Renewed Search for Air France Flight 447

Paris, FRANCEMore than nine months after the June 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, authorities are launching a renewed effort to locate the wreckage of the plane. According to a report published on 3/8/10 in USA Today, Air France and Airbus paid $14 million for a collection of advanced underwater robots to undertake the task of recovering the black box, flight data recorders and any remaining victims still trapped in the wreckage.


Three robots will search for the Airbus A330 in a heavily mountainous part of the Atlantic between 10,000 and 13,000 feet below sea level. The robots are capable of crisscrossing the depths independently for hours at a time, automatically climbing and descending with the contours of the ocean floor, creating high-definition sonar images of the surrounding area. Three other vehicles dedicated to the search will photograph the wreckage and remove items such as the crash-proof flight recorders.

Two of the robots are owned by the Waitt Institute for Discovery, the same institute that provided the technology in the failed attempt to locate the remains of Amelia Earhart's plane in 2009. Even so, the computer entrepreneur who helped fund the Earhart search is optimistic about prospect chances of finding the wreckage of the Airbus A330.

"If it's there, they'll find it," said Ted Waitt.

Teams of experts studied how ocean currents and winds move bodies and debris from the jet to pinpoint where the Airbus A330 most likely went down, according to BEA documents.

Air France Flight 447 was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009, when stormy weather felled it over the Atlantic Ocean. Investigators with the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA) believe the crash may have been triggered by the formation of ice on the pilot tubes, which are external sensors serving as speed sensors for the aircraft. However they won't know for sure until they succeed in recovering the flight data recorders and the rest of the wreckage.

Investigating the crash of commercial airliners is key to preventing similar airplane accidents in future.