An airplane seat cushion, a life jacket, metallic debris and signs of fuel were found in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean yesterday by Brazilian airplanes searching for a missing Air France airliner.
The debris was spotted from the air by Brazilian military pilots searching 650km north of the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, roughly along the path that the jet was taking before it disappeared with 228 people on board, Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral said.
There were no signs of life.
Amaral said authorities would not be able to confirm that the debris was from the plane until they can retrieve some of it from the ocean for identification.
Brazilian military ships were not expected to arrive at the area until today.
The discovery came more than 24 hours after the jet bound from Rio to Paris went missing, with all feared dead.
Stormy seas and heavy clouds hampered the search yesterday for the wreckage of Air France Flight 447. French investigators said a series of extraordinary events likely brought the airliner down.
The four-year-old Airbus jet was last heard from at 2:14am GMT on Monday en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Investigators on both sides of the ocean worked through the night to determine what brought it down - wind and hail from towering thunderheads, lightning, or a catastrophic combination of factors.
France's junior minister for transport, Dominique Bussereau, predicted a "very long investigation. It could be several days, several weeks or several months."
French police were studying passenger lists and maintenance records and preparing to take DNA from passengers' relatives to help identify any bodies. If there are no survivors, as feared, it would be the worst aviation disaster since 2001.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin said "we have no signs so far" indicating terrorism was involved, but told French radio "all hypotheses must be studied."
The French minister overseeing transportation, Jean-Louis Borloo, said officials did not think that lightning, even from a fierce tropical storm, could have brought down the aircraft.
"There really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation," Borloo said.
The chance of finding survivors now "is very, very small, even nonexistent," Borloo said.
"The race against the clock has begun" to find the plane's two black boxes, which emit signals up to 30 days.
On board were 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians. A smaller number of citizens from 27 other countries were also on board.
