The families of the three Irish women lost on Air France Flight 447 face an agonizing wait to see if their bodies will ever be found.

"Riverdance" star Dr. Eithne Walls and her friends Dr. Jane Deasy and Dr. Aisling Butler were all onboard the ill-fated Airbus A330 flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The Brazilian Air Force has found debris from the flight scattered across the Atlantic Ocean where the plane is believed to have gone down.

The debris find means that all hope is now lost for the 228 passengers and crew on board Flight 447.

However, investigators say it is extremely unlikely that they will be ever able to find human remains.

The Brazilian navy is battling severe conditions at the debris site where crews are now searching for the flight data and voice recorders.

The recorders could hold vital clues to why the plane fell out of the sky during a severe storm.

But for now, the families of those who died face the heartbreaking possibility of saying goodbye without ever burying a body.

A 9/11 widow,  Ann*, says her heart goes out to them.

"It is unimaginably painful to try and grieve without a body to grieve over," she said.

"I lost my husband on 9/11 and they were only able to identify him through his DNA on a toothbrush.

"Our children kept asking when Daddy was coming home and I could barely keep it together. Not only was Daddy never coming home but we would never be able to bury him.

"It sounds morbid but the absence of a body makes the loss worse. It just doesn't seem real because you don't have the coffin, you don't have the wake. It takes months just to deal with that part of it.

"It's such an Irish thing to wake the body and then go to church and then the graveyard.

"There's no sense of finality without that."

Meanwhile, Air France has confirmed that it received a bomb threat on a Paris-bound jet just four days before Flight 447 disappeared.

The affected flight was preparing for take off from Buenos Aires in Argentina when security officials ordered a 90-minute sweep of the plane.

No explosives were found and the plane departed for Paris without any further incident.
 

*Ann did not want her last name used