The BEA held a press conference today, and the following article
Air France Black-Box Quest Has Better Than 50% Chance, BEA Says - Bloomberg.com has been published by Bloomberg France.
Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Investigators probing the crash of Air France Flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean more than eight months ago said the chances of finding the plane’s “black-box” flight recorders remain “well above 50 percent.”
A search that was suspended in August will resume next month with the help of computer models that have reduced the area to be scoured, Jean-Paul Troadec, head of France’s BEA air- accident investigation bureau, said today at a Paris briefing.
Without the cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders it may be impossible to discover why the Airbus SAS A330 plunged into the ocean off Brazil on June 1 while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people on board.
“This is one of the most complex search operations ever conducted on the seabed,” Troadec said. “‘If we don’t find the flight recorders, we won’t be able to go much further.”
Computer models run by oceanographic institutes have homed in on a zone within the earlier search area and about 10 times smaller, the investigators said Feb. 4. Data from recovered debris and satellite-tracked buoys improved their understanding of currents after previous searches ended in failure.
The area under scrutiny measures about 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) in water no deeper than 4,000 meters (13,000 feet).
With a budget of 10 million euros ($14 million) financed by Airbus and Air France, the BEA plans to cover the site in less than a month. Mountainous parts of the seabed will be examined by remotely controlled submarines at a rate of about two square miles a day. Flat areas can be scanned 20 times faster by sonar.
Ships Hired
The BEA has engaged two ships for the search: Anne Candies, hired from U.S-based Phoenix International and equipped with U.S. Navy sonar, and Seabed Worker, made in Norway, which will serve as a larger coordination base.
Three robot submarines will use sonar to scan the seabed and two more will explore rougher terrain.
In the first search, submarines and boats equipped with listening devices sought to detect signals emitted by the black boxes during the month that their batteries were expected to hold out. A second phase from July to August using sonar and submarines also produced nothing.
The cockpit voice and data recorders are located in the tail of the plane. About 1,000 pieces of the downed Airbus have been recovered, together with 50 bodies. The main fuselage hasn’t been found.
Seabed Worker specs.
http://www.seabedgroup.no/attachment...WORKER-007.pdf
Anne Candies specs.
ANNE CANDIES
We are still missing a lot of the detail. Hopefully more will emerge in the near future.
mm43