Air France CEO: Don't assume sensors caused crash

PARIS, France (CNN) - There should be no assumed link between on-board speed sensors and the crash of Air France flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean last week, the airline's chief executive said Thursday.

"I am not convinced that the sensors are the cause of the accident," said Air France Chief Executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon.

Still, he said the airline will continue with a program, begun just days before the crash, to replace the sensors on its Airbus A330s, the same type of plane that crashed June 1.

The program was stepped up after the crash, but the sensors on the doomed plane hadn't yet been replaced, he said.

"Airbus and the European Aviation Safety Agency maintain that the A330/A340s are safe with any one of the three types of existing sensors," Gourgeon told reporters in France.

Air France has promised that no Airbus A330 or A340 will take off unless at least two of its three Pitot tubes have been replaced. The tubes are an instrument contained in the speed-sensing system.

Investigating the crash, which killed all 228 people aboard, will be "long and difficult" given the location in the sea, hundreds of miles off the coast of Brazil.

Flight 447 had been flying from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France when it went down in stormy weather.

"Analysis of the initial results of the searches being carried out may give us an indication of the circumstances of the catastrophe," Gourgeon told reporters. "Various scenarios could then be built by the experts. In addition to which, we hope to recover the flight recorders."