The vertical stabilizer of Flight 447 recovered by the Brazilian Navy
The disappearance of Air France flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris was no doubt mysterious. Investigators say that lighting appears to be the most plausible cause of crash. After all, the A330 was engineered to weather lighting strikes. When lighting hits an aircrafts skin, the current will get transferred to an element called a static wick, theses wicks are installed along the trailing edge of the wing and aft stabilizers. These locations are away from the engine and avionic components.
The radius of the storm cells were too wide for the pilots to go around and too high for them to go over. The pilots of flight 447 had no choice but to go trough the series of storm cells that was in their path.
The search for the black boxes became harder after June 30, 2009, the black boxes will only emit a signal for 30 days. On August 20, 2009, it was announced that the black box search was halted. At the end of August, BEA announced it would resume the search later in 2009 early 2010. The search for the black box has been continued as of April, 2010.
