After days of painstaking search, Brazilian crews have recovered the first bodies from the Air France plane that disappeared hundreds of kilometers off the coast.
Search crews on Saturday found debris and the bodies of two males from the Airbus 330 200-series jet.
Brazilian Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral broke the news.
Amaral said that this morning at 8:14 local time, Brazilian authorities received confirmation of the recovery from the water of objects from the plane and bodies that belonged to the Air France flight.
Among the items found, a seat with a serial number that matched the plane and a bag with an Air France ticket for the flight inside it.
Brazil's air force has been scouring the remote area some 640 kilometers off the northeast coast since Monday.
Amaral says that the intense search will continue. He says 14 planes are currently being used in the operation along with three naval vessels and he predicts more bodies and debris from the plane will be found.
Meanwhile in Paris, Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of France's Accident Investigation Agency showed reporters an example of a beacon or pinger attached to the so-called black box flight and data recorders that now may be deep below the surface. "This is what we are looking for, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. So what we have are basically microphones, or call it hydrophones, which are built and usually we call them fishers," he said.
Normally, those beacons emit signals for around 30 days before they fade. If located, they could hold vital clues relating to why the plane came down.
228 passengers and crew were on flight 447. The loss is the worst in Air France's 75-year history.
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