Brazil official to AP: Jet crash bodies show fractures; expert says could mean midair breakup

Brazil official to AP: Crash bodies show fractures

SAO PAULO — Bodies recovered in the Air France disaster show multiple fractures in the legs, hips and arms, a Brazilian official said Wednesday. Experts said such injuries suggest the plane broke up in the air.

A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press that autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far showed the fractures. The official spoke on condition he not be named due to department rules.

The description of the bodies and large pieces of the plane recovered point to the jet breaking apart in the air, said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

“Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures — arm, leg, hip fractures — it’s a good indicator of a midflight break up,” Ciacco said. “Especially if you’re seeing large pieces of aircraft as well.”

On Wednesday, the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper — citing unamed investigators — reported the pattern of fractures and said some of the victims were found with little or no clothing. The newspaper earlier reported the bodies also showed no signs of burns.

Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, D.C., who is a former accident investigator, said the lack of clothing could be significant: “In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away.”

He also said multiple fractures are consistent with a midair breakup of the plane.

“Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall — even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect,” Casey said. “Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess.”

When a jet crashes into water mostly intact — such as the Egypt Air plane that hit the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from New York in 1999 — the debris and bodies are broken into small pieces, Ciacco said.

“When you’ve had impact in the water, there is a lot more fragmentation of the bodies. They hit the water with a higher force,” he said.

Lack of burn evidence would not necessarily rule out an explosion somewhere outside the passenger cabin, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

If something caused the lower fuselage to burn or explode, “passengers would not be exposed to any blast damage” and the plane would still disintegrate in flight,” he said. “These are scenarios that cannot be ruled out.”