The first 16 bodies recovered from the Air France crash have been flown to Brazil's northeastern city of Recife for identification, the Brazilian Air Force said on Wednesday.

Upon the arrival of the C-130 transport aircraft, the bodies were taken to a local legal medical institute where forensic experts would begin the identification process, Air Force spokesman Ramon Cardoso said.

Due to a delay of the preliminary identification procedure at the Fernando de Noronha islands plus the bad weather in the area, the military plane took off seven hours later than planned, he said.

According to Cardoso, the identification of each body was expected to take an average of three hours. Dissection of these bodies was expected to start on Thursday.

Another 25 of the recovered bodies would be first taken to the Fernando de Noronha islands and later transferred to Recife.

The identification work at Recife involved 39 Brazilian professionals and seven French experts.

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus 330-200, was traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board when it vanished over the Atlantic Ocean around midnight on May 31.

The Brazilian military search team has recovered 41 bodies from the Atlantic Ocean near the crash site as of Wednesday.

(Xinhua News Agency June 11, 2009)