Too Soon To Tell If Terror Ties Doomed Air France Flt. 447

The New York Post is reporting that two passengers on board the doomed Air France Flight 447 had ties to terror groups.

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on board the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.

French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31st.

Flight AF447 crashed in mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.

While it is certain that there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.

Without actual evidence from the plane itself - wreckage indicating an explosion or sabotage, there's no way to rule in or out this particular theory of why the plane crashed. Remains of passengers and debris continues to be collected from the crash site, more than 100 miles off the coast of Brazil.

Investigators continue searching for the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, which would shed more light on the flight systems and what was going on in the cockpit and on board the plane. Voice recorders have been handy in the past in determining whether there was an explosion on board aircraft, including decompressions that render the crew and passengers unconscious before they had the ability to react.

In the meantime, airlines around the world are racing to replace speed sensors on Airbus A330s, because experts believe that may have contributed to the crash.

A key part of the investigation relies on a burst of 24 automatic messages the plane sent during the last minutes. The signals showed the autopilot was not on, officials said, but it was not clear whether the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because of conflicting airspeed readings.

The L-shaped metal pitot tubes jut from the wing or fuselage of a plane, and are usually heated to prevent icing. The pressure of air entering the tubes lets internal sensors measure the speed and angle of flight. A malfunctioning tube could mislead computers controlling the plane to dangerously accelerate or decelerate.

The largest Air France pilots union, SNPL, said Tuesday at a news conference that Air France had "guaranteed" that no Airbus A330 or A340 planes would leave the ground without at least two of three updated pitot tubes.