Autopsies shed little light on crash

PARIS - Autopsies on the bodies recovered after the Airbus disaster in the south Atlantic suggest there was no explosion or fire and therefore no terrorist attack.

But two weeks after Air France's AF447 fell from the sky between the Brazilian and West African coasts, the mystery of what happened to the plane and the 228 people on board remains largely impenetrable.

The automatic messages sent from the aircraft in its last minutes suggest problems with speed sensors and the rudder in the tail.

However, French investigators are still uncertain whether these were symptoms or the principal causes of the difficulties which overwhelmed the Airbus 330-200 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1.

Autopsy reports on the first 16 bodies recovered from the ocean seem to have put to rest the theory that the aircraft was the victim of a terrorist attack.

Details of the autopsies leaked to the Brazilian press indicate the bodies showed no sign of burning or damage from an explosion. The bodies were recovered whole and x-rays revealed no evidence they had been penetrated by shards of metal.

The 50 corpses discovered so far were recovered in two groups more than 80km apart. This suggests the aircraft may have disintegrated in midair.

An aviation website, EuroCockpit, has published the full details of the 24 automatic messages transmitted by the airbus to Air France headquarters in the minutes before it crashed.

The messages show the aircraft may have had a problem with its "rudder limiter", which prevents the main rudder in the tail from moving beyond its safe range.

Aviation experts said that, in theory, if the rudder moved too far at speed, it could break off and take the "vertical stabiliser" - the main part of the tailplane - with it. The tailplane is the largest piece of wreckage from the A330-200 to have been recovered so far.

However, the experts also pointed out there was nothing in the automatic message which proved the "rudder limiter" had failed, causing the crash. The device might have simply locked itself into place because of the conflicting speed readings.

"The message tells us that the rudder limiter was inoperative," said Jack Casey, an aviation safety expert in Washington.

It is believed that the erratic speed readings may have been caused by malfunctioning speed sensors but it still remains unclear how this problem could have brought down the aircraft so rapidly.

A French nuclear submarine is searching the ocean depths up to 4500m below the crash site in the hope of picking up a message from the beacons fitted to the aircraft's flight recorders.

Senior French air crash investigation officials have warned it may never be possible to explain the crash if the recorders or "black boxes" are not found.

A Dutch ship towing a United States Navy listening device has been sent to troll the Atlantic in search of the data and voice recorders.

- INDEPENDENT