Piecing together the Air France Puzzle - and they've found a big piece

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said recovered passenger bodies also will play a role. If investigators can determine the identity of a body and know where that person was sitting in the plane, the types of injuries sustained could offer clues into the crash, he said.

SHOOT: No burn marks were found on the tail fin, and it was found virtually intact. This suggests the plane broke apart whilst at altitude rather than during impact. The fact that so few bodies have been discovered suggests passengers were in free fall from a substantial height, assuming they didn't have their safety belts fastened. Since the tragedy took place after 1:30 am local time, passengers were likely to be sleeping, and less likely to have been buckled up. The military do not want to publish wreckage pictures, probably in order to protect the airline industry. The reality of this crash - once it emerges - ought to make the ordinary passenger more nervous about flying.

clipped from news.yahoo.com William Waldock, who teaches air crash investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, examined the photos and video of the stabilizer and rudder and said the damage he saw looks like a lateral fracture. "That would reinforce the idea that the plane broke up in flight," he said. "If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces." That there were no signs of burn marks on the stabilizer is not necessarily significant, according to Waldock, who said that any explosion or fire in the fuselage would likely not make its way back to the tail section. Examining the fracture surfaces is important, since they will indicate from what direction the force came that snapped the piece, he said.