Interpol to help identify Air France 447 crash victims

The global police agency Interpol will help French and Brazilian officials identify victims of the crash of Air France flight 447, the organisation said yesterday.

More than 228 people were lost when the Airbus A330 long-haul jet suddenly and mysteriously plunged into the Atlantic Ocean of June 1, and so far only 24 bodies have been recovered from the remote waters.

"Since the victims of this tragedy came from all parts of the globe, international collaboration will be essential in ensuring their accurate, dignified and speedy recovery and identification so as to enable the families to begin the healing process," said Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble.

A statement from the agency said an Interpol officer would be attached to a French gendarmerie unit from Paris charged with identifying the victims using their DNA, fingerprints, medical records, tattoos and other clues.

Air France scrambles to upgrade speed probes

Air France raced yesterday to replace within days the airspeed probes on its Airbus A330 jets after the crash.

The decision to fit new "pitot probes" on A330 and A340 planes came as one French union urged pilots not to fly the jets after the crew of flight AF 447 crashed.

Air France has said it is stepping up replacement of the sensors on its A330s, amid speculation that they may have iced up during a storm at high altitude and supplied false airspeed data to the cockpit.

This, in turn, could have caused the pilots to fly too slow and stall, or too fast and rip the airframe apart, aviation experts say.

"Air France management summoned pilots' unions on Monday night to inform them on work to replace Pitot probes, and gave an extremely tight calendar... of a few days," Erick Derivry, spokesman for the SNPL union, said yesterday.

Later, another union official said that Air France had promised not to allow any A330 or A340 jets to fly from yesterday unless each had seen at least two of its three replaced with newer models. "That's to say, they'll all be modified today, even if that causes delays," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Air France refused to comment on the union statements.

Airbus, Air France and official accident investigators have not confirmed a link between the pitots and the crash, but all have renewed warnings to pilots about contradictory speed readings since AF 447 went down.

The Rio de Janeiro-Paris crash is the worst aviation accident since 2001, and unprecedented in Air France's 75-year history.

The doomed jet broadcast a series of 24 automatic error messages as its systems shut down one-by-one in its final minutes, and French investigators say the cockpit was receiving conflicting speed data.

According to a memo obtained by AFP, Air France warned its pilots in November about "a significant number of incidents" linked to the pitots.

The memo, dated November 6, 2008, describes false speed readings; different speed readings on the pilot's control panel and that of the copilot; and the automatic pilot cutting out.

Two Air France pilots, who preferred to remain anonymous, confirmed the document's authenticity.

For one of them, the memo showed that "Air France knew from November 2008 the problems that seem to explain the catastrophe of AF 477."

Separately, the pilots' union Alter, which represents a minority of Air France crews, denounced the airline for not taking the A330 and A340 out of service until all the pitot probes have been replaced.

It called on flight crew to boycott the planes, hundreds of which are in service around the world, until the fleet is modernised. The larger SNPL was also in talks with management Tuesday and has not yet called for a boycott.

An Air France spokesman said each of the airline's whole fleet of these jets already had at least one new pitot, from at least three per plane, and that there was a programme in place to replace the rest.

On Monday, Brazilian naval crews recovered the tail fin belonging to the missing Air France jet, while 24 bodies have so far been fished out of the Atlantic, Brazilian officials said.

The tail fin discovery is an important element in the quest to find out why the Airbus A330 went down, as the plane's black box flight data recorders were mounted in the tail section.

The fin's location could therefore narrow the underwater search for those devices, which will emit a homing signal for only three more weeks, by a French nuclear submarine expected to arrive in the zone today.

Brazilian and French teams continue to scour the crash zone 1,100 kilometres off Brazil's northeast coast.