Air France Plane Unfound; Most Likely Hit Lightning

[Loghead]

Airline officials said Monday they fear the worst after an Air France jetliner carrying more than 200 people to Paris from Brazil went missing after running into thunderstorms and turbulence over the Atlantic Ocean.

Air France Flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time and was due to land in Paris on Monday morning. (CBC)
One Canadian was on board, Canada's Foreign Affairs Department has confirmed. Officials would not provide details about the passenger, citing privacy laws.

A Guelph, Ont., radio station spoke to the man's mother, who confirmed that her son was on board. He used to live in Guelph but has family across the country. The radio station, CJOY, is not releasing any details about the man until his other family members have been notified.

Air France received an automatic message from Flight 447 signalling an electrical circuit malfunction about four hours into the flight — at 10 p.m. ET on Sunday. The message came shortly after the flight crossed "through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence," said Air France officials.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with some of the family members of passengers during a visit to Charles de Gaulle airport Monday.

"I told them the truth. The prospects of finding survivors are very small," he said.

Sarkozy said it will be difficult to find the plane because of the "immense" search zone and that France has asked for help from U.S. satellite equipment to locate the plane.

The Airbus A330 was carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew members from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, Air France chief executive officer Pierre Henri Gourgeon told reporters at a brief news conference at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

The flight left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time (6 p.m. ET) and was scheduled to land in Paris on Monday morning, but ran into severe weather.

"After it crossed through storms … then automatic messages were sent out by the plane indicating there was a fault," said Gourgeon. "You can interpret that as meaning the plane was in a difficult situation as it … went through storms."

"We are probably facing an air catastrophe," he said.

Brazilian military planes and ships are searching an area near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, more than 300 kilometres off the most eastern point of Brazil and about 2,400 kilometres northeast of Rio.

Other reports, however, suggest the flight may have been further advanced across the ocean when it went missing. Military flights from the West African country of Senegal are also aiding the search.

Experts dismiss lightning theory

Aviation experts say the jet can no longer be in the air, because of the amount of fuel it can hold, and they have speculated a catastrophic event may have occurred.

François Brousse, the head of communications at Air France, told reporters several of the plane's mechanisms had malfunctioned, and that it could have been struck by lightning, but aviation experts expressed doubt that a bolt of lightning was enough to bring the plane down.

Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Virginia-based Flight Safety Foundation, said planes have specific measures built in to help dissipate electricity along the aircraft's skin and are tested for resistance to powerful electromagnetic shocks and equipped to resist them.

When asked whether the airline could rule out an attack, Gourgeon said he had "no way of answering that." However, senior French government minister Jean-Louis Borloo said the plane was not hijacked.

Both the pilot and co-pilot were experienced and had considerable time spent flying the aircraft, said Gourgeon.

"I want to say that the whole airline is deeply touched and shares the mourning of the relatives of passengers," he said, appearing visibly shaken. "And as soon as we know anything, we will pass it on.

The plane had 18,870 flight hours and went into service in April 2005.

Airbus said it would not comment further until more details emerged.

"Our thoughts are with the passengers and with the families of the passengers," said Airbus spokeswoman Maggie Bergsma.

French, Brazilians, Italians on flight

Families and friends who arrived at the Paris airport to meet passengers on board were taken to a special information centre set up by Air France.

Other than Canada, countries known to have passengers on board include Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, U.S., China, Hungary, Spain, U.K., Morocco and Ireland.

The flight's passenger list has not been released, but it did include seven children and one baby.

Canadians concerned about Canadian family members flying on the Air France flight can contact the Department of Foreign Affairs at 1-800-387-3124 or (613) 943-1055, for those living in the Ottawa area.

Air France has also set up toll-free numbers: 0800 800 812 in France or +33 157021055 for international callers.

Air France's last major incident was in July 2000 when a Concorde supersonic jet crashed shortly after taking off from Charles de Gaulle, killing all 109 people on board. Four other people on the ground were killed.

In August 2005, an Air France plane burst into flames after landing amid a fierce thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. The Airbus 340-300 ended up in at least three large pieces after an intense fire broke out when the plane overshot the runway by 200 metres in a heavy rainstorm.

None of the 309 passengers and crew members on board died, but 43 were injured.

1 Canadian on board missing Air France jet

This is a truley sad event. It's so unfortunate that this happened.

