Next month, officials will launch a fourth effort to find wreckage from the Air France A330 that crashed into the mid-Atlantic, about 600 miles from the Brazil coast, in June 2009. Previous searches have retrieved debris and remains of some of the 228 people who died, but investigators still hope to find the missing cockpit data and voice recorders. Heavy thunderstorms and faulty pitot tubes have been cited by accident investigators, but the full chain of events that led to the crash remains unclear. The new search is scheduled to start March 18 and could last until July. Three autonomous probes operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Woods Hole, Mass., will search about 4,000 square miles of seabed. Each probe is fitted with ultra-high-resolution cameras and sonar gear.
David Gallo, of WHOI, told The New York Times the new submersibles are a state-of-the-art version of the vehicles that found the remains of the Titanic in 1985. “We are employing the most advanced robotics that exist in the world today,” Gallo said. “I have confidence that if the aircraft is in this area, we will be able to identify it.” The PBS show Nova will debut an hour-long report about the crash next week. “Crash of Flight 447” premieres Wednesday, Feb. 16. Compiling expert testimony, satellite weather images, and messages transmitted by the aircraft’s computer system, Nova attempts to trace the events that led to the crash.
