Air France says the body of the chief pilot of Flight AF447 and a flight attendant have been retrieved from the Atlantic.

On its Web site the airline says that the two are among the 11 bodies that have been positively identified from the 50 that have so far been recovered from the crashed airliner.

Though Air France did not identify the crew members by name, a pilots’ union named the captain as Marc Dubois.

Earlier this week the international police agency Interpol said that positive identities had been made of 11 of the 50 recovered bodies, saying they were eight Brazilians, one with joint Brazilian-German citizenship, one Brazilian-Swiss and a British national.

A sea and air search is continuing for the bodies of the remaining 178 passengers and crew from the downed flight, as well as wreckage and the vital flight data and cockpit voice recorders - commonly referred to as black boxes.

Time is rapidly running out though as the locating beacons on the data recorders are emitted for only 30 days and after the end of this month will rapidly fade away and become silent.

Air France AF447 departed Rio de Janeiro at 7pm (BRT) and was due to arrive at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle 2 airport at 11.15am local Paris time (0915 GMT).

Air traffic controllers lost contact with flight AF447 three hours into the flight when the aircraft was some 1,500 miles (2,400km) northeast of Rio.

The flight was carrying 126 men, 82 women, 7 children and one baby.

The aircraft had reported electrical failure and strong turbulence before contact was lost and sent two dozen automatically generated systems failure reports over four minutes, leading many to believe the aircraft broke-up in mid air.