Brazil's air force has confirmed that it has traced debris in the South Atlantic, but has yet to positively identify it as having come from the missing Air France Airbus A330-200.
It says that an Embraer R-99 remote sensing aircraft, which has been conducting search scans with synthetic aperture radar, detected a signal return overnight from "metallic and non-metallic materials floating in the ocean".
The air force adds that a Lockheed C-130, at 09:49UTC, tracked material - notably an aircraft seat and traces of oil, plus other items - at two locations about 60km distant.
"It is not possible to state that they belong to the missing aircraft," says the air force in a statement.
But the search area is being concentrated on a region about 350nm (650km) north of the Fernando de Noronha islands, from where the R-99 aircraft has been operating.
Diagrams from the air force indicate that this search area lies within the Atlantico oceanic flight information region, east of the section of airway linking the INTOL and TASIL waypoints along which the aircraft was apparently flying when contact was lost.
Air France flight AF447 had departed Rio de Janeiro for Paris Charles de Gaulle on 31 May with 228 passengers and crew on board.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
