French investigators on Sunday announced they have found and recovered the black box of Air France flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 during a scheduled flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) said in a statement that an investigation team located and identified the memory unit of the flight data recorder (FDR) in the ocean at around 12 p.m. Paris time on Sunday.
The statement said a crew aboard the vessel the Ile de Sein was able to lift it on board at around 6.40 p.m. Paris time. It appeared to be in a good condition, according to photos released by BEA that show the FDR.
Earlier this week, a twelve-hour long search of the ocean floor near waypoint TASIL led to the discovery of the chassis of the plane’s FDR. But as the crash survivable memory unit (CSMU) was missing, it was of no use to investigators.
The discovery of the CSMU on Sunday may finally give investigators the information they need to figure out what caused the crash of flight 447, which went down during severe weather. Some investigators have suggested that the crash might have been caused by an icing-over of the plane’s air-speed sensors during the flight, which would have resulted in inaccurate airspeed data.
The disaster involving the Airbus A330-203 led to the deaths of 228 people, the majority of them from France and Brazil. More than 50 bodies have been recovered since the accident happened.
