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Debris recovered in the Atlantic does not come from the missing Air France flight, it emerged today.
Brazilian air force officials contradicted earlier reports, saying: “No material from the plane has been recovered”. Search teams combing the waters discovered a wooden cargo pallet, but the Airbus A330 did not have any of these on board.
Two life buoys were pulled by helicopters from the suspected crash site, about 680 miles northeast of Brazil's coast, but investigators decided that they were not part of the jet either.
Eleven air force planes and five navy ships are continuing the major search operation after several other debris sites have been located, spread out over 56 miles.
Three more Brazilian boats and a French ship equipped with small submarines are expected to arrive in the area in the next few days.
The Paris-bound flight from Rio de Janeiro vanished in the early hours of Monday carrying 228 passengers and crew. The plane is thought to have crashed in a violent storm just minutes after several automatic messages were sent to Air France signalling electrical failure.
Investigators have been left baffled as to how the plane disappeared so quickly without issuing a May Day call – something which would have taken a couple of seconds.
Investigators said they are looking at the possibility an external probe that measures air pressure may have iced over. This feeds data used to calculate air speed and altitude to onboard computers. Another possibility is that sensors inside the aircraft that read the data malfunctioned.
If the instruments were not accurately reporting information, the jet could have been travelling too fast or too slow as it entered turbulence from towering bands of thunderstorms.
A source said: “There is increasing attention being paid to the external probes and the possibility they iced over in the unusual atmospheric conditions experienced by the Air France flight.”
A terror attack has not been ruled out, although there are no signs of a bomb. Officials have said a jet fuel slick on the ocean's surface suggests there was no explosion.
The aircraft's two black box flight recorders could be 1,300ft below the surface. They are designed to send homing signals when they hit water for only 30 days.
Relatives have been told that there is no hope of survivors. Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told the victims' families the jet broke apart either in the air or when it hit the sea.
