The Spanish Air Force has joined the search for debris from crashed Air France Airbus A330-200 F-GZCP. And the Brazilian Navy dock landing ship (LSD) Rio de Janeiro is due in the search area on Saturday, June 20.

More debris, but no human remains, was recovered on Thursday June 18. This was reported by the Brazilian Air Force, which is responsible for coordinating the operation.

A Fokker F-27 aircraft from 802 squadron, a dedicated search-and-rescue (SAR) unit of the Spanish Air Force based at Las Palmas in the Canary islands, is executing missions under the direction of the SAR Coordination Centre in Dakar, Senegal. Wreckage from the lost aircraft has been drifting northwards into the Dakar Coordination Centre’s area of responsibility.

The F-27 joins Brazilian Air Force and French Navy aircraft carrying out radar and visual search operations across a wide swath of the South Atlantic. The French aircraft, Dassault Atlantique 2 and a Dassault Falcon 50, are operating out of the French base in Dakar.

The Brazilian aircraft are flying from the island of Fernando de Noronha, and (excluding helicopters) comprise an Embraer R-99 air-to-surface surveillance aircraft (which has detected most of the debris from F-GZCP), two Embraer P-95 Bandeirante patrol aircraft, two EADS-Casa C-105 Amazonas transports, and three Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules transports.

The transport aircraft undertake daylight visual reconnaissance missions and, in the case of the Hercules, the grim and sad task of flying bodies of the crash victims, recovered by Brazilian and French warships, from Fernando de Noronha to the Brazilian mainland.

Brazilian and French Navy helicopters, embarked on the warships taking part in the recovery operation, are also retrieving debris and have ferried bodies from smaller ships to larger ones.

Indeed, it was the need to await the arrival of two helicopters which delayed the departure of the Rio de Janeiro for the search zone. The LSD was returning from a mission to Haiti when it was assigned to the search and recovery mission.

It first had to proceed to a position some 25 nautical miles (48 km) north of the port city of Fortaleza in the State of Ceará. At that point, on Thursday June 18, two Navy helicopters, a Helibras UH-12 Esquilo (Brazilian built Eurocopter Squirrel) and a Eurocopter UH-14 Super Puma, landed on the ship, allowing it to leave for the search area.

The Netherlands, UK, and US are also assisting, in different ways, with the search and investigation into the loss of the Airbus.

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