Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Cockpit Voice Recorder Found From Air France Mystery Crash


The cockpit voice recorder from an Air France plane that crashed inexplicably nearly two years ago, killing all 228 people on board, has been found, the head of the company announced.

The declaration came "only hours" after the recovery of the flight data recorder's memory unit, Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said, citing the official French air accident investigation agency, the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA).

He called it "another important step forward in the inquiry" into the cause of the crash, which remains unidentified nearly two years after it happened.

Air France flight 447 crashed in violent weather en route to Paris from Brazil on June 1, 2009. It took nearly two years and a huge undersea search to locate the bulk of the wreckage deep in the Atlantic Ocean.

Only about 50 bodies were ever found, but investigators announced last month that the fuselage still contained human remnants.

The discovery of the two data recorders may lastly explain why the Airbus A330 dropped out of the sky and bellyflopped into the ocean, falling so rapidly that air masks did not have time to deploy.

The cockpit voice recorder was brought to the face by the Remora 6000, the same remote-controlled submarine that brought the flight data recorder memory unit up from the Atlantic on Sunday.

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