Airlines move to replace speed monitors suspected in Air France crash

Airlines moved Tuesday to replace speed monitors like those suspected of feeding false information to the computers on Air France Flight 447, possibly causing the plane to break up over the Atlantic Ocean.

More bodies were pulled from the sea, bringing the number recovered to 41. The first remains were brought to land by helicopter and will be flown to this coastal city today for identification.

There were 228 people aboard Flight 447, which crashed May 31 off Brazil.

With the plane’s voice and flight data recorders still not found, investigators have focused on the possibility that external speed monitors -- called pitot tubes -- iced over and gave false readings to the plane’s computers in a thunderstorm.

A key part of the investigation relies on a burst of 24 automatic messages the plane sent during the last minutes. The signals showed the autopilot was not on, officials said, but it was not clear whether the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because of conflicting airspeed readings.

The L-shaped metal pitot tubes jut from the wing or fuselage of a plane, and are usually heated to prevent icing. The pressure of air entering the tubes lets internal sensors measure the speed and angle of flight. A malfunctioning tube could mislead computers controlling the plane to dangerously accelerate or decelerate.

The largest Air France pilots union, SNPL, said Tuesday at a news conference that Air France had “guaranteed” that no Airbus A330 or A340 planes would leave the ground without at least two of three updated pitot tubes.