The Brazilian Air Force announced on Thursday that the first items recovered from the Atlantic Ocean did not belong to the missing Air France airliner, which crashed early Monday morning.

On Thursday, the Navy picked up a wooden luggage pallet, which turned out not to be from Flight 447, because the airliner was not carrying wooden pallets, said General Ramon Cardoso, director of the air force's air traffic control, in the coastal city of Recife.

Cardoso also said a big oil slick originally believed to come from the plane probably also came from some ships.

But Cardoso added that the items the rescue team has found in the sea should include some from the missing plane.

According to procedures, all the debris picked up from the sea should be first sent to the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago and then transferred to Recife, where experts from Air France will analyze the items which would then be flown back to France.

Cardoso also said chances of finding the bodies of the victims were becoming slimmer with every minute that passes.

The Air France Airbus A330, with 228 people on board, lost contact with the air control tower in the first hours of Monday when it was flying over the Atlantic.

(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2009)