Wed, Dec 16, 2009
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.
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