Flight data recorder found at Air France crash site

Search teams have found one of the two flight recorders from the crash of an Air France jet.

Travel Insurance News - 02/05/2011

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Searchers have recovered one of the two flight recorders from a crashed Air France jet that went down in 2009. The jet, an Airbus A330, was carrying 228 people when it disappeared in the middle of a violent storm over the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June, 2009.

Recovery of the flight data recorder from the ocean floor off Brazil’s Atlantic coast should help crash investigators learn more about what might have caused the accident. Flight AF447 was about four hours into its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in France when it encountered severe turbulence in a heavy thunderstorm.

The French Bureau of Investigation describes the flight data recorder as being in good physical condition. Last week, search teams discovered the outer casing from the recorder but the device’s memory module was missing.

The wreckage of the crashed plane was found last month following a search that covered some 10,000km2 of the ocean floor. Searchers, using remotely-operated and robotic vehicles that can operate at depths up to 4,000m, found the crash wreckage on only their fourth attempt.

Nearly two years have elapsed since the crash and investigators are still unsure what led to the loss of the aircraft. It is hoped that information provided by the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder will help explain what went wrong.

Aviation experts, however, caution that there is no guarantee that any information will be available. They say that the two years spent under great pressures at such depths may have destroyed any information.

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