 

[rockin'robin]

Last I heard, 228 people were missing, 2 Americans....my prayers are with these people, hoping they will find survivors, hoping no one suffered.

 

[Loghead]

Brazilian ships and French and Brazilian military planes began the search Monday for an Air France passenger jet that is presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on its way to Paris from Rio de Janeiro.

But the last known location of Air France Flight 447 makes finding the plane a difficult task, said a former senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB).

Nick Stoss, the past director of air investigations with the TSB, said locating the Airbus 330-200 aircraft or any of the 228 people who were on board is complicated by the fact that the plane was outside the reach of radar and over deep ocean waters.

"It's a significant search area," he told CBC News.

Brazilian military ships and planes are searching the area near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, more than 300 kilometres off the most eastern point of Brazil, while French planes that took off from Senegal look farther east.

France has also called upon the United States to aid with satellite imagery. Ground radar stations are usually able to track a plane's whereabouts within 400 to 500 kilometres from the coast, said Stoss, with higher altitude planes easier to detect.

The Air France jetliner was said to be hundreds of kilometres from the Brazilian coast when it sent out an automatic message signalling a malfunction of the plane's electrical circuitry about four hours into the flight. The plane reportedly hit a severe electrical storm.

Without the assistance of radar, air officials rely on automatic messages like the one sent at 10:36 p.m. ET from Flight 447 to not only keep them informed of the technical information of the aircraft but also to let them know the aircraft's location.

Air crews also routinely check in with status updates, but these are infrequent, often once an hour, whereas the automatic transmissions can occur about every five minutes or when there is an issue, said Stoss.

Aircraft also have the ability to send a distress signal using an Emergency Locator Transmitter, or ELT. These transmitters can send a signal at 406 MHz that satellites can pick up and send to ground control stations, but it's unclear whether the Air France plane sent out such a signal.

Lacking data from the ELT, search and rescue operations typically extend about 30 kilometres on either side of the planned flight route, starting from the aircraft's last known position, according to the Transport Canada website.

To conduct the actual search, planes and ships rely on sonar signals from the flight data recorder, or black box.

Stoss said the black box, if functioning, can send out a ping that can be detected as far as 100 kilometres. Unless visual signs of the plane turn up, the flight data recorder is likely the best clue for investigators trying to uncover what happened to the plane.

Tracking it down, however, won't be easy, as the Atlantic Ocean extends to depths of around 3,900 metres.

The head of investigation and accident prevention for Brazil's Civil Aeronautics Agency, Douglas Ferreira Machado, said as much when he told the Associated Press the search could take a "long time."

"It could be a long, sad story," he said Monday. "The black box will be at the bottom of the sea."

Finding downed Air France jet will be difficult far from coast

 

[JamieLynn]

It's one of the most tragic crashes in Air France History.

I feel with the family members

Apparently 2 French people (a married couple) changed their flight from Brasilia to Paris because they wanted to go to Montpellier first. Those are the only two lucky ones!!!!!

But I doubt they'll find any kind of survivors of that lost plane

JL

 

[Loghead]

They found it! It's both sad and good at the same time. It's sad because so many people lost their lives, but it's good because it is closure for the family of the passengers that passed on.

Debris confirms Air France jet crashed in ocean: Brazilian minister

Large amounts of debris found floating in the Atlantic confirm an Air France plane that disappeared while flying from Brazil to Paris crashed into the ocean, Brazil's defence minister said Tuesday.

Nelson Jobim told a news conference that the five-kilometre path of wreckage found earlier in the day is "without a doubt" from the Airbus A330, which was carrying 228 people when it vanished over the Atlantic Ocean after leaving Rio de Janeiro on Sunday night.

Searchers in planes spotted the debris — including an orange life-vest, a small white piece of metal and what is believed to be an airliner seat — at about 1:30 a.m. local time (12:30 a.m. ET) Tuesday.

There were no signs of any lifeboats, survivors or bodies.

French officials have said there is little chance of finding any survivors. Police are studying passenger lists and preparing to take DNA from passengers' relatives to help identify any retrieved remains.

Among the 216 passengers and 12 crew was Brad Clemes, 49, a Coca-Cola executive who was born and raised in Guelph, Ont., and lived in Belgium.

If there are no survivors, as feared, it would be the world's deadliest commercial airline disaster since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines jetliner crashed in the New York City borough of Queens during a flight to the Dominican Republic, killing 265 people.

