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BY EMILY GIFFIN

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Closure for the families of Air France Flight 447 victims remains out of reach after new details surface from black box recordings.

Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic two years ago - killing all 228 passengers and crew on board. Video- BBC

According to a report from a German news magazine over the weekend, the flight recorders were retrieved at the beginning of the month, and investigators more recently have been successful in extracting data from them. WHDH explains.

“Now according to unnamed sources familiar with the black box data, quoted in the respected German newspaper Der Spiegel, the captain of the Airbus 330 was not in the cockpit when the trouble started. About four hours into the flight, between Rio and Paris, entering a monster storm. And that he can be heard rushing in to try to help the two co-pilots save the plane.”

Bloomberg reports - the details also came from unidentified sources with knowledge of the investigation.

 “Air France Flight 447’s flight recordings show the aircraft slowed to a stall after its airspeed sensors failed while the two co-pilots were at the controls ... causing the autopilot to disengage over the Atlantic Ocean, said the people, who declined to be identified because the investigation is still confidential.”

As the data begins to point fingers at either technical or human error, the media wonder who's to blame.

“The big question is: What triggered the stall in the first place? One possibility is that the pilots reacted incorrectly to the speed sensors' failure. But even if this was the case, it still wouldn't be enough to free the plane's manufacturer or operator from all responsibility.”

The New York Times references a French governmental investigation that said “faulty speed readings” could be to blame for the autopilot failure -- but also concluded that couldn’t have been the only reason for the crash. The Times looks at how the newly discovered data have affected those close to the crash.

“Air France’s main pilots’ union and relatives of the 228 people who perished in the mid-Atlantic crash of Air France Flight 447 two years ago strongly condemned reports Tuesday suggesting that crucial errors made by the jet’s crew may have led to the disaster.”

And people like Robert Soulas, whose daughter and son-in-law died in the crash, told The Times the back-and-forth of the media does more damage than good.

“’This is extremely upsetting for the families… I am thinking in particular of the families of the pilots who are being anonymously accused and cannot defend themselves.’”

Representatives from both Airbus and Air France have reportedly said they will not respond before the bureau’s expected release on Friday of additional details about the crash captured on the recorders.


 
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