Flight 447 remains gone without a trace. The debris officials had earlier confirmed as having come from the missing Air France flight is actually just “sea trash” with no connection, red-faced investigators admitted today.

Military investigators had said that they had ‘without a doubt’ found vital parts of the Airbus A330 in deep ocean 600 miles off the coast of Brazil.

Among the debris was a wooden pallet that they believed had been used to load luggage on to the plane, which disappeared over the Atlantic early Monday morning with 228 people on board.

But today investigators said the wooden pallet and two buoys recovered was not from Flight 447, but just floating waste believed to be from a ship.

Earlier, investigators had also claimed to have spotted a plane seat and a seven-metre piece of fuselage floating in the ocean from search planes thousands of feet up.

They have not yet confirmed if those pieces of debris were from Flight 447 or not.

Apparently the missing Airbus flight had no pallets aboard in the first place. You would think they would’ve checked that before confirming that the debris was from the flight.

He added the Airbus that vanished on Monday did not have any wooden pallets on board.

‘That’s how we can confirm that the pallet isn’t part of the remains of the aircraft,’ Cardoso said.

Bunch of geniuses running the operation.

Cardoso said the fuel slicks detected in the area were ‘almost certainly from another passing vessel too.’

Yesterday Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim rubbished the idea that the plane had been blown out of the sky by a bomb, saying that if an explosion had occurred on board all the fuel would have burned away.

‘If we have oil stains, it means it wasn’t burned,’ he said.

However with investigators admitting the fuel found floating in the water was not from the plane, speculation that the plane had fallen victim to a terrorist attack was growing again.

French investigators said no cause, including a terrorist bomb, had yet been ruled out.

This admission sets the investigation back quite a bit. Keep in mind that the black boxes only send out pings for a period of 30 days. We’re into the fourth day and not so much as a seat cushion has been found. There’s also a non-specific timeline to deal with: How long investigators have before debris disappears under the surface.