24 bodies found in Air France crash

RECIFE, Brazil (AP) — Search crews have recovered 24 bodies of passengers on the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean eight days ago with 228 people on board, Brazil’s military said Monday. They also recovered a large tail section from the jetliner, helping narrow the hunt for “black boxes” that could reveal the disaster’s cause.

Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said eight more bodies were found Monday, near where 16 others were recovered since Saturday — roughly 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast, and about 45 miles from where the jet was last heard from May 31.

Some high-tech help is on the way: two U.S. Navy devices capable of picking up the flight recorders’ emergency beacons far below on the ocean floor. What caused the Airbus A330-200 to plunge into the middle of the ocean May 31 with 228 people on board might not be known until those black boxes are found.

But some Air France pilots aren’t waiting for a definitive answer. With investigators looking at the possibility that external speed monitors iced over and gave dangerously false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm, a union is urging pilots to refuse to fly Airbus A330 and A340 planes unless the monitors — known as Pitot tubes — are replaced.

An internal memo sent to Air France pilots Monday and obtained by The Associated Press urges them to refuse to fly unless at least two of the three Pitot sensors on each planes have been replaced. The instruments have drawn attention because of other incidents in which the monitors have iced over at high altitudes.

The leader of another pilots’ union, however, said Monday that Pitot troubles probably didn’t cause the Flight 447 disaster.

Searchers must move quickly to find answers in the cockpit voice and data recorders, because acoustic pingers on the boxes begin to fade 30 days after crashes.

While large pieces of plane debris — along with 16 bodies — has helped narrow the search, it remains a daunting task in waters up to 1.5 miles deep and an ocean floor marked by rugged mountains.

“Finding the debris helps because you can eliminate a large part of the ocean,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Willie Berges, chief of the U.S. military liaison office in Brazil and commander of the American military forces supporting the search operation.