FRANCE: Families of AF447 air crash victims meet with French government officials to discuss return of the bodies

Record ID: 772049

  • Title: FRANCE: Families of AF447 air crash victims meet with French government officials to discuss return of the bodies
  • Date: 16th June 2011
  • Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (JUNE 15, 2011) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF FRENCH TRANSPORT MINISTRY (SOUNDBITE) (Portuguese) PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE FAMILIES FROM THE AIR FRANCE CRASH AF447, NELSON MARINHO, SAYING: "This meeting is only to talk about the planning of the delivery of the bodies to the respective families. I don't know how the collection of DNA material will work, o
  • Embargoed: 1st July 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France, France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Disasters,Transport
  • Reuters ID: LVADOSVEG3K8KFT3XF6XPWG39J05
  • Story Text: Families of the victims of the AF447 plane that crashed in the sea off Brazil two years ago met members of the French Transport ministry on Wednesday (June 15) to discuss how the remains of their relatives would be returned after a French search team retrieved all salvageable bodies from the sunken wreckage of an Air France airliner.
    "This meeting is only to talk about the planning of the delivery of the bodies to the respective families. I don't know how the collection of DNA material will work, or if they will take advantage of the data bank that the Brazilian Federal police has from the time when it was initially recovered," said Nelson Marinho, President of the Association for the Families from the Air France crash AF447.
    A French official representing the families has said all the remains of 104 victims of the Air France flight AF447 crash had now been recovered and the search vessel was headed to France for investigators to work on identifying them, and that the search team had prepared a commemorative plaque to leave with the sunken wreckage before departing.
    Each body had to be painstakingly hauled up from a depth of some 3,900 metres (12,800 feet). The first bodies, brought up in early May, were still strapped into their airline seats.
    All 228 passengers and crew aboard died when flight AF447 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2009. In the days after the crash, rescuers recovered about 50 bodies floating in the sea but the main wreckage was only found this year after extensive searches.
    In what has been an emotional few weeks for the families, data recovered from the flight recorders late in May showed the aircraft plunged out of control for four minutes before crashing into the ocean. The revelations have raised questions over how the crew handled what appeared to be a "stall alarm" emergency.
    The black boxes from the Airbus A330 airliner showed the pilot was away from the cockpit, and a 32-year-old junior pilot pulled the plane's nose up as the aircraft became unstable, generating an audible stall warning.
    But Marinho said a defect in the plane was also responsible and that they wanted it to be recalled.
    "We have discovered in these past two years that the Airbus has a manufacturing defect. And this is our fight, to get them to recognise this fact. If it were up to us, this plane would never take off again. The German association has asked a French judge to order the grounding of the plane until the causes of the defect have been determined," he said.
    The French military police force in charge of the recovery operation believes the bodies can still be identified, despite having spent two years in the depths of the ocean.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register