Search team discovers Air France wreckage

ft.com
04 April 2011

A search team has found bodies and wreckage from an Air France aircraft that disappeared over the South Atlantic in 2009, raising hopes that investigators could determine the cause of the crash.

The discovery of debris and human remains on the sea floor, 3,900m below the surface, comes just over a week since the latest search began for the A330 jet. The aircraft disappeared in bad weather on 1 June 2009 on its way to Paris from Rio de Janeiro with 228 passengers and crew onboard.

French air crash investigators said on Monday that the next step would focus on retrieving the bodies in the wreckage and that they would step up the search for the flight data recorders.

The so-called "black boxes" are essential to help determine what might have caused the crash of the twin-engined jet, built by Airbus, the European aircraft maker which is part of EADS.

Three previous searches for flight AF 447 had failed to locate the wreckage leaving investigators with few clues as to what might have happened to the aircraft. Last month, the investigating French magistrate placed Air France and Airbus under official investigation. Unlike in most countries, France conducts criminal probes in parallel to the air crash probe, which is conducted by BEA, the country's air safety watchdog.

Airbus and Air France have both said they disagree with the preliminary charges of manslaughter.

Jean-Paul Troadec, the head of the BEA, said the wreckage was found on the seabed just north of the aircraft's last known position and that it was located in a "relatively limited" flat and sandy zone.

"This is a relief for all those affected by this tragic event," said Tom Enders, Airbus chief executive, said on Monday. "We 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."

The A330 is a relatively new design and the disappearance of the aircraft had baffled the aviation community as it is highly unusual for a modern aircraft to encounter problems mid-flight.

"This discovery ... is good news indeed since it gives hope that information on the causes of the accident, for far unresolved, will be found," Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, chief executive of Air France-KLM said in statement on Sunday.

The latest search was conducted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute using remote controlled submersibles fitted with sidescan sonar to map the ocean floor. The BEA said the wreckage included part of the fuselage, a piece of the wing and one of the engines. It will take between three and four weeks to get vessels into the area to attempt to retrieve the "many" bodies that the latest search has found. The retrieval operation will also hope to bring the flight data recorders to the surface, if they are
located.

Some wreckage and bodies were recovered from the sea in the days after the crash but most of those onboard are still missing. The BEA said it was briefing representatives of the families of flight AF 447 on Monday afternoon.

Charles-Henri Tavidat, a London-based lawyer at Stewarts Law, which represents more than 50 families who lost relatives in the crash, welcomed the discovery but cautioned it was too early to assume the mystery behind the crash can be solved.

"This is good news for the families in that we finally have something . . . But this doesn't mean they will find the black boxes and we do not know know if they will work," Mr Tavidat said.