LE BOURGET (France), June 6 (RIA Novosti) - Twenty-four messages automatically sent by an Air France A330 that went missing off Brazil's northeast coast show that the autopilot mode was not on, the French agency investigating air crashes (BEA) said.
Flight 447 bound from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared on Monday four hours after it took off. There were 228 people on board. The debris have not been discovered yet.
According to Paul-Louis Arslanian, who heads the French agency, the autopilot could have stopped working after it received wrong airspeed data.
Meteorologists have said there had been no powerful storms on the aircraft's way, thus doubting an earlier version that a lightning could have destroyed the plane.
Brazil's Air Force chief said Friday that none of the debris recovered during a search for the wreckage of the Airbus 330 belonged to the aircraft.
"We confirm that the objects are not from the wreckage of the plane... it is more likely to be trash, but we will examine it all the same," Brigadier Ramon Borges Cardoso said.
