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Air France 447 - No Wreckage Yet Recovered of Plane Lost Over Atlantic

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Six days after Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean, searchers still have not recovered any wreckage belonging to the plane, prompting questions as to whether they have been searching in the right place and muddying initial theories over what happened to the aircraft.

News that a piece of debris recovered Thursday was only maritime garbage instead of an eight-foot piece of the plane’s cargo equipment, as the Brazilian military initially announced, frustrated French officials and friends and relatives of the victims of the crash, which claimed 228 lives.

Planes and ships from Brazil, France and the United States are involved in the search, and on Friday, France sent a nuclear submarine to listen for signals from the black boxes containing data and voice recordings.

Investigators found only more unrelated flotsam on Friday. And the pieces that the crews of surveillance planes had originally spotted Tuesday and initially determined to have been parts of the A330 Airbus aircraft — an airplane seat and life jacket — were no longer visible, according to Brazilian military officials who spoke at a news conference in Recife, Brazil.

“The area is very large, and some of the debris that were floating on the first day may have already sunk,” said Ramon Borges Cardoso, the director of Brazil’s Air Space Control Department, according to the news Web site Globo.com.

The new uncertainty over the disaster came after a statement on Thursday from Airbus, the manufacturer of the missing jet, warning its customers to follow established procedures when pilots suspect that air-speed indicators are not functioning properly.

The warning may indicate one focus of the investigation, and appeared to suggest that malfunctioning instruments might have played a role in the crash.

The Associated Press reported that Air France pilots were sent a memo on Friday saying that the airline was replacing Pitot tubes, part of the system for indicating air speed, on its larger jets to reduce the risk of loss of air-speed information. The airline declined to comment on the memo.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, Laura J. Brown, said Friday afternoon that as best she could determine, her agency was not requiring any changes to the Pitot tubes on Airbus planes operated by American carriers, and had not heard anything from its French counterpart about problems with that system.

Aviation experts thought that the eight-foot piece recovered Thursday indicated that the plane came apart at high altitude, allowing the parts to spread widely. But that theory seemed less solid on Friday, since the debris did not belong to the aircraft.

In radio interviews, France’s transportation minister, Dominique Bussereau, urged “extreme prudence” about judging the source of any debris until it could be analyzed. He said it was “bad news” that the Brazilian teams had been mistaken about the large piece of debris.

“We would have preferred that it had come from the plane and that we had some information,” he said.

On Friday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened a criminal investigation of the crash, a routine procedure when a French citizen dies abroad.

Liz Robbins reported from New York, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Nicola Clark contributed reporting from Paris, Andrew Downie from São Paulo, Brazil, and Sergio Peçanha from New York.

Liz Robbins reported from New York, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Nicola Clark contributed reporting from Paris; Andrew Downie from São Paulo, Brazil; and Sergio Peçanha from New York.





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