On the basis of the first factual elements gathered in the course of the investigation, the

following facts have been established:

• The crew possessed the licenses and ratings required to undertake the flight,
• The airplane possessed a valid Certificate of Airworthiness, and had been maintained

in accordance with the regulations,

• the airplane had taken off from Rio de Janeiro without any known technical problems,

except on one of the three radio handling panels,

• no problems were indicated by the crew to Air France or during contacts with the Brazilian

controllers,

• no distress messages were received by the control centres or by other airplanes,
• there were no satellite telephone communications between the airplane and the

ground,

• the last radio exchange between the crew and Brazilian ATC occurred at 1 h 35 min

15 s. The airplane arrived at the edge of radar range of the Brazilian control centres,

• at 2 h 01, the crew tried, without success for the third time, to connect to the Dakar

ATC ADS-C system,

• up to the last automatic position point, received at 2 h 10 min 35 s, the flight had followed

the route indicated in the flight plan,

• the meteorological situation was typical of that encountered in the month of June in

the inter-tropical convergence zone,

• there were powerful cumulonimbus clusters on the route of AF447. Some of them

could have been the centre of some notable turbulence,

• several airplanes that were flying before and after AF 447, at about the same altitude,

altered their routes in order to avoid cloud masses,

• twenty-four automatic maintenance messages were received between 2 h 10 and 2 h

15 via the ACARS system. These messages show inconsistency between the measured

speeds as well as the associated consequences,

• before 2 h 10, no maintenance messages had been received from AF 447, with the

exception of two messages relating to the configuration of the toilets,

• the operator’s and the manufacturer’s procedures mention actions to be undertaken

by the crew when they have doubts as to the speed indications,

• the last ACARS message was received towards 2 h 14 min 28 s,
• the flight was not transferred between the Brazilian and Senegalese control centres,

69

• between 8 h and 8 h 30, the first emergency alert messages were sent by the Madrid

and Brest control centres,

• the first bodies and airplane parts were found on 6 June,
• the elements identified came from all areas of the airplane,
• visual examination showed that the airplane was not destroyed in flight ; it appears to

have struck the surface of the sea in a straight line with high vertical acceleration.