Brazilian Officials: Ships On Way To Plane Debris Field

Brazilian Officials: Ships On Way To Plane Debris Field

NEW DETAILS: RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CNN) -- Three commercial ships were expected to arrive around midday Tuesday at an Atlantic Ocean debris field believed connected to an Air France jet that disappeared Monday with 228 passengers and crew onboard, Brazilian aviation officials said.

Earlier Tuesday, searchers found an airplane seat, an orange life vest, small white fragments, an oil drum and signs of oil and kerosene around 700 kilometers (435 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, said Brazilian Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral. 

The search will continue but there was not enough material to officially say it is wreckage from Flight 447, Amaral said.

The debris was found 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of the plane's flight path, another Brazilian Air Force official said.

The Airbus A330 encountered heavy turbulence early Monday, about three hours after beginning what was to be an 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, according to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon.

The majority of the people on the flight came from Brazil, France and Germany. Other victims were from 29 other countries, including two from the United States. One passenger held dual citizenship with the United States and another nation but was traveling on the other passport, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday. State Department spokesman Robert Wood did not identify the passenger or give other details.

Fernando de Noronha is an archipelago of 21 islands around 355 kilometers (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil. It lies near the flight path between Rio de Janeiro and Paris.

A report by the crew from the Brazilian airline TAM who said they saw "shiny spots" in the sea along the route of Flight 447 also prompted a search in the territorial waters off the African nation of Senegal.

Senegal is northeast of Fernando de Noronha and near the plane's presumed flight path.

Ten Brazilian Air Force aircraft were conducting the search.

A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion airplane will join the search later Tuesday, the U.S. military said. The maritime patrol aircraft and 21 crew members arrived in Brazil on Tuesday from its forward operating location at Comalapa Air Base, El Salvador, where the plane was supporting illegal trafficking detection operations, the military said.

The missing Air France plane has built-in homing devices that may help searchers find it, but that could take up to a week, said Greg Feith, former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Homing devices such as "pingers," which are underwater locator beacons attached to flight data and cockpit voice recorders, can transmit signals from as deep as 14,000 feet.

"They're water-activated, so if they're sitting at the bottom of the ocean, of course, then the military assets will have to go in there with listening devices and try and home in on those particular signals," Feith said.

Factors such as the amount of time since the crash and the speed of ocean currents will determine how long it may take to locate the wreckage, if the debris is confirmed as being from the plane.

"What they're going to have to do now is some reverse engineering, find out the location of this debris. Then they're going to have to figure out what the tide speed was. It's been around now for 28 hours. Now they're going to have to back up that course probably several hundred miles to the actual area of the wreckage," Feith said. 

Shortly before it disappeared, the plane's automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating that "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down," Air France CEO Gourgeon told reporters Monday.

The jet, which was flying at 35,000 feet and at 521 mph, also sent a warning that it had lost pressure, the Brazilian air force said.

There was no contact with the crew during the time that the automatic messages were being sent, Gourgeon said.

"It was probable that it was a little bit after those messages that the impact of the plane took place in the Atlantic," he added.

A team of approximately 20 Air France staff members, including two doctors and a nurse, arrived in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday morning to assist families of the victims, the airline said.

The passengers included 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby, and there were 12 crew members, Air France said. Of the crew, 11 were French and one was Brazilian.

An official list of victims by name was not available Tuesday afternoon, but two Americans on board -- Michael Harris, 60, and his wife, Anne, 54 -- were identified by the couple's family and his employer.

"Anne and Mike were indeed a beautiful couple inside and out, and I miss them terribly already," said Anne Harris' sister, Mary Miley.

Michael Harris was a geologist in Rio de Janeiro for Devon Energy, the largest U.S.-based independent natural gas and oil producer, according to a company spokesman.

The couple had lived in the city since July 2008 and were traveling to Paris for a training seminar and vacation, Miley told CNN.

Prince Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca -- a member of Brazil's non-reigning royal family -- was on the flight, the Orleans and Braganca family, descendants of the Brazilian royal family, confirmed Monday. Pedro Luis was 26.

In addition, a spokeswoman for the French tire company Michelin told CNN that two executives were on board. She identified them as the president of Michelin Latin America, Luiz Roberto Anastacio, and the director of informatics, Antonio Gueiros. 

The jet was 4 years old and had last undergone routine maintenance on April 16.

Its crew consisted of three pilots, including a 58-year-old captain who had logged 11,000 hours in flight, and nine cabin crew members, Air France said in a new release. About 1,700 of the captain's hours were on two Airbus models. Of the two co-pilots -- ages 37 and 32 -- one had 3,000 hours of flying experience and the other 6,600 hours. The aircraft had flown 18,870 hours, the statement said.

         --CNN's Nesta Distin and journalist Helena DeMoura contributed to this report.