Black Box found.
Now let's hope the French authorities release the full report.

very interesting line in the BEA posting above....

"If the data can be used it will allow the inquiry to make headway because the [flight data recorder] records the altitude, speed and the various positions of the rudder.

Congrats to the recovery team.

@ Empire :
"Who is going... ?"
=> The BEA and other representatives (from NTSB, Honeywell, AF... etc.) is likely the good answer.
"How can transparency and accuracy be guaranteed?"
=> By the team working exposed above. I cannot see a better way, can you?

I like many here am more than a little skeptical that the truth will out. The financial consequences are too high, if as I believe, the a/c broke up in the air, the ramifications to airbus and also the french government are enormous. Do they admit that 561 a/c can be unsafe in high turbulence?, will this create a public that will not fly in such a/c as many have done with the MD11? what do the airlines operating these a/c do? ask for their money back?
Imagine the response from Boeing supporters there will be a huge anti airbus hue and cry! with cancelled orders etc
I for one will not be surprised if they simply announce the fdr was too damaged to offer much help but they were convinced the a/c remained integral till it hit the sea.
another small matter taht I am not too happy about is the apparent ease in which they found the recorder mostly the size of a coke can in an ocean where they couldnt find something the size of a/c last year.
yes I am a cynic when it comes to matters involving various countries CAA's or their equivalents.

The debris field does not appear to support any obvious in-flight breakup, and evidently the A330 is not inherently unsafe or more would have dropped out of the sky by now with several hundred of them in the air daily. Statistics are not on your side.

Oops I missed the do not feed the trolls sign, my bad.

britfrog.

I invite you to take a look at the Tech Log discussion on this crash. I think you will find the arguments well support "it hit the water pretty much intact" conclusion.

Cheers.

Not really a surprising comment, though. It's well-known that the data from the aircraft included a rudder travel limiter fault message. Therefore the investigators want to know the rudder positions.

My understanding of that message (and several others including a cabin press system alarm) is it was generated due to the lack of air data.

I suspect that's the case, I'm just putting the rudder comment into context before it starts taking on a life of its own.

One can only speculate that without airdata, the RTLU was not in fault, but couldn't compute its limits due no speed data. Not being in the set doesn't mean it is inop, per se. It rather defaulted to least sweep, due last velocity, M.82. I think this is the working theory. There is no reason to exclude extensive damage to flight surfaces, without loss from airframe. The VS roots look as though they encountered a range of overstresses, perhaps it "broke" on board, to remain onboard to the surface. If broken loose, (not 'free') and inarticulate, serious inflight control issues would ensue, etc.

As to in-flight breakup. Yes. And No. There was no disintegration. There was the opportunity however for shedding some parts due air loads (overspeed) or cycling at past critical limits (airspeed). Found on the surface were flight surfaces, aileron, elevator, and spoiler, and radome. The drift calcs are inconclusive, and there was ad nauseum comment on the issue, some of it mine. If the ship plunged quickly down from LKP, yet ended up in a flat spin (aspect), remember the average rate of descent is 6,000 fpm. Likewise, the average AOD is 45 degrees (down) plus, pointing to the possibility that some nose down may have been in excess of 50 degrees or more.

So against the evidence already collected, and without waiting for data to be analysed, your own brilliant deduction is that the plane broke up in the air. If the data shows something different you will of course say that the analysis is forged. And if the data cannot be recovered, you will say that you were right all along.

The recovery operation has gone to extremes of effort and expense to find why this tragic accident happened, in the hope of avoiding it ever happening again. If a cover-up was required it would have been possible to give up the search after the first or second or third failed attempt. But the recovery team have persisted for nearly two years in order to get to the truth. It has been a superb effort.

Set against all this, your own conjecture at this very late stage is utterly futile and pointless.

britfrog said "another small matter taht I am not too happy about is the apparent ease in which they found the recorder mostly the size of a coke can in an ocean where they couldnt find something the size of a/c last year."

I am constantly amazed at the inability of some at this forum to display commonsense, and your statement is a classical example. Why? You might well ask.

Well, imagine you were set down on a dry lakebed the size of Lake Eyre in a sandstorm and told there was a crashed model aircraft that had gone missing as it flew over the middle heading north. You're given a pair of scratched goggles and dropped in the middle of the lakebed and told to look for the wreckage, and the battery is the most important thing to find.

After several weeks of criss-crossing the dry lakebed you stumble upon a wing section partially covered in drifting salt, and you start to narrow the search area to a kilometre radius of where you found the wing. Despite the handicap of having to peer through almost opaque goggles, the next day or two other bits are located, scattered over an area of a couple of hundred metres. The next day you find the all-important battery, a few metres from the damaged rear fuselage. Nothing surprising about the fact that you found the battery so soon after finding the wreckage, because now you have a small area in which to concentrate your efforts.

As you walk back to search HQ some pratt whispers that it all seemed so convenient, finding the battery so soon after locating the rest of the wreckage.

SSCVR Found and recovered
 

France24.com

AFP - Search teams have retrieved the second black box flight recorder of an Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009 en route from Rio to Paris, killing 228 people, French investigators said Tuesday.
"The investigation team localised and identified the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) at 2150 UTC (GMT) on Monday 2 May, 2011," France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said in a statement.
The recorder was "in good condition," BEA chief Jean-Paul Troadec told AFP, adding: "The chassis, the module and even the underwater locator beacon is there."
"It was raised and lifted on board the ship Ile de Sein" by a submersible robot early on Tuesday, the statement said.

Picture of the CVR here:

AF447 recovery team retrieves cockpit-voice recorder

BEA pictures:
3rd May 2011 briefing

For those who can't magnify picture 3 of 3, above, the hand in shot is applying a second sealing stamp to the red seal compound. I suppose one stamp from an indepedent (maybe the Brazilian Naval officer aboard) and one from BEA.

Might I just ask, and excuse me in advance of any ignorance on this subject, but given that after two years sitting on the bottom of the South Atlantic ocean under immense pressure, both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the Air France disaster have been found intact and more amazing still is that they were found at all given the size of the wreckage area, why then have the black boxes from the aircraft that smashed into the twin towers not been found and never will be found?

One situation exposed the recorders to obliterating impact, fire and not just a few hundred tons of pulverizing concrete and steel.

The other... well, didn't.

Indeed, I appreciate that. However, is the pressure 4000 metres below sea level well in excess of the crushing weight of the world trade centre towers? Also, there are many instances where black boxes have been well able to withstand excess heat for many days.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious.

Having read this thread, I can't help but admire and be impressed by the extraordinary lengths to which this Airbus/Air France/French Government/Bigfoot conspiracy is going to ensure that all the facts are covered up and nobody ever finds out what happened!