Brazil gives France data from doomed Air France flight

BRASILIA, Oct 13, 2009 (AFP) - Brazil on Tuesday handed French investigators documents from the investigation into the Air France disaster that killed 228 people on June 1, the Justice Ministry said.

Justice secretary Romeu Tuma welcomed a French delegation including investigating magistrate Sylvie Zimmerman and handed over documents on boarding, air traffic control and the state of bodies that were recovered, a ministry spokesman said.

Air France Flight 447 was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris during stormy weather when it crashed into a remote area of the Atlantic, about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) off Brazil's coast.

Just before dropping off radar screens, it had emitted a series of automatic warning signals indicating systems failures.

The Airbus A330's black box flight recorders have not been found, but French investigators said in a report that the faulty speed sensors were not the only explanation for the accident.

Both the European air safety agency and Airbus advised airlines after the crash -- the worst in Air France's 75-year history -- to replace the French pitot tubes in the speed sensor mechanism used on the doomed jet with a more reliable US model.

The French air accident agency BEA said Monday it was planning to publish a further interim report before the end of the year. But the agency has previously said it might be more than a year before it publishes its final report.

The French investigators were expected to spend about 15 days in Brazil to visit the Rio de Janeiro international airport where the flight originated; and the airport in Pernambuco where the air traffic control center closest to the accident site is located.

The Airbus A330 went down on a flight from Rio to Paris in the mid-Atlantic between Brazil and Senegal, with 216 passengers and a crew of 12 on board. The victims were from 32 countries and included 72 French, 58 Brazilians and 26 Germans.


by Lachlan Carmichael and Stuart Williams
(c) 2009 AFP