Flight 447: French submarines to resume black box search

French submarines will next week resume the search for the flight recorders of the Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic ocean last month, investigators said on Wednesday.

Search teams deployed after the June 1 crash of Flight AF 447 stopped monitoring on Saturday for the remote signals of the so-called “black boxes,” which are designed to emit for at least 30 days.

Starting next week, French submarines will attempt to physically track down the devices, in a second search phase lasting around a month, said a statement from the French bureau leading the crash investigation, the BEA.

The marine research ship the “Pourquoi Pas” and its dozen crew will use two diving vessels, a mini-submarine and a robot craft to hunt for the recorders, which are clad in orange metal casing to protect and make them visible.

One of the devices records flight data while the other captures the voices of the crew and other sounds in the cockpit.

The Airbus 330 crashed in a storm on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with the loss of all 228 people on board, scattering debris and likely plunging the two recorders as deep as 3 500m under water.

Brazil’s military called off the search for bodies and debris from the Air France jet, flight AF447, late last month.

Source: AFP