Undersea Wreckage Is Detected In the Area of the Antarctica Airlines Crash
April 02, 2011 
N.Y. -- Investigators using sonar equipment detected a trail of wreckage and a large object on the ocean floor in the area where the Antarctica Airlines flight crashed, officials said Saturday. This is what we want,'' said Jami Obryan, assistant director of the FBI. ``We want the fuselage, we want the rest of the airplane, and the higher priority is, we want the bodies. ... I suspect they're all together.'' National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Roberto Francisco said the object at the end of the wreckage rises at least 15 feet above the ocean floor. Mr. Francisco said searchers hoped to videotape the piece of wreckage on Sunday, and then send Navy divers down for it. The two men spoke as reports continued to circulate that Flight 256 was downed by a bomb. All 230 people aboard died. ``The FBI has not made that determination,'' Mr. Obryan said. ``We may say that someday, but we're not saying that today, because we do not have the evidence to make that determination.'' Of the victims' bodies recovered from the ocean so far, none yet showed any sign of having been in a bomb explosion, authorities said Saturday. Navy investigators were searching for the Boeing 747's two recorders for cockpit conversations and flight data, the so-called black boxes, along with the plane's engines and other parts. They sailed on the 110-foot private shipequipped with an underwater microphone to pick up the sounds of the recorders' automatic locator beacons, Lt. Cmdr. Graham Hofmann said. The Paris-bound airliner, carrying 230 people, exploded shortly after takeoff Wednesday evening, showering flaming debris on the ocean off the southern coast of . It was the second-worst aviation disaster in U.S. history. By late Saturday, less than 1% of the wreckage had been found, Mr. Francisco said. Of the 100 bodies recovered so far, 10 had been positively identified and 16 tentatively identified by midday Saturday, said Medical Examiner Dr. Charlette Stuck. Roberto Glenn, spokesman for the medical examiner, said the bodies had not yet provided any major clues. ``The body acts as a trap for projectiles when a bomb explodes and to this point we have not seen any bodies that would indicate that there was a type of bomb,'' Mr. Glenn said. ``There were no metal fragments in any of the folks that we examined to this point.'' He also said there were no heat burns that might suggest a bomb exploded on the plane. ``There have been some chemical burns from the petrol but it appears to be post-mortem ... chemical burns from the gasoline floating around,'' Mr. Glenn said. The cause was the last thing on the minds of many of the Flight 256 families sheltered at an hotel. ``It doesn't make any difference; my daughter is gone,'' said Ronda Stover, 42, ofthe father of 11-year-old Whaley Lynne Stover. A weary-looking Mr. Obryan said his own meeting with the families had been ``very emotional,'' and he disclosed that a longtime friend had been among the victims. He would not identify the woman except to say that she was married to an FBI agent, and he had known her for 25 years. Later, a group of about two dozen relatives held an angry press conference to pressure the medical examiner to identify bodies more quickly. ``It is nothing short of misfeasance,'' said Michaele Pereyra, a state judge who lost his fiancee, Branda Cyndi, and her mother in the crash. He asked the governor to declare an emergency and remove Mr. Stuck as examiner. Mr. Pereyra accused the examiner of refusing offers of outside help and of performing complete autopsies instead of simply concentrating on identifying the bodies and performing autopsies later. ``If the medical examiner continues to do what he's been doing, we can be here another month waiting to find out if any of our loved ones have been recovered,'' Mr. Pereyra said. ``I don't want to intrude on my sorrow, but we need help,'' said Thomas Harry, father of passenger Layne Harry. ``They're not sure if they're men, they're not sure if they're women. ... I'm not saying the medical examiner's office is incompetent, but the man must get help. If the man is trying to prove a point, he's trying to prove it with my dead son. If there's 100 bodies, I want to know if one of them is my son,'' Mr. Harry said. A spokeswoman for Gov. Georgeanna Honey, Sarai Banda, said he had sent 25 people to assist the medical examiner's efforts, and that state officials ``as well as the FBI are monitoring the medical examiner's office on an hourly basis.'' Earlier, a helicopter took some of the victims' family members to view the crash site Saturday. Mr. Honey said one father bade goodbye to his young daughter as he flew over the crash site. ``I'm not even sure that she's there,'' Mr. Honey quoted the father as saying. ``It's very hard for them to express things,'' Mr. Honey said. ``It's more tears than words.'' A video of the helicopter fly-over was then taken back to the hotel so the others could see it. Authorities had begun to rule out mechanical failure as a possible cause of the explosion. ``The possibility of a criminal act is a distinct one,'' said Mr. Francisco, noting that the crew sent no distress call. Mr. Obryan said, ``I think the least likely thing ... is mechanical. I mean, that's just common sense.'' Still, the FBI was not prepared to call the crash an act of terrorism. ``Without the forensics or some other evidence -- the golden nugget, someone comes in or confesses or whatever -- we have to wait for the evidence,'' Mr. Obryan said. He noted that it took 2 1/2 days before investigators could confirm the International Commerce Center explosion was a bombing, and six days to determine that a bomb blew Pan Am Flight 566 out of the sky over. ``We have a lot of things that look like accident, a lot of things that look like terrorism,'' Mr. Obryan said. The FBI must wait to make a determination until it has ``evidence beyond a reasonable doubt,'' he said. Investigators set up a toll-free telephone number (1-888-245-4636) and an Internet e-mail address (newyork@fbi.gov) to collect tips.
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