Jobim told reporters in Rio de Janeiro that the discovery "confirms that the plane went down in that area," hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.

He said the strip of wreckage included metallic and nonmetallic pieces, but did not describe them in detail. No bodies were spotted in the crash of the Airbus in which all aboard are believed to have died.

The discovery came just hours after authorities announced they had found an airplane an airplane seat, an orange buoy and signs of fuel in a part of the Atlantic Ocean with depths of up to three miles (4,800 meters).

Jobim said recovery of the of the plane's cockpit voice and data recorders could be difficult because of the depth of the ocean where the debris was found.

"It's going to be very hard to search for it because it could be at a depth of 2,000 meters or 3,000 meters (6,500 to 9,800 fee) in that area of the ocean," Jobim said.

Aircraft wreckage found on flight path of Air France 447!

If this is confirmed, then the worse happened...

BRASILIA, Brazil -- Brazilian military pilots spotted an airplane seat, a life jacket, metallic debris and signs of fuel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday as they hunted for a missing Air France passenger jet that carried 228 people. They found no signs of life.

The pilots spotted two areas of floating debris about 60 kilometers (35 miles) apart, about 410 miles (650 kilometers) beyond the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, roughly along Flight 447's path from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, said Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral.

"The locations where the objects were found are toward the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted," Amaral said. "That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis."

Amaral said authorities would not be able to confirm that the debris is from the plane until they can retrieve some of it from the ocean for identification. Brazilian military ships are not expected to arrive at the area until Wednesday.

The discovery came more than 24 hours after the jet went missing, with all feared dead.

Rescuers were still scanning a vast sweep of ocean extending from far off northeastern Brazil to waters off West Africa. The 4-year-old plane was last heard from at 0214 GMT Monday (10:14 p.m. EDT Sunday). If no survivors are found, it would be the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.

Stay tuned!

Not a single clue to what happened to Air France 447!

Nothing has been found of Air France 447. Nothing!
Now this is getting weird!

Authorities from several countries are now investigating the mystery of Air France flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Brazil to France.

All 228 aboard the flight are presumed dead. An official list of names has not been released, but the Wall Street Journal reports out of Sao Paulo that the list is likely to include some big names in business.

From the Journal report:

The biographies of passengers aboard the disappeared Air France airliner likely will serve as a tragic testament to Brazil's rising importance in global business.

Although Brazilian and French authorities have yet to release a detailed passenger manifest, the list is expected to read like a roster of European and Brazilian blue-chip companies, whose executives regularly packed the business- and first-class sections of the trans-Atlantic flight.

Already, some firms, such as French tire maker Michelin SA, have begun confirming their executives were aboard the Airbus A330-200. German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp Steel AG said that Erich Heine, chairman of the company's Brazil unit, was aboard.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is one of the bodies helping French authorities with the investigation.

MSNBC's Alan Boyle gives us details about how the mystery will get solved -- and notes that it could take years.

"Solving the mystery surrounding the jet's trans-Atlantic disappearance is more challenging because there's no radar, no witnesses, no easy-to-find debris field," he wrote. "But similar mysteries have been solved over the past couple of decades, thanks to some heavy-duty underwater sleuthing."

Also of note, The Times UK reports that pilots have been unhappy with the A330's reliance on computers:

Investigators will want to know how the Air France aircraft, with an experienced crew, flew into the middle of a brutal storm that it could not handle. The Airbus flight system will be examined again; some pilots distrust the Airbus family's heavy reliance on computers (last October a Qantas A330 went into a 600ft dive over the Indian Ocean when the automatic pilot disconnected itself).

As far as updates go: Air France has released details about the flight crew.

The French captain, age 58, joined the company in 1988 and became qualified to fly the Airbus A330 in February 2007. The two co-pilots, ages 37 and 32, joined the company in 1999 and 2004. Eight of the cabin crew were French and one was Brazilian.

Two television stations are reporting that the two Americans on board the flight were Mike Harris, 60, and his wife, Anne Harris. They reportedly lived in Brazil.

I can see it now...movie of the week and aliens are going to be involved!

More as it comes!

UPDATE - 7AM!
Pilots for Brazilian airline TAM reported orage glows near the African coast and now a French freighter reported seeing wreckage near the Senegal coast.

Timeline of vanished Air France flight.

Timeline of events surrounding the disappearance of Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, according to Air France:

• 2219 GMT Sunday (6:19 p.m. EDT Sunday): left Rio de Janeiro

• 0130 GMT Monday (9:30 p.m. EDT Sunday) last contact with Brazil air traffic control.

• 0200 GMT Monday (10 p.m. EDT Sunday): plane entered zone of storms and high turbulence

• 0214 GMT Monday (10:16 p.m. EDT Sunday): Air France receives automatic message indicating electrical circuit malfunction.

• 0500-0600 GMT Monday (1-2 a.m. EDT Monday): French military radar begins searching for plane.

• 0730 GMT Monday (3:30 a.m. EDT): Air France sets up crisis center

• 0915 GMT Monday (5:15 a.m. EDT): plane's scheduled arrival in Paris.

More as it comes in!

Air France plane vanishes in the middle of the ocean!

This news came over almost 15 minutes ago.

PARIS (Reuters) – An Air France plane on its way from Brazil to Paris has gone missing with 228 people on board, the airline said on Monday.
Its last known location was unclear. Brazilian television said the Brazilian air force had started a search mission over the Atlantic Ocean for the plane.
Flight AF 447 has 216 passengers and 12 crew on board. It left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time and was expected in Paris on Monday at 11:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m. EDT).
"Air France regrets to announce that it is without news from flight AF 447, which was flying on the Rio de Janeiro - Paris Charles de Gaulle route and was scheduled to arrive at 11.15 a.m. today (5:15 a.m. EDT)," an Air France spokesman said.
An Air France-KLM spokeswoman in Amsterdam said there had been no radio contact with the missing plane "for a while."
The plane was an Airbus 330-200, according to the Paris airports authority website.
Air France said relatives of people traveling on board flight AF 447 were being taken care of in a special area of Charles de Gaulle airport.
(Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey, Gerard Bon, Astrid Wendlandt and Tim Hepher; writing by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Crispian Balmer and Angus MacSwan)

This a developing story. Stay tuned!