A Brazilian helicopter crew recovered the first debris from Air France Flight 447 on Thursday, pulling a cargo pallet from the Atlantic Ocean. No sign of human remains have been seen, and Air France has told families that the jetliner broker apart, killing all 228 people on board. Two buoys—standard emergency equipment on jetliners—also were recovered from the sea about 550 kilometers northeast of Brazil's northern Fernando de Noronha islands by the helicopter crew, which was working off a Brazilian naval ship. Flight 447 disappeared en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday night. It was the deadliest crash in Air France history and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001. With the cockpit voice and data recorders still missing—thought to be on the ocean floor at a depth of between 2,000 and 3,000 meters—investigators were relying heavily on the airplane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened as it flew through thunderstorms. The messages detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the jetliner broke apart in the sky, some experts have said.
