Autopilot wasn't working on Flight 447

The head of the French agency leading the investigation into the crash of Air France Flight 447 said today that signals from the plane before it disappeared showed its autopilot wasn’t on.

Paul-Louis Arslanian said it was not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings.

Plane manufacturer Airbus said the investigation found the flight received inconsistent readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm.

Head of the investigation Alain Bouillard said: “We also saw messages that show the automatic pilot wasn’t working.”

Arslanian says investigators were searching a zone of several hundred square miles for the debris.