A helicopter has recovered the first wreckage from doomed Air France Flight 447, Brazil's air force has said.
A structural support piece of the jet, about 8ft long, was pulled from the Atlantic Ocean some 340 miles north-east of the Fernando de Noronha islands, off Brazil's northern coast.
Two buoys were also found but no bodies or human remains have been spotted.
The helicopter was working off one of the navy ships which arrived overnight at one of the crash debris fields.
The air force released the information in a statement on its website.
Meanwhile, the French agency investigating the crash said automatic messages received from the plane had failed to show exactly how fast the aircraft was flying.
The Accident Investigation Agency said only two findings have been established. One is that the series of automatic messages sent from Flight 447 were "incoherent" regarding the plane's speed. The other is that the plane's route on Sunday night was spotted with stormy, unstable weather.
The agency warned against any "hasty interpretation or speculation" about the crash.
The French newspaper Le Monde had reported, without naming sources, that the Air France plane was flying at the wrong speed.
Air France Flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro for Paris on Sunday night but disappeared over the Atlantic.
