New search for Air France plane ends in failure

Published 8:45 am Tuesday, May 25, 2010

PARIS — An ambitious, euro13 million ($15.8 million) search effort failed to find the flight recorders that could explain why Air France Flight 447 crashed a year ago in the Atlantic depths, investigators said today.

The third search for the remains of the Airbus 330 wrapped up Monday, according to Alain Guilldou of the French air accident investigation agency BEA.

The search “did not allow us to locate the wreckage of the airplane,” he said in an e-mailed statement today.

The BEA is not commenting further on the search, or on whether there could be another search effort at a later date.

All 228 people aboard the flight, traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, died when it crashed June 1, 2009.

Initial search efforts found some 50 bodies and more than hundreds of pieces of the plane, including its torn-off tail.

But international search teams using specialized submarines and underwater robots failed to find the “black box” voice and data recorders. Without those, investigators may never find out why the plane crashed during thunderstorms in a remote part of the ocean, in depths of up to 13,120 feet.

Automatic messages sent by the plane’s computers just before it crashed show it was receiving false air speed readings from sensors known as Pitot tubes. Investigators have insisted that the crash was likely caused by a series of failures and not just the Pitot tubes.

The BEA organized a third search effort this year, an effort that the BEA chief called “one of the most complex undersea operations ever,” involving U.S. and Norwegian ships, investigators and scientists.

Searchers covered 2,240 square miles in March and April but found nothing. The project was extended through late May, with Air France and Airbus putting in another euro1.5 million each.

While that search was under way, French defense officials announced what appeared to be a breakthrough: Pinging signals from the plane’s recorders detected last year were reanalyzed with the aid of new technology. The new analysis led defense officials to narrow down the search zone to an unexpected location. But searches in the newly defined area turned up nothing.