Brazil: Crash probe looks at sensors

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-05 09:48

RIO DE JANEIRO – Investigators trying to determine why Air France Flight 447 broke apart in a violent storm over the Atlantic are looking at the possibility that speed sensors - or an external instrument key to collecting speed data - failed in unusual weather, two aviation industry officials said Thursday.

Meanwhile, Brazil's Navy issued a statement saying despite earlier reports, no wreckage has been recovered from the Airbus A330, which went down off the country's northeastern coast, killing all 228 people aboard. It is the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.

A freezer truck is unloaded from a Brazilian air force plane during search operations for the remains of an Air France jet at the airport in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, Thursday, June 4, 2009. [Agencies]

Officials with knowledge of the investigation and independent analysts all stressed they don't know why a plane that seemed to be flying normally crashed just minutes after the pilot messaged that he was entering an area of extremely dangerous storms.

They will have little to go on until they recover the plane's "black box" flight data and voice recorders, now likely on the ocean floor miles beneath the surface.

Other hypotheses - even terrorism - haven't been ruled out, though there are no signs of a bomb. Officials have said a jet fuel slick on the ocean's surface suggests there was no explosion.

Two officials told The Associated Press that investigators are looking at the possibility an external probe that measures air pressure may have iced over. The probe feeds data used to calculate air speed and altitude to onboard computers. Another possibility is that sensors inside the aircraft reading the data malfunctioned.

If the instruments were not reporting accurate information, the jet could have been traveling too fast or too slow as it entered turbulence from towering bands of thunderstorms, according to the officials.

"There is increasing attention being paid to the external probes and the possibility they iced over in the unusual atmospheric conditions experienced by the Air France flight," one of the industry officials explained to the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn't authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

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