Bodies from crashed Air France plane found: Brazil

A Brazilian military official has said that searchers found two male bodies in the Atlantic Ocean near the area where an Air France jet is believed to have crashed.

Air force spokesman Col Jorge Amaral says the bodies were recovered on Saturday. They were picked up roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.

Amaral says a suitcase also was found containing a plane ticket for the flight. Flight 447 disappeared Sunday with 228 people on board.

AFP adds:

The first item recovered was a seat from the plane, Amaral said. Later, a body was sighted by a navy vessel, which was recovered by the ship's crew and identified as that of a man, he added.

The last item recovered so far was a backpack, he said. The search for more bodies and debris from the plane was continuing in the zone, 1,000 kilometers off Brazil's northeast coast.

It was the first recovery of items from the aircraft in six days of searching the open Atlantic.

Earlier finds on Thursday had turned out not to be part of the crash, as searchers battled days of terrible weather conditions -- with rain limiting the visibility and waves of up to 1.8 meters.

Investigators are still trying to work out what caused the tragedy of flight AF 477, which was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

French investigators said Saturday the Air France Airbus A330 suffered multiple systems failures in its final moments and had speed monitors that had failed on other planes.

Automatic error messages sent by the plane just prior to the crash last Monday showed its autopilot was disengaged after conflicting speed readings were given by sensors, the head of the French air accident investigation agency said.