June 8 (Bloomberg) -- An Air France labor union called on pilots to refuse to fly Airbus SAS A330s and A340s until the airline replaces speed sensors after investigators said the equipment probably played a role in a June 1 plane crash.

The Alter union, which represents 12 percent of the Paris- based carrier’s pilots, wants Air France to replace at least two of the three probes on each plane, Francois Hamant, a spokesman at the labor group, said in a phone interview.

“We made this decision following our reading of the technical messages” sent automatically by the Air France A330 that went down into the Atlantic Ocean a week ago, Hamant said. “Air France communicated to pilots that it accelerated the program to replace these probes. I’m not a technical expert but it makes us fear that this is a very serious matter.”

Unreliable data from speed sensors may have triggered a chain of events leading to the crash of Air France Flight 447 that killed 228 people, France’s chief crash investigator said. Brigitte Barrand, a spokeswoman at the airline, declined to comment on the union’s demands. The carrier has been changing the probes, made by Thales SA, on single-aisle Airbus A320s since late 2007 and on twin-aisle A330s and A340s since May.

Air France pilots are represented by a half-dozen unions, with the largest, SNPL-ALPA, claiming 50 percent of them as members. SNPL-ALPA hasn’t made any recommendation yet, a spokesman said.

Salvage Work

Salvage teams from the French and Brazilian navies have recovered 16 bodies from the region of the Atlantic where military planes and ships are searching for the wreckage, the Brazilian armed forces said today. “Hundreds” of pieces of debris have been found, it said.

The U.S. Navy is sending equipment and personnel to help search for the aircraft’s flight-data recorders, known as black boxes, and two French mini-submarines are scheduled to arrive in the area by about June 12.

US Airways Group Inc., the smallest U.S. full-fare carrier, and Aer Lingus Group Plc, Ireland’s second-biggest carrier, said they’re replacing speed sensors on their A330s. Aer Lingus already had a program of installing upgraded probes in its A320s-series aircraft.

Spokesmen at Neuilly Sur Seine, France-based Thales, Europe’s biggest maker of military electronics, haven’t returned repeated calls to office and mobile phones seeking comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Laurence Frost in Paris at lfrost@bloomberg.net; Andrea Rothman in Toulouse, France, at aerothman@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 8, 2009 11:04 EDT