RECIFE, Brazil — Airlines moved quickly Tuesday to replace speed monitors like those suspected of feeding false information to the computers on Air France Flight 447 and possibly causing the plane to break up over the Atlantic Ocean.
Seventeen more bodies were pulled from the sea Tuesday, bringing the number recovered to 41. Another 187 have yet to be found. The first remains were brought to land by helicopter and will be flown to this coastal city today for identification.
Federal police visited families in Rio de Janeiro to collect genetic material — hair, blood, a cheek swab — to help identify the corpses.
Figuring out where the victims were seated and studying their injuries might help explain what brought down Flight 447 as it flew into thunderstorms on May 31, according to Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.
With the plane’s data recorders still missing, investigators have been focusing on the possibility that external speed monitors — called Pitot tubes — iced over and gave false readings to the plane’s computers in a thunderstorm.
Air France said it began replacing the tubes on its A330 and A340 jets in May after pilots reported several incidents of icing leading to a loss of airspeed data. The monitors had not yet been replaced on the A330 that was destroyed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
On Tuesday, the airline assured its pilots that none of its A330s or A340s would fly without at least two of the new instruments, and that all Air France A330s and A340s will have all three Pitots replaced by July.
Brazil’s air force said it is replacing them for the president’s jet.
