Air France has replaced all airspeed sensors on its entire fleet of A330 and A340 long-haul aircraft after the crash of Flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean, a pilots' union said on Monday.

Eric Derivry, a spokesman for the SNPL union said Monday that Air France had completed the replacement of the suspect pitots.

"Air France has further speed up the replacement of the device compared to its initial plan," Derivry said.

On June 1, an Air France A330 airliner crashed into the Atlantic en route from Rio to Paris which claimed all 288 lives onboard. The investigation into the crash has focused on the possibility that the disaster was caused by a faulty pitot airspeed sensor, which iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.

Neither Air France nor plane maker Airbus said that there was a link between the crash and the airspeed monitors. But Air France promised to speed up the replacement of the suspect device in the wake of the crash.

Meanwhile, Axa Corporate Solutions, one of Air France's insurers, said on Monday that the carrier is to receive compensation of 67.4 million euros (about US$93.4 million) for the loss of its Airbus A330. The carrier also has separate insurance for its responsibility for compensating the families of the 228 people on board.

(Xinhua News Agency June 16, 2009)