Two pieces of new evidence have suggested that the stricken Air France jet broke up over a number of minutes, rather than in one catastrophic incident. Firstly, bodies from Flight 447 had been picked up from locations more than 50 miles apart, the Brazilian Air Force revealed.
And secondly, a re-analysis of the plane's last automatic transmissions indicated many parts had malfunctioned before it plunged into the Atlantic. Manufacturer Airbus told customers the investigation re-enforced the belief that the parts measuring air speed were the first to fail.
The plane's three speed sensors, or Pitot tubes, are likely to have malfunctioned four hours into the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, according to pilot union officials who examined the data.
Meanwhile, two terror suspects who died alongside 226 other passengers on the stricken jet have been ruled out as a cause of the disaster. The two men only "shared the same name" as known Islamic radicals, posthumous security checks found. Although their bodies have yet to be recovered, France's Interior Ministry confirmed that a "deep and wide-ranging investigation has allowed us to clear them".
The announcement came as the urgent hunt for the flight's black boxes was boosted by the introduction of a French nuclear submarine.(Uk.News.Yahoo)
