Broken Bones Suggest Flight 447 Broke Up in Midair

(NEWSER) - An Italian woman who cheated fate when she missed her flight on the doomed Air France jet has been killed in a car crash, the London Times reports. Johanna Ganthaler and her husband were late to the Rio airport on May 31 and caught another flight the next day. The two then traveled to Austria, where their car collided with an oncoming truck. Her husband was seriously injured. More»

(AP) - Brazilian searchers found a large tail section from an Air France jet today, one of the biggest pieces yet recovered from wreckage that could help narrow the search for Flight 447's black boxes. A US Navy team is bringing in high-tech underwater listening devices to detect pings from the data and voice recorders. Brazilian and French military ships had so far recovered 16 bodies and large amounts of plane wreckage—reduced from the 17 reported yesterday. More»

(NEWSER) - The Brazilian Air Force has recovered the first two bodies from the Air France crash, the BBC reports. They also found a suitcase and a backback with a laptop inside. “We confirm the recovery from the water debris and bodies from the Air France plane," an air force spokesman said. “We can't give more information without confirming what we have.” The remains were recovered this morning, and experts are on their way to investigate. More»

(NEWSER) - The first Brazilian navy ship arrived on the scene where Air France flight 447 is thought to have gone down, but aviation officials aren't holding out much hope of finding the black boxes, reports the BBC. "We cannot rule out that we will not find the flight recorders," said one French official. Deep-sea submersibles won't arrive until next week because of bad weather. More»

(NEWSER) - The Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean early today after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris is believed to have crashed, Reuters reports. Mechanical malfunctions kept the aircraft's crew from keeping in touch with air-traffic controllers after they reported serious turbulence about 4 hours into the flight. "It is probably a combination of circumstances that could have led to the crash," an airline rep said. More»