Airlines Replace Monitors After Air France Crash

GREG KELLER

RECIFE, Brazil (AP) — Airlines moved quickly Tuesday to replace speed monitors like those suspected of feeding false information to the computers on Air France Flight 447 and possibly leading the plane to break up over the Atlantic Ocean.

Seventeen more bodies were pulled from the sea Tuesday, bringing the number recovered to 41. Another 187 have yet to be found. The first remains were brought to land by helicopter and will be flown to this coastal city Wednesday for identification.

Federal police began visiting families in Rio de Janeiro to collect genetic material — hair, blood, a cheek swab — to help identify the corpses.

Figuring out where the victims were seated and studying their injuries might help explain what brought down Flight 447 as it flew into thunderstorms on May 31, according to Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.

With the plane's data recorders still missing, investigators have been focusing on the possibility that external speed monitors — called Pitot tubes — iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers in a thunderstorm.