The Blackhawk helicopter skimmed over the sea before flying between green hills and coming to rest amid the puddles on the tarmac at Fernando de Noronha. On this island 400 miles off Brazil, eight days after the worst disaster in Air France's history, a solemn procession of the dead of flight 447 began.
For a moment helicopter and ground crew dressed in army fatigues and surgical masks stood, their heads bowed. Then the first small green bag was lifted onto a waiting stretcher and fastened into place. Over the next 30 minutes, eight body bags were passed hand to hand from the helicopter and transported to two waiting refrigeration units, pulled by lorry onto the runway.
The exercise was carried out in silence only punctuated by the snapping cameras of photographers. No families were present to receive the bodies.
But outside, local people in T-shirts and flip-flops gathered on the roadside.
The island paradise of Fernando de Noronha could not be a more incongruous setting for the sight of body bags being unloaded into the sunshine. The island is in mourning for those who perished so close to its shores.
Only 3,000 people live here, proud of the island's glorious white sand beaches and clear seas. Many are distraught that their home has been turned into what amounts to a makeshift morgue born of a terrible tragedy.
"I wanted to come here to pay my respects," said Rosanna Silva, who runs a tourist restaurant on the island. "The island has never seen anything like this before. It is such a peaceful place. To think all those people died so close.
"We just want the bodies to be given back to their families and this nightmare to be over."
By the time the second helicopter, a Super Puma, returned to the island hours later, heavy rain had returned. It blew in sheets across the runway, buffeting the helicopter as it attempted to land. This time there was no ceremonial atmosphere as stretcher bearers slipped and struggled in the wind whipped up by the rotors to unload eight more body bags.
Inside the refrigeration units, police unzipped the bags one by one and started the grisly process of trying to identify the remains.
The team of investigators who arrived with the refrigeration units on Monday are hoping to identify them using dental records and fingerprints. This, they hope, may end the anguish for at least a few of the families of the 228 people who lost loved ones last week.
Police in Rio de Janeiro have been visiting families to collect genetic material hair, blood, cheek swabs to help identify the corpses.
The authorities want to transport the bodies to the Brazilian mainland as soon as possible, and by afternoon officials were already preparing a C-130 aircraft for this purpose. There they were due to met by a delegation of family officials. The dead come from 33 countries and Interpol said an international effort would be required in the identification process.
Ronald Noble, the organisation's secretary general, said: "Since the victims from this tragedy came from all parts of the globe, international collaboration will be essential." Even as the identification process got under way the investigation into the cause of flight 447's crash appeared to be focusing on the possibility that external speed sensors called pitot tubes may have given false readings to the plane's computers during a storm.
Unions representing Air France pilots reported that the airline had decided to replace sensors on all of its Airbus A330 and A340 jets.
Pilots had previously reported several incidents in which the sensors had iced up leading to loss of airspeed information. AF447 had not had its sensors replaced.
"What we know is that other planes that have experienced incorrect airspeed indications have had the same pitots. And planes with the new pitot tubes have never had such problems," said Air France pilot Eric Derivry, a spokesman for the SNPL pilots union.
Meanwhile the French nuclear submarine Émeraude is due to arrive later this week to aid the search for the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.
The urgency of the search has been underlined by the 30-day time limit within which the acoustic beacons on the black boxes can operate. The US navy is also providing devices capable of picking up the beacons to a depth of almost four miles.
As that search continues in the Atlantic, Recife – one of Brazil's most violent cities with one of the highest murder rates in the world – is working to clear its already overcrowded morgue in preparation for the arrival of the bodies from Fernando de Noronha.
Seventeen more were pulled from the sea yesterday, bringing the number recovered to 41.
Many of the families of the victims have been waiting for news in Rio. Others who initially flew to Brazil in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy have returned home.
"People are trying to carry on in as normal a way as they possibly can," said Marteen van Sluijs, the brother of one of the missing Air France passengers, outside the central Rio hotel where some family members are now staying.
For Isa Furtado, whose daughter was also on the flight, the daily discoveries are too much to bear.
"I just want them to leave my daughter where she is," she said. "This rescue is so painful".
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/09/air-france-crash-victims-brazil
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