Air France 447 - Air France jet crash debris retrieved

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (CNN) -- The Brazilian navy began retrieving debris Thursday from an Air France passenger jet which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with 228 people onboard as investigators continued to hunt for clues into the cause of the accident.

Brazilian Air Force planes spotted an oil slick and four debris fields Wednesday but rain and rough seas had kept searchers from plucking any of the debris from the water.

Investigators have not determined what caused the plane to crash. The flight data recorders have not been recovered, and the plane's crew did not send any messages indicating problems before the plane disappeared.

A Spanish pilot said he saw an "intense flash" in the area where Flight 447 came down off the coast of Brazil, while a Brazilian minister appeared to rule out a mid-air explosion.

Meanwhile, a report in France suggested the pilots were perhaps flying at the "wrong speed" for the violent thunderstorm they flew into early on Monday before the Airbus A330's systems failed.

Le Monde newspaper reported that Airbus was sending a warning to operators of A330 jets with new advice on flying in storms.

As several ships trawled the crash site in the Atlantic, Brazil's defense minister said a 20-kilometer (12-mile) oil slick near where the plane, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, went down indicated it probably did not break up until it hit the water.

If true, that would rule out an in-flight explosion as the cause of the crash of Air France Flight 447, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told reporters.

However, both pilots of an Air Comet flight from Lima to Lisbon sent a written report on the bright flash they said they saw to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority, the airline told CNN.

"Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds," the captain wrote.

Air Comet declined to identify the pilot's name, but said he waited until landing to inform Air Comet management about what he saw. Air Comet then informed Spanish civil aviation authorities. The Air Comet co-pilot, and a passenger aboard the same flight, also saw the light.

But Robert Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said the question of determining where a plane broke up "is a very difficult one to deal with." He told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" that "there are lots of things that cause a plane to go out of control."

He added that extremely strong winds are not unusual near Brazil. Pilots who fly over that part of the world keep track of radar and "are very, very wary about the weather as they go back and forth down in that area."

Jobim said currents had strewn the debris widely and that the search area had been expanded to 300 square miles. Watch report on the struggle to find pieces of the plane »

The Airbus A330 went down about three hours after beginning what was to have been an 11-hour flight. No survivors have been found. Map of Flight AF 447's flight path »

Among Wednesday's finds were objects in a circular 5-kilometer (3-mile) area, including one object with a diameter of 7 meters (23 feet) and 10 other objects, some of which were metallic, Brazilian Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral said.

Searchers found two debris fields and identified the wreckage as coming from Flight 447. The debris was found about 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers off the northeast coast of Brazil. It included an airplane seat and an orange float.

Eleven aircraft and five ships are engaged in the search, including airplanes from France and the U.S. Watch as experts question whether recovery is possible »

The NTSB said Wednesday it has accepted an invitation from the French aviation accident investigation authority, the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, to aid in the investigation.

The aircraft's computer system did send about four minutes of automated messages indicating a loss of cabin pressure and an electrical failure, officials have said.

Some investigators have noted that the plane flew through a severe lightning storm. Foul play has not been ruled out.

Air France had received a bomb threat May 27 for a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Paris, sources in the Argentine military and police told CNN on Wednesday.

According to the officials, who had been briefed on the incident and declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigation, the Air France office in Buenos Aires received the threat from a man speaking Spanish.

Authorities checked the Boeing 777 and found nothing. Security was tightened during check-in for Flight 415, which left on time and without incident, the officials said.

Although officials have said the likelihood of finding survivors of Flight 447's crash are small, authorities have not closed the door on the possibility.

Most of the people on the flight came from Brazil, France and Germany. The remaining victims were from 29 other countries, including three passengers from the United States.

French officials say they may never find the jet's flight data recorders in the ocean that experts say is up to 7,500 meters (24,600 feet) deep in the area where the plane crashed.

But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed optimism that the recorders, also known as black boxes, would be found.

The recorders are built to emit locator signals for up to 30 days. The French government has sent a research vessel carrying a deep-diving submersible to where the debris was found.

CNN correspondent John Zarrella in Rio de Janeiro and journalist Brian Byrnes from Buenos Aires contributed to this report.

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