'Race against the clock' to find black boxes

Military aircraft and ships from France, Brazil and Senegal are continuing to sweep the area, searching for more signs of the plane. Authorities also asked commercial vessels to aid the search, and the United States agreed to use satellite imagery to help locate the wreckage.

"The search-and-rescue folks are very good about being able to pick up small objects in the water," said John Cox, an airline safety consultant. "They're highly trained for this."

The size of the debris field will give some indication as to whether the airplane struck the water in one piece or broke apart in flight, Cox said.

Aviation experts have said it is unusual there was no human or automatic distress message sent from the plane and that no emergency beacons transmitted.

Finding the plane's flight-data recorder will allow officials to begin to determine what happened, said Doug Moss, an aviation expert who teaches at the University of Southern California.

It is a "race against the clock" to find the plane's two black boxes, which emit signals for up to 30 days, said French Transportation Minister Jean-Louis Borloo Tuesday.

'Succession of extraordinary events'

The immense area of open ocean between northeastern Brazil and western Africa has depths reaching 4,570 metres. But the technology exists to retrieve any relevant parts from the bottom of the ocean if the plane is found, Cox said.

Officials believe that "there really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation," Borloo said.

Air France received an automatic message from Flight 447 signalling an electrical circuit malfunction about four hours into the flight, at 10 p.m. ET on Sunday. The message came shortly after the flight crossed "through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence," Air France officials said.

Some officials have speculated the plane may have been struck by lightning, but aviation experts have said that should not have been enough to bring down the aircraft.

Other potential causes include shifting winds and hail from towering thunderheads, a massive mechanical failure or a combination of other factors.

Meteorologists speculated Tuesday that the aircraft might have faced winds as strong as 160 km/h created from a series of thunderstorms along the flight path.

Pentagon officials told The Associated Press that American authorities have not seen any evidence suggesting terrorism or foul play.

 

[web730]

Seen it on the tv news... no bodies found but two fields of debris all they have found so far. Sad!

Wonder as if they could find the black box?! I doubt so... Atlantic ocean is too big and deep for anyone to dive and find it, obviously.

Guess that it stays as a mystery forever except one can always assume due to the powerful thunderstorm which must be the culprit.

AirBus shared a few major accidents in last few years... wonder as if its safe but a retired NTSB guy said it's safe... maybe?! Still hard to trust for anybody, no question!

 

[Chevy57]

Seen it on the tv news... no bodies found but two fields of debris all they have found so far. Sad!

Wonder as if they could find the black box?! I doubt so... Atlantic ocean is too big and deep for anyone to dive and find it, obviously.

Guess that it stays as a mystery forever except one can always assume due to the powerful thunderstorm which must be the culprit.

AirBus shared a few major accidents in last few years... wonder as if its safe but a retired NTSB guy said it's safe... maybe?! Still hard to trust for anybody, no question!

I think that Bermuda Triangle to blame for crash??

 

[Phillips]

Interesting Mystery! :Ohno:

 

[naisho]

Apparently, they said on the news update on the flight search team today that the debris found isn't from Flight 447 itself. It has to do with something about the fact that in the debris, there were items there that didn't belong to what was listed on Flight 447.

Also, for the 12 mile oil slick discovered, they're now correcting it saying that it may not be from the flight at all.
Literally nothing of this flight has been found yet.

It's not in the bermuda triangle either, this is supposedly where it was last heard from:

The Bermuda Triangle only extends to Bermuda, Florida, and Cuba, so it's way out of the path:

Overall.. it seems (publicly) that they are back to square one on the search.


More resources:
Air France Flight 447 (many details and pictures/info about the people who are missing from the flight)
Brazilian air force says debris was not from Air France crash - CNN.com

 

[AlleyCat]

That would be correct, Naisho.

There are new updates now. CNN has reported that bodies have now been found, and a suitcase.

Bodies from Air France flight found - CNN.com

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Bodies have been found from the crash of an Air France plane that disappeared Monday, the Brazilian air force said Saturday.

Also, one seat and a suitcase were recovered at sea by a vessel participating in the search, the air force said in Recife, Brazil.

Earlier in the day, aviation investigators said Flight 447 sent out 24 automated error messages, including one saying the aircraft's autopilot had disengaged, before it vanished with 228 people on board.

They also reported that the airline had failed to replace a part, as recommended by the manufacturer, Airbus.

