Air France Tail Found

(NEWSER) - The first Brazilian navy ship arrived on the scene where Air France flight 447 is thought to have gone down, but aviation officials aren't holding out much hope of finding the black boxes, reports the BBC. "We cannot rule out that we will not find the flight recorders," said one French official. Deep-sea submersibles won't arrive until next week because of bad weather. More»

Investigation among most complex and expensive in history

(AP) - French investigators have recovered all the flight data and cockpit voice recordings from the recorders of an Air France jet found in the Atlantic nearly two years after it crashed, they said today. The recorders were located by underwater robots and hoisted from depths of some 13,000 feet earlier this month , in one of the most expensive and complicated air crash investigations in history. Investigators and victims' families are hoping the recorders will shed light on what sent Flight 447 into the sea on June 1, 2009, as it traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. More»

Submarine sent to probe ocean floor

(NEWSER) - Rescuers are hot on the track of signals picked up deep in the Atlantic that could be from one of Air France Flight 447's black boxes, Le Monde reported today, but a French official denied that the signals could be originating from the doomed plane's flight recorder. “The black boxes have not been detected,” the official tells the AP. While Le Monde says a submarine was sent to investigate, a source tells Reuters it wasn’t “the first time sounds had been heard.” More»

(AP) - Bodies recovered in the Air France disaster show multiple fractures in the legs, hips, and arms, a Brazilian official said today. Experts said such injuries suggest the plane broke up in the air, and a spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners said autopsies on some of the 50 bodies recovered so far showed the fractures. More»

(NEWSER) - Autopsy reports indicate that Air France flight 447 did not crash because of a terrorist strike, the Independent reports. Examinations of the first 16 bodies—all recovered whole—show no signs of explosion, fire, or penetration by shards of metal. The autopsy details, leaked to the Brazilian press this weekend, leave authorities all the more baffled by the fatal crash. More»