Air France plane crash parts found in Atlantic

Underwater search teams located pieces of Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009, French investigators said, offering a surprising new glimmer of hope in the protracted hunt for clues to what happened. The plane’s black box flight recorders and it’s unclear whether they are still attached to the fuselage.
All 228 people aboard the plane were killed when the flight, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, slammed into the ocean June 1, 2009, after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm. The cause of the crash remains unclear.
The head of France’s air accident investigation agency, Jean-Paul Troadec, told reporters Monday that he’s confident that engineers can still read the data and recordings in the black boxes — if they weren’t damaged in the crash.
Previous extensive and expensive search efforts proved futile in attempts to shed light on the cause of the crash.
The French air accident investigation agency BEA said in a statement Sunday night that a team aboard the expedition ship Alucia “has located pieces of an aircraft ... in the last 24 hours.”
BEA did not identify what parts of the plane were located, or where. Messages left with the agency Sunday night were not returned.
Searchers are carrying out a fourth effort to find remains of the plane — and especially its flight recorders, in hopes of determining the cause of the crash.
Finding the cause took on new importance last month when a French judge filed preliminary manslaughter charges against Air France and the plane’s manufacturer, Airbus. Experts say without the flight data and voice recorders, authorities will not likely determine what was at fault.
Air France and Airbus are financing the estimated $12.5 million cost of the new search. About $28 million has already been spent on the three previous searches for the jet’s wreckage.
The team involved in this weekend’s discovery was led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, or WHOI, based in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
The search is being targeted in area of about 3,900 square miles (10,000 square kilometers), several hundred miles off Brazil’s northeastern coast, and could last until July.
Searchers are using up to three autonomous underwater search vehicles, each of which can stay underwater for up to 20 hours while using sonar to scan a mountainous area known as the Mid-Ocean Ridge. Researchers download the data, and a vehicle with a high resolution camera is sent to check out an area if scientists see evidence of debris.