Bodies Found In Air France Wreckage April 5, 2011 Options

[bluebird121]

This is the link to this story:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/bodi...0405-1czx5.html

Air France plane found on ocean floor
Undersea robots locate bodies, motors and a large part of the Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

Wreckage and bodies from the 2009 Air France crash have been found in the Atlantic Ocean, stoking optimism that investigators may be able to determine the cause of the crash that killed 228 people.

Debris of Flight 447 was found 3800-4000 metres below the surface by the Alucia search vessel, said Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for France's air-crash investigation agency.

French officials have said the bodies will be brought to the surface and identified. Families of victims have welcomed the announcement.

Air France wreckage found
The plane's landing gear can be seen clearly on the ocean floor. Photo: Reuters/BEA

The discovery follows three failed attempts to find the aircraft, which went down on June 1, 2009, on a flight from Brazil to France.

The discovery of the Airbus jet fragments "gives hope that information on the causes of the accident, so far unresolved, will be found," Air France-KLM Group Chief Executive Officer Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said.

Finding the wreckage, which includes an engine and a piece of the wing, is the most significant breakthrough yet in the 22-month search for the Airbus SAS A330 wide-body aircraft and its data recorders that may help explain the crash.

Air France and Airbus have both been charged with manslaughter over the accident, the worst in the airline's history.

Mobilising equipment to descend to the wreck and retrieve the debris will take "several weeks", Mr Del Bono said.

The Alucia arrived at the site on March 27. The BEA investigating body has not yet disclosed exactly where the wreckage was found, and plans to provide an update at a press conference in Paris today.

The wreckage contains corpses of some of those on board, French Secretary of State for Transport Thierry Mariani said today. Investigators may be able to recover flight recorders, or black boxes that store detailed records of the pilots' conversations as well as technical information.

The boxes sit in the rear of the aircraft and are designed to withstand heavy impact and emit a signal for several weeks to help recovery. While previous search missions pulled some wreckage and victims from the sea, the recorders were not found.

Other black boxes found more than a year after an accident have yielded information. In the case of a South African Airways Boeing 747 that crashed in the Indian Ocean in 1987, a deep-water recovery team found the voice recorder in 4900 metres of water more than a year later. Both Airbus and Air France have helped pay for the cost of the search for the Air France jet.

The BEA has said there can be no certainty about the cause of the accident unless the black boxes are found.

"Airbus welcomes the news of the discovery of the AF447 wreckage," Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath said.

"We do hope that this discovery will lead to the retrieval and the reading of the two recorders because these data are essential for the understanding of this accident."

Air France and Toulouse, France-based Airbus have both said they disagree with the preliminary manslaughter charges that were laid against them last month by a French investigating judge. France is one of the few countries in the world where fatal accidents automatically prompt criminal probes that run alongside investigations by aviation authorities.

The BEA has said a contributing factor to the crash may have been speed sensors, or Pitot tubes, icing up and causing unreliable readings. The agency made the suggestion after reviewing data transmitted in the last minutes before the crash.

.


Hopefully now we can discover the cause of this massive tragedy and the black box is not too badly damaged by lying in the sea for all this time. However I am sure the investigators will be able to piece together enough of the debris to come to a decision just what happened. I will be very interested to find out the conclusion of this and a lot of folk including the deceased families will be too.

[bluebird121]

This is the latest news:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/artic...d0789dec556.591

Brazil court raises damage award for flight victim
(AFP) – 3 hours ago
RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian court has again rejected an appeal by Air France and raised the damage award the French airline company must pay to the family of a Brazilian victim of Flight 447.
The Air France jet went down on flight from Rio to Paris on June 1, 2009, killing all 288 people on board, the worst crash in Air France history.
The Rio State court told AFP that the court had unanimously rejected Air France's appeal and upped the compensation it must pay to 1.4 million reals ($868,000), up from the previous sum of 1.2 million reals ($744,000).
"The 11th Rio Tribunal on Wednesday unanimously rejected an appeal by Air France, and raised the amount of the damage award which had first been set in December," said a court spokesperson.
The airline is being sued by the family of Luciana Clarkson Seba, a 31-year-old Brazilian who died along with her husband and stepparents in the crash.
A spokesperson for the airline in Brazil had no comment, noting that the court case was ongoing.
The airline, through its insurers, had made compensation payments to the relatives of the passengers and crew, but continues to defend itself from litigation in Brazil.
Both Airbus and Air France are being probed for manslaughter by a French investigating magistrate. The crash has been partly blamed on malfunctioning speed sensors used by Airbus, with Air France accused of not responding quickly enough to reports that they might be faulty. The airline has denied the allegations.
French police said Thursday that an undersea recovery team had retrieved the first body from the depths of the wreckage, still attached to a seat in the aircraft.
The remains of some of the passengers were found floating in the ocean after the crash, but scores more are still missing. It is thought that some of the victims could be in the wreckage two-and-half miles (4 kilometers) below the surface.
Earlier this week, the two black box flight data recorders, which might provide clues as to why flight AF447 went down, were recovered.
Relatives for the victims have demanded that all the bodies be recovered from the wreck, but the police have warned that the deep-water operation faces "highly complex and unprecedented conditions."
The BEA, the French agency charged with investigating air accidents, will start trying to decipher the two black boxes in the next few days in Paris.

Related articlesBody recovered from sunken wreckage of Air France Airbus
The Guardian - 6 hours ago Skeleton strapped in Air France jet seat raised from bottom of Atlantic
AHN | All Headline News - 4 hours ago Reuters Pictures
The Atlantic Wire - 22 hours ago More coverage (1)

I hope that now we can finally find out what caused that terrible crash and relatives may recover their loved ones and bury them properly but that just may not be possible. I can't wait to see what the black boxes will reveal.

[trijetflyermd11]

Hopefully it won´t take too long until they have the cause. I hate it that it takes months, sometimes even years to publish the findings. I guess that´s what being thorough is all about...