Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Air France Flight 447 Black Boxes Found After Almost 2 Years Of Searching

Nearly 2 years after thunderstorms brought down Air France 447, search teams have finally located both black boxes. The Airbus A330-200 crashed on June 1, 2009 during a flight over the Atlantic from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 onboard. To date the search for the boxes has costed over 40 million dollars. Rumors say that the efforts put out to find the boxes may stop the use of "black boxes". Data sent back to Air France computers in France while the plane was in flight suggested that the speed recorders, known as pitot tubes, may have frozen and malfunctioned. If so, the plane could have been flying at beyond its maximum allowable speed, which would cause excessive pressures on the aircraft's framework. The cockpit voice recorder, like the other devices, were found and retrieved by the Remora 6000 unmanned underwater vehicle. The black boxes were sent to French Guyana, from there they will be flown to Paris to be investigated by french investigators. The Black boxes seem to be in remarkably good condition but the question is, can the information be retrieved?




One of the Air France 447 black boxes, found 4km down beneath the ocean.