Weather creates difficulties for Air France crash searchers

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At the end of last week, military planes and ships involved in the search for bodies and debris from the Air France jet crash in the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil’s north-eastern coast faced worsening weather conditions that made their work even more difficult.

On shore, bodies were examined and the first pieces of wreckage were received – including two seats from the plane, oxygen masks, water bottles, and many pieces of the plane, some measuring no more than several centimetres.

Other debris from the Airbus A330-200, which crashed on 31 May with 228 people on board, is set to arrive in Recife by ship on Sunday, and then taken to the Air Force hangar where other pieces of the wreckage are being examined.

So far, the most important piece of the plane that has been recovered is the vertical stabilizer, which was found virtually intact, and could provide BEA, the French investigative agency, clues about the circumstances leading to the crash.

Gen Ramon Cardoso, of Brazil’s air force, said: “The debris will be at the disposition of the BEA and they will decide what to do with it.”

To date, 44 bodies have been recovered from the sea. Gen Cardoso indicated that no additional bodies were located on Friday, but searchers did find more debris just off the main search area, some 640km north-east of the Fernando de Noronha islands, which lie off the coast of northern Brazil.

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