Investigators Still Hope To Find What Caused The A330 To Go Down In The Atlantic

The French accident investigation authority BEA says it will resume the search for the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from Air France flight 447 in February. The flight went down in heavy weather on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris June 1st, killing all 228 people on board.

The search for the black boxes was made extremely difficult because of the depth of the water in which the aircraft went down, and the mountainous underwater terrain at the site. Very little of the wreckage of the A330 has been found in the six months following the crash. It is believed the aircraft impacted the water largely intact.

Reuters reports that Jean-Paul Troadec, head of the BEA accident investigation, was in Rio de Janeiro last week to meet with the families of those lost on the flight. He said BEA was working on determining where the aircraft had gone down, and attempting to calculate where the wreckage might be based on ocean currents.

The French government is expected to release a report Thursday regarding how the voice and data recorders might be located and recovered. The BEA is also expected to make at least three recommendations for aircraft modifications in light of the incident, including extending the life of black box locator beacons from 30 to 90 days, and additional beacons attached to various parts of the aircraft to assist in locating wreckage. A feasibility study of data streaming during normal operations may also be requested, but that has so far been considered prohibitively expensive to implement.

FMI: www.bea.aero/en/index.php