Air France debris displayed for 1st time

For the first time the debris of the Air France jet were displayed, even as military ships and planes struggled in worsening weather to find more bodies and debris from the plane.

Authorities laid out some of the recovered debris out for media on Friday, at a hangar at the Brazilian Air Base Cindacta lll, next to Recife airport.

Investigators examined corpses and received the first wreckage: two plane seats, oxygen masks, water bottles, and several pieces of the structure.

The most important piece recovered to date is the virtually intact vertical stabiliser, which could give the French investigative agency BEA solid clues about what prompted the crash.

Ramon Cardoso, Brigadier General and head of Brazilian Aviation Authority, said no more bodies were spotted or recovered on Friday, but searchers did see more pieces of debris, slightly west of the main search area, which lies 400 miles (640 kilometres) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.

Search teams would be deployed to the new search zone, he said. So far, 44 bodies have been recovered.

Some of the bodies have been found more than 50 miles apart, which could support a high-altitude breakup, or simply reflect strong ocean currents in the days since the crash.

Authorities hope that by identifying the victims, determining where they were sitting and examining their injuries, they will find more clues.

Cardoso said French ships equipped with sonar looking for underwater wreckage were approaching an area extending out some 70 kilometres (44 miles) from the last known position of the plane, within the main search zone.

The plane's black boxes, perhaps the best hope of definitively learning what went wrong, remain elusive.

A French nuclear submarine is scouring the search area in the hopes of hearing pings from the boxes' emergency beacons.

The first of two US locator listening devices won't arrive until Sunday. Meanwhile, the weather in the mid-Atlantic is bad and getting worse.

Rain has reduced visibility for ships, cloud cover has blocked satellite imagery and the seas are getting rougher.

Brazil's military will decide next week whether to halt the search for bodies on June 19 or extend it for another six days, Cardoso said.