Air France 447 - French Continue Search for Clues to Jet’s Loss
Click here for more news / Clique aqui para mais notícias
Soon, however, the sounds will gradually begin to weaken, complicating the quest for the recorders and the secrets locked in them: cockpit conversations and data on the plane’s altitude, airspeed and heading in the flight’s final moments.
The plane, an Airbus A330, went down more than 600 miles off the coast of northern Brazil on June 1 during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 passengers and crew members. Fifty-one bodies have been recovered; Brazilian Navy teams announced Friday that they had abandoned the search for more.
The black box “pingers” are certified to emit full-strength tones for only 30 days, a period that will end on Wednesday. But there are other ways to locate the recorders.
In the late ‘80s, sonar was used to find the cockpit voice recorder from a South African Airlines Boeing 747 14 months after it crashed between Taiwan and Johannesburg. It was recovered at a depth of 14,000 feet.
So the French ships, as well as a sonar-equipped nuclear submarine, continue to trawl the search zone, a circle 100 miles in diameter. France’s Office of Investigations and Analyses, which is directing the accident investigation, said Monday that the search would go on for as long as such an effort was deemed “reasonable.”
“We are keeping up hope,” said Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for the agency.
The French authorities appear to be planning the next phase of the search, which could involve unmanned submarines that operate untethered at depths up to 15,000 feet. They can perform sonar searches and transmit high-resolution images back to the surface, according to Thomas S. Chance, the president of C & C Technologies , of Lafayette, La., which owns and leases such vessels. He said he had been contacted by the French authorities. The 20-foot-long vessels, normally used to survey the ocean floor for oil and gas companies, can stay submerged for two days and scan at four knots.
For the moment, the French authorities have to rely on the 24 automated messages sent by the plane to an Air France maintenance station in its final minutes in flight. Much attention has focused on indications of inconsistencies among the jet’s three airspeed indicators and the possible vulnerabilities of a part known as a Pitot tube.
Autopsies of the recovered bodies and detailed analysis of more than 600 pieces of debris may also provide important clues.
The French air accident investigation agency plans to publish an initial report on Thursday summarizing its findings so far.
Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.