Airbus had advised airlines to update equipment that monitors speed, known as Pitot tubes. The recommendation was a result of technological developments and improvements, an Airbus spokesman told CNN's Richard Quest. The change was not mandatory, and the spokesman would not comment on Air France's failure to follow the advice.

Planes have crashed because of faulty or blocked Pitot tubes in the past, Quest said, and there was clearly something wrong with the doomed plane's speed-monitoring equipment.

But it may be a mistake to place too much emphasis on the Pitot tubes, he added, as the jet apparently was experiencing massive system failures.

Even as they analyzed the error messages and satellite images of the doomed flight's path, investigators said they still have a lot of work to determine what caused the plane to go down.

"I would just like to ask you to bear in mind that all of this is dynamic and there are a lot of question marks," said Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France's accident investigation bureau.

"We don't know how the aircraft entered the water. We don't know how these pieces of debris entered into the water and that you have to take into account the current ... and the shape of the ocean floor."

The error messages suggest that the plane may have been flying too fast or too slow through the stormy weather it encountered before the crash, officials said.

In addition, investigators have said the plane's autopilot disengaged, cabin pressure was lost, and there was an electrical failure before the disaster.

The jet's manufacturer, Airbus, sent a Telex to operators of Airbus models reminding them of what to do when speed indicators give conflicting readings.

The spokesman said the notice does not mean there is any major flaw in the aircraft but is simply a reminder to pilots of what to do in the cockpit if they get conflicting information about air speed. Watch as experts question whether recovery is possible »

All 228 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus 330 are presumed to have died when the plane disappeared northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, 355 kilometers (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil.

The flight originated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was en route to Paris, France. Search teams were still trying to find debris from the jet Saturday, two days after a Brazilian air force official said debris plucked from the ocean was not from the Air France jet.

 

[Liebling:-)))]

Yes it´s very, very, very sad.

I feel for victim´s families.

 

[naisho]

Wow, nice update AC.. That's a scary thought.

Though stuff like this happens like once every thousands of flights, it is unimaginable to be in this situation. The unlucky people on the flight, may they rest in peace. There's more on airfrance447.com for pictures and photos of some of the crew..

What would you guys do if you were in a plane going down?
I think the guys they found must've been one of the few who tried to escape while the plane sunk into the water. The unidentified person must have been attacked by marine animals..

 

[Jiro]

Wow, nice update AC.. That's a scary thought.

Though stuff like this happens like once every thousands of flights, it is unimaginable to be in this situation. The unlucky people on the flight, may they rest in peace. There's more on airfrance447.com for pictures and photos of some of the crew..

What would you guys do if you were in a plane going down?
I think the guys they found must've been one of the few who tried to escape while the plane sunk into the water. The unidentified person must have been attacked by marine animals..

do my damnest to survive?

I surely hope I don't end up in that situation where I have to eat human flesh

 

[AlleyCat]

CNN has posted more updates. There's several links so I won't post them here unless anybody wants me to; but as of this writing 17 bodies have been recovered. It was said that for at least some of them, they could not be identified as either man or woman. The Brazilian and French navys declined to say why their condition was so bad they couldn't be identified. It is my hope that with finding these bodies they may have a shot at finding the black boxes now.

 

[naisho]

do my damnest to survive?

I surely hope I don't end up in that situation where I have to eat human flesh

Imagine you just got word or you know the plane is going down. I'm too lazy to do the physics now, but I'm guessing you have anywhere between 1minute-2 minutes depending on how high the plane is, before you hit the ground (or sea).

What will you do? I think I would try to not panic, the plane will be probably going down at a 25-60 degree angle.. hopefully not a nosedive. So everyone's moving around.

I'd try to go for my cellphone, text a message out and hope it gets out before we hit contact with the ocean.. the crash would be horrible.


Yeah, AC.. the whole story is like whoa! To follow on. Makes you kind of not want to fly on a plane.

 

[Liebling:-)))]

More bodies found from lost jet

More bodies have been recovered from the Atlantic in the area where a French jet disappeared last week, bringing the total number to 17, officials say.

Dozens of pieces of debris from the Air France plane were also picked up by Brazilian and French ships.

They were found some 1,000km (600 miles) north-east of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha islands where the Airbus disappeared with 228 people.

Meanwhile, the investigation is looking into faulty speed sensors on the plane.

