That really is superb news. All the effort and expense has been justified.
This is all about avoiding a repeat of whatever caused this tragic accident.

Congratulations to all involved.

Now Airbus will finally have some hard data that it can modify.

How do we know that the photo is not taken in a fish tank somewhere? It is not like the recorder is holding up a newspaper to verify date and location.....
lol:E;)

In fact I suspect this photo was taken on the same stage from where the moon landing was faked........:ooh::p

I think the CVR may be a bit more important in this event.

(Only because the ACARS transmissions have provided some pieces of puzzle already relating to the aircraft state)

Wonderfully wrong
 

Looks like this news has been progressing fast.

Great news indeed that it is the memory module.

Hopefully this will tell the story of what happened. We don't want this to ever happen again.

Just how much force is required to separate the memory unit from the casing, are the attachment points intended to shear at a certain force?
Personally not seen one separated before, despite a very severe arrival on earth, so quite curious.

@ Parabellum,

Force required for separation would depend upon rate of change of deceleration and angle of deceleration along with whether deceleration was sustained. Then there are the bolt material strength to be taken into account, whether there was any play in connections and also the material strength of whatever the bolts were attached to.

Great news!

Hopefully they can pull the data and give everyone a wealth of information on this accident.

Maybe not. The accident may have been solely the result of 'system problems.' The wreckage very near LKP points to an immediate loss of control.

Why is this search so transparent . . .
 

Why is BEA/AF so transparent on the recovery effort, if somebody were trying to cover something up? Every screw-up on the recovery effort has been reported and reported again -- by them!
Doggone, they have found the FDR and presumably will bring it up. Good work!
Maybe the CVR will reveal more if found, but how many times can a person say "Aw Crap" in French?
Although long retired as a pilot, I have spent 600k miles as SLF on the 330 and its derivatives. No French person I know would ever deliberately put me on a dangerous plane. Please, all you Bus bashers, give these guys a little more time. Pray God the gizmo tells us something.

I don't doubt this as a possibility either.

The CVR may provide an insight into how the errors appeared to the crew, and how they responded. Appropriately or not.....


Or maybe they do indeed just say "Aw Crap".

Air France black box recovered from Atlantic
Posted 4 hours 16 minutes ago onABC Australia

Relatives of the crash victims said they were heartened by the news the black box had been recovered. (Reuters: Brazilian Air Force)

RELATED STORY: Doomed Air France flight's black box found
Search teams have retrieved one of two black box flight recorders of an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, killing 228 people.

The device was the crucial memory unit from a flight data recorder, France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said in a statement.

It was "in good physical condition" after having been moved by a robotic submarine.

The official cause of the disaster remains uncertain, but the crash has been partly blamed on malfunctioning speed sensors used by Airbus.

Air France has been accused of not having responded quickly enough to reports that they might be faulty.

The recovery could be a breakthrough in the investigation into the disaster, because the box could hold crucial data that would enable BEA investigators to determine the cause of the crash.

"Our experts will tell us if there's hope of reading the data," BEA director Jean-Paul Troadec said.

"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."

The device was expected to arrive at BEA offices within eight to 10 days to allow for the search of the cockpit voice recorder (CFR), so both can be taken back to France.

"If we can read the first data, that would be a great step forward. But without the second black box, essential data will be missing ... the way the pilots reacted, the reasons they took ... one decision or another during the emergency," Mr Troadec said.

A spokesman for relatives of the crash victims said they were heartened by the news.

"It's very, very encouraging for all the families of the victims, even if we have to remain prudent while we wait to see to what extent the recorder can be used," said Jean-Baptiste Audousset, head of the AF447 Association.

Investigators announced last Wednesday that search teams had retrieved part of a black box flight recorder from the Airbus A330, but not the part containing the key data.

BEA said the chassis that held one of the recorders had been found a day after a salvage ship began working to retrieve bodies and recently discovered wreckage using the Remora submarines.

The module had broken off from the chassis, presumably at the moment the plane, which was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed into the water.

- AFP

I too am waiting for the CVR, I want to know why everyone else deviated around the cells,and AF 447 did not. Radar failure,and they took a chance and continued?

In days of olde, the CVR yielded much more than the 5 or 13 parameter FDR. The large number of parameters in this DFDR should reveal most or all that's really needed.

On the 330, is it possible to deselect the WX RDR on the MFD? I have spotted the Co on my current Jet having done this a couple of times with CBs predicted. At night, unless you got a flash above you, it could be easy to assume nothing was painting and you were all clear. To be honest, the best tool I find for searching for cells are a set of NVGs. you can see a good 200+ miles, flashes over the horizon WELL before the typical radar will pick things up.


Would a forward looking IR camera in addition to the WX RDR be a more sensible addition? If they had a night mode on the tail cam I have seen some buses have, with a tilt feature to move from the view of the wingspan more into the direction of flight, it could be done at very little cost. Of course, doesnt help with embedded stuff, so you will still need WX RDR. Of my 2000 hours heavy jet (dont laugh), I can only think of 1 time where I needed to nav in cloud around embedded stuff; generally, if its convective, people generally stay out of clouds rather than fly though it!

Fantastic news . . . hoping it yields that missing piece of the puzzle, despite the length of time it took to find it . . . quite an accomplishment, really.

Pinger?
 

Nobody seems to have noticed yet that the pinger is missing from the memory module. You can see the four holes where the pinger was attached on the side. Since the pinger is located on the outside of the memory unit, it is much less protected. The forces needed to shear it of the memory unit would probably also destroy it, which would explain why they never heard the pinger.

actually from the the tech log thread , the french navy did in fact hear a pinger , but only on the data tapes , via a new `cleaning` method many many months after the initial search.

@Daysleeper

i should have been clearer then , the french navy actually heard the `pinger` , or rather , they recorded it on the data tapes which were looked at `again` many months later ; using equipment designed for hunting other subs at much much higher depths than the 10000 feet of water AF447 is laying to rest

Given the progress they made, I am very confident, that they find the CVR module too.

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!