Search for passengers of Flight 447 ends, race for black boxes goes on

Published on Saturday 27 June 2009 19:44

BRAZIL has ended the search for bodies from the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic last month, calling the task impossible, but the search for flight recorders goes on.

Brazilian and French searchers have recovered large chunks of debris and 51 bodies from Air France Flight 447, which disappeared with 228 people on board on 31 May.

On Friday, Brazil's air force and navy ended their search for more bodies or debris.

"The reason for this is the impossibility of finding survivors or bodies, which has always been the main focus of our search efforts," Brazilian Air Force Colonel Henry Munhoz said. He said the search for the black boxes would continue "co-ordinated by France."

Experts say the black boxes may be the key to deciding what brought the airliner down. Signals from the voice and data recorders begin to fade after about 30 days.

"We'll have a better idea by 1 July on how much longer we'll go," said US Air Force Colonel Willie Berges, the Brazil-based commander of the American forces supporting the search.

Berges said searchers were likely to keep going 12 to 15 days past the 30-day mark of the crash.

A French nuclear submarine and two French-contracted ships towing US Navy listening devices are trawling a search area with a radius of 50 miles off Brazil's north-eastern coast where it is believed the plane crashed. The black boxes send out an electronic tapping sound that can be heard up to 1.25 miles away.

With the recorders still missing, accident investigators have focused on automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact.

One indicates the plane was receiving incorrect speed information from external instruments, which might have iced over, which could destabilise the plane's control systems.

Air France has now replaced the monitors, called pitot tubes, on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft.

Last week, US safety officials said they were investigating two incidents in which airspeed and altitude indications in the cockpits of A330 planes may have malfunctioned. The aircraft are the same type as the Air France plane that crashed.

In both cases the planes landed safely, and no-one was injured, the National Transportation Safety Board said.