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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Brazilian navy races to solve Air France mystery |
| 2009-06-04 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Brazilian navy divers rushed on Wednesday to reach the wreckage of an Air France jet and start the grim job of pulling debris from the Atlantic Ocean, where the plane with 228 people went down in the airline's worst disaster in its 75-year history. Four navy ships with recovery equipment and a tanker were headed to a 3-mile (5 km) strip of water strewn with airplane seats, an orange buoy, wiring, hunks of metal and jet fuel stains about 745 miles (1,200 km) northeast of the coastal city of Recife. Rear Admiral Domingos Nogueira said the navy was battling tough weather as officials predicted the hardest task would be finding the flight data and voice recorders that hold clues to why the plane fell out of the sky during a severe storm in the middle of the night. Mysterious crash Distraught relatives who had prayed for a miracle gave up hope as experts were certain that all aboard died on the flight, which left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday night bound for Paris. So far no bodies have been sighted on flyovers by the air force, which spotted evidence of the catastrophe on Tuesday, allowing the navy to mount a retrieval operation. "The ships are equipped to arrive and pick up pieces of the Airbus," Nogueira said. "Each ship has two divers on board and smaller ships to throw into the ocean to try and get pieces." Helicopters would then be used to take wreckage of the Airbus A330 from the ships to a base on the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, 430 miles (700 km) from the crash site. Officials said the recorders needed to identify the causes of the mysterious crash could be on the ocean floor at a depth of 6,600 to 9,800 feet (2,000 to 3,000 meters). The recorders are designed to send homing signals for up to 30 days when they hit water but many do not float well. One expert said it could be among the hardest recoveries since the decades-long search to find the Titanic. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 So great a loss. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-06-04 14:01 |