Re: Earlier comment about the 2009 Air France recorder recovery:
Debris does not mean answers. With AFR447, there were some details transmitted from the aircraft via ACARS that night. However, the full picture of what actually happened (including the prolonged stall and a stall warning that only functioned when the aircraft was starting to recover from the stall due to the computer disregarding very low airspeed indications) as well as crew inputs were not known until the flight recorders were recovered. That happened in mid 2011, about two years after the accident. Air France and the French government tried with great effort to locate the flight recorders before giving up and hiring Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to find the recorders. Phoenix International recovered them shortly thereafter.