Photo: BEA, via Reuters

After over two years and three failed searches, an international team, including specialists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in partnership  with French authorities, have located the primary wreckage of Air France Flight 447 which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean on May 31, 2009 while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.  In addition to wreckage,  it is reported that the remains of multiple victims were also sited.    The discovery was made using side scan sonars from  Remus 6000 drone submarines, deployed by the search vessel, the MV Alucia.

Bodies From 2009 Air France Crash Are Found

All 228 passengers and crew members were killed when Flight 447 went down on June 1, 2009, in a heavy, high-altitude thunderstorm en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro. Previous searches yielded more than 600 pieces of floating debris and the remains of no more than 50 bodies — 45 passengers and five crew members, including the plane’s captain.

With the wreckage located within a relatively limited field measuring 600 meters by 200 meters, Jean-Paul Troadec, director of the investigations bureau, said investigators were now focusing their efforts on identifying and retrieving the plane’s flight recorders, which they hope would help to solve the mystery of what caused the twin-engine plane to go down.

It remained uncertain whether the recorders — which are normally located in the rear, on the underside of the fuselage — remained attached or were separated on impact with the water, Mr. Troadec said. The images being studied by investigators so far have not revealed the aft section of the plane.

It was also unclear if, after being immersed in salt water for nearly two years and under significant pressure, the data they contain — voice recordings from the cockpit and information on the plane’s position, speed, altitude and heading when it ran into trouble — would be sufficiently readable to advance the investigation.