Brazilian and French ships recovered 15 bodies on Sunday - six days after the crash. Two bodies had been retrieved on Saturday.

Brazilian officials say four of the bodies are of men and four are of women. There is no word on the others.


See a map of the plane's route

The remains will be taken by ship to the nearby archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, before being moved to the Brazilian city of Recife, where a temporary mortuary has been established.

Relatives of those on board the AF 447 flight have already provided DNA to help in the identification process.

A Brazilian navy spokesman said search crews were working despite poor weather.

He said about 100 objects had been spotted in the crash zone, including seats with the Air France logo and oxygen masks.

Some have spoken of "a sea of debris", the BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo reports.

A total of six ships and 14 planes from France and Brazil are involved in the operation.

Speed sensors

The investigation is increasingly focusing on the aircraft's speed sensors, which had been providing inconsistent data in the minutes before it disappeared in turbulent weather.

Air France has said it is stepping up the process of replacing speed monitors on board its Airbus planes.

The company said it had first noticed problems with speed monitors a year ago and began replacing them a few weeks before the accident.

But investigators said it was too soon to say if problems with the sensors were in any way responsible.

On Saturday, the Brazilian navy recovered the first confirmed debris from the plane, including a briefcase containing a ticket for Flight 447.

Other debris linked to the flight included a blue seat and a backpack containing a computer.

The remains were found not far from where the last signal from the plane was received on Monday, and were taken to the islands of Fernando de Noronha to be examined by experts.

The search for the plane's flight data recorders - or black boxes -

BBC NEWS | Americas | More bodies found from lost jet

 

[naisho]

You know, a lot of airplane protocol these days disallow any kind of food or consumer items to be brought aboard to prevent biological diseases that can be transmitted through food.

You must buy the consumables at the airport or they must be in packaging, any item that is out of a factory bag or looks homemade will be confiscated at the airport. I wonder if they give it to the homeless there.. anyways.

What I'm getting at is, it was about nearly a week before any of these passengers were found. Depending on what you're doing and what your metabolism rate is, chance are if you're bouncing in the ocean you're going to want to eat after a few days.

Since the airport confiscated all your food, here you are floating looking for hope with limited survival.
Is it fair?

 

[Jiro]

You know, a lot of airplane protocol these days disallow any kind of food or consumer items to be brought aboard to prevent biological diseases that can be transmitted through food.

You must buy the consumables at the airport or they must be in packaging, any item that is out of a factory bag or looks homemade will be confiscated at the airport. I wonder if they give it to the homeless there.. anyways.

What I'm getting at is, it was about nearly a week before any of these passengers were found. Depending on what you're doing and what your metabolism rate is, chance are if you're bouncing in the ocean you're going to want to eat after a few days.

Since the airport confiscated all your food, here you are floating looking for hope with limited survival.
Is it fair?

assuming that they're stranded on ocean. they're more likely to die in ocean than on land if it's been a week because

1. predator factor - shark, jellyfish, etc.
2. environmental factor - stormy weather, prolonged period of time under sun, salty seawater can causes diarrhea, dehydration, serious infection, hallucination, hypothermia, etc. much faster than you get those on land
3. health factor - no food, no water, no emergency kit... a simple cut on your head/arm/leg will be severely infected and worsened due to salty seawater, microorganisms, and poor health within just a matter of few days

Despite of these factors, it is still survivable for those with strong will and basic survival knowledge.

 

[Frisky Feline]

CNN has posted more updates. There's several links so I won't post them here unless anybody wants me to; but as of this writing 17 bodies have been recovered. It was said that for at least some of them, they could not be identified as either man or woman. The Brazilian and French navys declined to say why their condition was so bad they couldn't be identified. It is my hope that with finding these bodies they may have a shot at finding the black boxes now.

i dont mind if you do post few links here. thank you. but others post a few links too.

 

[AlleyCat]

i dont mind if you do post few links here. thank you. but others post a few links too.

No problem! I usuallly do post a link, just that there have been so many articles online and on TV basically saying the same thing. But as far as my post yesterday, here is a CNN link that I have been obtaining my info from. (It was updated today with more information, though.)

A week later, Air France mystery deepens - CNN.com

(CNN) -- It's been little more than a week since an Air France jet crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, bringing a horrific end to the lives of the 228 people aboard.


Recovery efforts have found several items confirmed to have come from Air France Flight 447.

