Paris: Air France has agreed to replace within days sensors on all of its Airbus A330 and A340 airplanes, parts that are suspected of being involved in last week's crash, a pilots' union said on Tuesday.
The cause of the crash is not yet known, but investigators are looking at the role of airspeed sensors known as pitot tubes, among other factors.
Air France said on Saturday that it had begun replacing the sensors throughout its fleet in April.
An Air France representative told CNN that the pilots' union SNPL will meet with company officials on Tuesday afternoon and that the airline would not comment until after the meeting.
A smaller Air France pilots' union, ALTER, has advised its pilots not to fly planes until their pitot tubes are replaced.
The plane manufacturer had advised airlines to update the pitot tubes, but the change was not mandatory.
Investigators in Paris, France, said Saturday that the Air France flight sent 24 automated error messages about four minutes before it crashed. The messages suggest the plane may have been flying too fast or too slow through severe thunderstorms it encountered before the crash, officials said.
Air France 447 disappeared over the Atlantic early June 1. The jet was en route to Paris, from the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro with 228 passengers and crew aboard.
The first bodies to be recovered from the crash returned to land on Tuesday, as helicopters landed on the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, according to a CNN reporter on the scene.
Two Brazilian helicopters, each able to carry up to eight bodies, took off earlier to rendezvous with the Brazilian navy ship carrying the 24 bodies that have been recovered.
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Most of the bodies were found on Monday floating about 273 miles (440 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago northeast of the Brazilian coast, military officials said.
France is sending a submarine to the suspected crash site to search for wreckage, including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, commonly known as black boxes. The United States is also sending equipment to help with the search, which aims to find the cause of the crash.
The exact location of the crash has not been determined because ocean currents probably caused the bodies and debris to drift in the days since the crash.
The part of the ocean where the debris and bodies have been found ranges from about 19,700 to 26,250 feet deep. The search area covers 77,220 square miles, an area nearly as big as the country of Romania.
Recovery of bodies and debris is significant not only for families but also for crash investigators, said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
"Even if they don't find anything else, they can get some very important clues from the pieces that they do find and from the human remains," she said Saturday.
She said investigators would be able to tell whether there was an explosion from possible residue on the bodies or other items. Or, if water is found in the lungs of victims, investigators would know that the plane went down intact, she said.
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