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French: Air France plane hit the sea belly first

Workers unload debris, belonging to crashed Air France flight AF447, from the Brazilian Navy's Constitution Frigate in the port of Recife, northeast of Brazil, Sunday, June 14, 2009. A burst of last-minute automatic messages sent by Air France Flight 447 includes one about a problem with a rudder safety device but that does not explain what sent the jet plunging into the Atlantic Ocean, an aviation expert said. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

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Navy officers hold a wreath that will be thrown into the sea in memory of the victims of the Air France Flight 447, at the frigate Bosisio, 19 miles off the coast of Recife, in northeastern Brazil, Monday, June 29, 2009. Brazilian and French searchers have recovered large chunks of debris and 51 bodies from the airplane, which disappeared with 228 people on board last May 31. (AP Photo/Otavio de Souza)

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Christophe Guillot-Noel, head of an association for victims of Air France Flight 447, speaks to reporters as he arrives for a meeting with with the French air accident investigation agency, the BEA, and Air France officials at the French Transport Ministry in La Defense, outside Paris, Thursday July 2, 2009. BEA is presenting Thursday its preliminary report to journalists at its headquarters in Le Bourget, outside Paris. Christophe Guillot-Noel lost his brother in the crash of the Airbus A330-200 plane flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

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Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said although investigators seem to know very little about what happened due to "a horrendous lack of evidence," it is significant that the plane landed the right way up.

"It suggests they were in some kind of flight attitude," he said.

But he warned that "without finding the black boxes it's going to be phenomenally difficult, maybe impossible, to determine what happened."

Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, suggesting passengers were not prepared for a crash landing in the water. The pilots apparently also did not send any mayday calls.

He said there was "no information" suggesting a need to ground the world's fleet of more than 600 A330 planes as a result of the crash.

"As far as I'm concerned there's no problem flying these aircraft," he said.

Air France said all elements of the investigation "will be fully and immediately taken into account by the airline" and that it is continuing to cooperate with the investigators with "a commitment to total transparency with regard to the investigators, its passengers and the general public."

The black boxes — which are in reality bright orange — are resting somewhere on an underwater mountain range filled with crevasses and rough, uneven terrain. Bouillard said the search for them has been extended by 10 days through July 10, while his investigation would run through Aug. 15.

Bouillard said French investigators have yet to receive any information from Brazilian authorities about the results of the autopsies on the 51 bodies recovered from the site.

But a spokesman for the Public Safety Department in Brazil's Pernambuco state — in charge of the autopsies — denied that.

"French medical examiners are working together with Brazilian medical examiners and they have full access to all the information obtained from autopsies," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity according to department rules.

Families of the victims met with officials from BEA, Air France and the French transport ministry before the report was released. An association of families addressed a letter to the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, demanding answers to several questions about the plane.

Investigators should have an easier time recovering debris and black boxes in the crash of a Yemeni Airbus 310 with 153 people on board that went down Tuesday just nine miles (14.5 kilometers) north of the Indian Ocean island-nation of Comoros.

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Vandore reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Cecile Brisson at Le Bourget, Angela Charlton in Paris, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

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July 03, 2009 01:12 AM EDT

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