The Airbus A330-200 is considered an exceptionally safe plane, so why was there no signal from the pilots of a crisis? Planes, particularly sophisticated craft like the Airbus, are built to withstand severe storms like the one Flight 447 is believed to have confronted.

The plane has numerous electrical backup systems, so when one thing goes wrong, another switches on to compensate. Did all those systems fail?

The plane's data recorder, which might help answer that, is presumably at the bottom of the ocean.

These unknowns create a stomach-turning question: If no one knows how this happened, can and will it happen again?

For the past week, experts have offered theories, including weighing in on whether it's possible foul play was at work.

"As an investigator, until you know exactly what caused it, you need to leave everything on the table. I wouldn't rule it [foul play] out," said Capt. John Cox, a veteran major-airline pilot who has extensive expertise in global air safety. "But there's been nothing that shows me that it would be a prime suspect." Watch Cox describe in detail what might have downed Flight 447 »

Autopsies performed on bodies recovered from the Atlantic could provide clues, said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Cox, an expert in flight safety auditing who has flown the Airbus A320 and has flown the A330 simulator, said he suspects, as do other flying experts, that weather was not the single cause of the disaster. It was most likely a series of events, he said in an interview on American Morning on Monday.

Cox is the founder and CEO of Safety Operating Systems, a Washington, D.C.-based aviation safety company. Air France has never been a client of the business, one of its aviation researchers told CNN.

On Saturday, Air France released literature about a speed-sensing system, including an instrument called a Pitot tube. The devices are susceptible to icing in high-altitude storms. Airspeed sensors can affect the stability of an airplane, particularly if it's on autopilot. One wrong reading can make the autopilot shift the plane into a wrong direction or wrong speed.

Cox said he was aware of "three to four previous cases in the fleet history" in which the Pitot tube has iced over -- a rare event.

The crew of Air France Flight 447 had reported severe turbulence shortly before the plane disappeared. A dozen flights using similar routes to the Air France plane did not report exceptional weather, but aviation experts say weather can change suddenly and vary over short distances -- and passengers on at least one other flight reported what they described as bad turbulence.

Investigators in Paris said Saturday that the Air France flight sent out 24 automated error messages lasting about four minutes before it crashed. The messages suggest the plane may have been flying too fast or too slow through severe thunderstorms it encountered before the crash, officials said.

"What we learned by the information that the airplane uplinked to the Air France maintenance is that they had a lot of very confusing signals that the pilots would have been confronted with," Cox said. "Exactly what caused that, it could possibly be Pitot tubes or airspeed indications that could be causal in some way."

The jet was 4 years old and had last undergone routine maintenance April 16.

Airbus recommended that Pitot tubes be replaced on the smaller Airbus A320 planes in 2007. Air France says that last year, there were incidents in which its A330 and A340 planes lost air speed data because of icing in the Pitot probes. Air France then began a program to modernize the Pitot tubes on its A330s and A340s. That program began in April this year, but air crash investigators said this past weekend that the jet that crashed had not been retrofitted with the new Pitot tubes.

While news about the mechanics of the plane is being widely discussed, Air France has decided, out of sensitivity to the crew and passengers' families, to not disclose details about who has been recovered and the condition of those bodies.

On Monday, Brazilian authorities confirmed that 16 bodies out of the 228 on board had been found. The recovery process has been arduous and painstaking for crews on the water. Where the bodies have been found, the depth of the ocean ranges between 19,685 and 26,247 feet (about 6,000 and 8,000 meters).

Also on Monday, the U.S. Navy announced that it was sending two high-tech acoustic devices known as "pingers" to help search for emergency beacons from Flight 447, a U.S. defense official told CNN. That may help recover the plane's data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, which can transmit signals from as deep as 14,000 feet, about the maximum depth of the water in the area where the plane apparently went down. The flight recording devices are designed to emit a regular ping for 30 days after a crash.

While that operation is being carried out, crews will continue combing the search area, which is 77,220 square miles (about 200,000 square kilometers) -- or nearly the size of Romania.

Already discovered in that area was a leather briefcase containing an Air France boarding pass with the flight number on it and a nylon backpack with a vaccination card inside, officials said.

Among those on board were a member of Brazil's former royal family, a one-time performer with the Riverdance troupe, a Rio de Janeiro city official, executives from major international companies and an 11-year-old British schoolboy.