Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral said the seats were spotted by search planes early this morning but that authorities have not yet confirmed they were from the plane.'The plan now is to focus our efforts to collect the debris and try to identify if they belong or not to the Air France plane,' Amaral said at a news conference. 'The locations where the objects were found are towards the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted,' Amaral said.
'That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis. The search is continuing because it's very little material in relation to the size [of the Airbus A330],' he added.
Officials need 'a piece that might have a serial number, some sort of identification' to be sure it came from the missing jet.
Brazilian military ships are not expected to arrive at the area until Wednesday. If no survivors are found it will be the worst crash since 2001 and the biggest loss of life in Air France's 75-year history.
The debris was found about 375 miles (650 kilometres) north-east of the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha - near where the last contact was made with the jet on Sunday night.
Yesterday, pilots flying a commercial jet from Paris to Rio de Janeiro for Brazil's largest airline, TAM, said they saw what they thought was fire in the ocean along the route taken by the missing plane yesterday.
The debris found this morning is believed to have been spotted in the same location. It was spotted as the French defence minister said today the possibility of a terrorist act on the plane 'cannot be ruled out'. No distress signal was received and aviation experts said they did not have enough information to understand how flight AF 447 could have disappeared from radar screens without a trace over the Atlantic. (Daily Mail)
