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BY JIM FLINK
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Hi-tech underwater robots have discovered more wreckage from Air France flight 447 which crashed shortly after taking off from Rio De Janeiro on June 1st, 2009.
It’s the fourth discovery in a two-year long search to determine what caused the crash that killed all 228 people on board.
The Telegraph has video of France’s Transport Minister who says, the discovery is key in determining exactly what happened to the ill-fated airliner.
“We found a large part of the aircraft surrounded by debris. It’s like a field. There is debris and a large part of the plane. A part of it has remained in tact. We have more than traces in fact. We have bodies.”
Parts of the plane -- and some bodies -- were last discovered in May 2010, along with some plane parts -- but that discovery failed to find the flight’s black box recorders. The Guardian notes, that has fueled speculation as to what happened.
“Speculation about the cause of the crash has focused on the possible icing-up of the aircraft's speed sensors, which appeared to give inconsistent readings seconds before the plane vanished.”
The inconsistencies are key. On CNN, an analyst says, other planes survived adverse weather conditions -- but Flight 447 did not. Now investigators want to know why.
“They have located the engines, they have located parts of the undercarriage, and they have located the main part of the fuselage. ... There was a massive fault on board. Massive. That caused numerous systems to fail. They don’t know what caused that.”
This latest discovery was aided by remote, high tech robots from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. New Scientist reports, the robots have quite a history.
“….the submarine robots...are far more agile than in previous searches - and use a novel sonar image mosaicing technique honed during … mapping of the complete debris field of the RMS Titanic. The way the sonar image stripes are stitched together reduces the risk that detail will be lost where the images are joined...It seems to have worked.”
France 24 reports, Air France and Airbus -- who are being probed for alleged manslaughter in connection with the crash -- are paying the estimated $12.7 million cost of the search.
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