U.S. & World

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil (CBS) ― Air France has told families of passengers on Flight 447 that the jetliner broke apart and there was no hope for survivors, a grief counselor said Thursday as military aircraft tried to narrow their search for the remains of the plane.

Air France's CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told the families in a private meeting that the plane broke apart either in the air or when it slammed into the ocean, according to Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel family members and was at the Wednesday meeting with Air France. The plane, carrying 228 people, disappeared after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris on Sunday night.

Brazil's air force said Thursday that they have recovered wreckage from the Air France flight that disappeared while en route to Paris.

A structural support piece of the jet about eight feet  long was fished from the ocean. It was found about 340 miles northeast of Brazil's northern Fernando de Noronha islands.

Also found Thursday around 1 p.m. (1600 GMT, noon EDT) were two buoys.

No bodies or human remains have been spotted.

The helicopter was working off one of the navy ships that reached the debris early Thursday.

The air force released the information in a statement on its Web site.

Investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms. They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.

"What is clear is that there was no landing. There's no chance the escape slides came out," said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who heads an association founded for victims of UTA flight 772, shot down in 1989 by Libyan terrorists.

Gourgeon told families there were no survivors, according to Denoix de Saint-Marc. That would make this Air France's deadliest plane crash, and the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001.

The French agency investigating the crash of the Air France jet over the Atlantic says automatic messages received from the plane have failed to show exactly how fast the aircraft was flying.

The Accident Investigation Agency says only two findings have been established. One is that the series of automatic messages sent from Flight 447 were "incoherent" regarding the plane's speed. The other is that the plane's route Sunday night was spotted with stormy, unstable weather.

The agency warned against any "hasty interpretation or speculation" about the crash. The French newspaper Le Monde had reported, without naming sources, that the Air France plane was flying at the wrong speed.

Air France Flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro for Paris on Sunday night but disappeared over the Atlantic.

Brazilian military planes located new debris from Air France Flight 447 Wednesday, after spotting an airline seat and oil slick on Tuesday.

"As of today French planes have not found any debris that could have come from the Air France Airbus that disappeared. There have been radar detections made by the AWACS (radar plane) ... and each time these signals have not corresponded to debris," Prazuck said.

He said French teams have been searching in different places and at different times from the Brazilian search teams, which may be why they have not been able to identify the seats and other debris that the Brazilians picked up.

Three more French overflights were planned for Thursday, Prazuck said. A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane has also joined Brazil's Air Force in trying to spot debris.

Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with some 140 miles separating pieces of wreckage they have spotted. The overall zone is roughly 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, where the ocean floor drops as low as 22,950 feet below sea level.

The floating debris includes a 23-foot chunk of plane, but pilots have spotted no signs of survivors, Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said.

Heavy weather delayed until next week the arrival of deep-water submersibles considered key to finding the black box voice and data recorders that will help answer the question of what happened to the airliner.

But even with the equipment, the lead French investigator questioned whether the recorders would ever be found in such a deep and rugged part of the ocean.

Some areas of the ocean floor there are as much as three miles down. Searchers will be listening for the automated 'ping' that the boxes give off but that pinging is only designed to continue for about a month, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.

But some experts think, if the weather conditions are favorable, recovering the data recorders is very possible.

"I worked on several crashes in the past where the black boxes were under lots and lots of water in the ocean, and the technology is very good these days. You have the submersibles, you have submarines, and that signal can be heard between 14,000 to 20,000 feet of water," Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, told CBS' The Early Show.

Still, the recovery operation will be "at the whim of Mother Nature," said Schiavo.

Even if the black boxes aren't recovered, Schiavo told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen there will still be enough data to piece together the events leading to the crash.

"In any crash a lot of the answers are contained on things that are back on the ground - at the maintenance base or in the weather radar … I do think there will be an awful lot of data there that can give them the clue as to what went wrong."

A Brazilian newspaper, quoting from sources in the country's Air Force, said automatic data messages from the plane detailed a series of critical failures to its power, computer and flight control systems. Those messages were the last that was heard from the plane, reports Phillips.

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time Sunday saying he was flying through an area of black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning.

Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.

The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure - catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.

Air France spokesman Nicolas Petteau referred questions about the messages to the French accident investigation agency, BEA, whose spokesman Martine Del Bono said the agency declined to comment. Brazil's defense minister Nelson Jobim also declined to comment, saying that the accident investigation is being done by France. Brazil is leading the recovery effort.

Other experts agreed that the automatic reports of system failures on the plane strongly suggest it broke up in the air, perhaps due to fierce thunderstorms, turbulence, lightning or a catastrophic combination of events.

"These are telling us the story of the crash. They are not explaining what happened to cause the crash," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)