30-day race against time to recover Air France black boxes

Published on Wednesday 3 June 2009 22:04

INVESTIGATORS face a race against time to find the black boxes likely to hold the key to the mystery of why an Air France flight plunged into the Atlantic.

The flight recorders will reveal information that could explain why Flight AF447, carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed early on Monday morning.

However, they may only emit locator signals for up to 30 days, and could have sunk to the seabed, more than four miles down.

The head of France's accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, warned yesterday they may not be discovered, raising fears that the reason behind the devastating crash may never be known.

More debris from the Airbus A330, including a 23ft chunk, was spotted yesterday by military search planes and ships battling heavy winds and high seas.

No bodies have been seen among the wreckage, about 400 miles north-east of the Fernando de Noronha islands, off Brazil's northern coast.

Among the passengers, all thought to have perished, were two Scottish-based oil workers and an 11-year-old schoolboy from Bristol.

Mr Arslanian said he was "not optimistic" rescuers would recover the black boxes. "It is not only deep, it is also mountainous," he said.

The plane crashed about four hours into the flight after hitting heavy storms. The black boxes will hold information including voices and background noise from the cockpit.

Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, told The Scotsman he believed they would be found.

"Clearly, it could turn out to be difficult," he said. "There's a significant degree of luck involved, but in the past, even in the most difficult circumstances, they have found them in the end.

"They got the Titanic up. They have gone down to quite dramatic depths in the past with unmanned submarines.

"It clearly will take quite a long time, but I think money will not be much of an object here because it's so imperative to find out what has happened.

"This hits Airbus quite badly, because you have got an Airbus that fell out of the sky for reasons unknown. Airbus has to be able to sell them to airlines for years to come."

However, he added: "This A330 flight ended in mysterious circumstances, but then tens of millions ended without anyone getting hurt."

Remotely controlled submersible craft will have to be used to recover wreckage settling so far beneath the ocean's surface.

France has dispatched a research ship equipped with unmanned submarines that can explore down to 19,600ft, but it and another French military vessel are not expected to reach the area until the end of the week.

A Brazilian navy spokeswoman said that if the black boxes were at the bottom of the ocean then there was nothing it could do, lacking the special remotely controlled submarines needed to withstand the pressure at that depth.

Theories of what caused the crash include fierce thunderstorms, lightning or – far less likely – terrorism.

The crew made no distress call, but the plane's system sent automatic messages just before it disappeared, reporting lost cabin pressure and electrical failure.

Meanwhile, the Queen has sent a message of condolence to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, expressing sympathy for bereaved relatives.