Air France Crash Data Retrieved From Black Boxes, Investigator Agency Says
Air France Crash Data, Audio Are Retrieved From Black Boxes
BEA via Bloomberg
The flight data recorder from Air France Flight 447 that crashed in 2009 rests on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean in this photo released by France's air accident investigation agency on Sunday, May 1, 2011.
The flight data recorder from Air France Flight 447 that crashed in 2009 rests on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean in this photo released by France's air accident investigation agency on Sunday, May 1, 2011. Source: BEA via Bloomberg
Investigators of the Air France Flight 447 crash in 2009 said they successfully recovered the full contents of the black-box flight data and voice recorders.
The flight parameters and cockpit audio from the black boxes, recovered this month from the bottom of the Atlantic, will be analyzed for an interim report to be published in “several weeks,” France’s BEA air-accident investigation bureau said today in an e-mailed statement.
Investigators retrieved “all the data from the flight data recorder as well as the whole recording of the last two hours of the flight from the cockpit voice recorder,” BEA said. The black boxes were immersed for two years in 3,900 meters (12,800 feet) of seawater.
The breakthrough comes two weeks before the second anniversary of the Airbus A330’s unexplained plunge into the Atlantic en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which killed all 228 people on board. According to the plane’s last automated radio transmissions, faulty airspeed readings caused the autopilot to shut down in bad weather, a situation pilots are trained to cope with.
The voice recording alone is expected to help explain why the crew flew into a storm that other planes deliberately avoided, and whether flight Captain Marc Dubois was at the controls or had handed over to his co-pilots.
The BEA had no comment on the recording or any of the other recovered data, spokeswoman Martine Del Bono said today.
BEA chief Jean-Paul Troadec said May 12 the cockpit recording would first be heard by two BEA investigators, a police officer and a court-appointed expert. He said the agency aimed to complete its investigation and issue a final report early in 2012.
The flight data unit and audio recorder, made by Honeywell International Inc. (HON), were recovered from the seabed and transported to Paris this month. An undersea search in April located the plane’s wreckage, after three previous operations had failed.
To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Frost in Paris at lfrost4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net
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