Travel Safety Update - Latin America / Caribbean.

Jun 28, 2009

Air France, Airbus

The body of the pilot of an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic on June 1 has been identified among dozens that have been recovered from the ocean, the airline said Thursday. All 228 people on board the Airbus A330 died when it crashed for unknown reasons during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Brazilian and French ships are still searching the remote area where the plane is believed to have crashed for bodies and wreckage. The flight recorders or "black boxes" have not been found. People from 32 nationalities died in the crash. Among them were 61 French nationals and 58 Brazilians. Autopsies on more than 50 bodies recovered from the ocean are being carried out in Brazil. French authorities have given few details of the findings. Jun 25, 2009

Air France, Airbus

Signals from the flight data recorders of an Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located, Le Monde newspaper said on Tuesday. But a spokeswoman from the BEA, the French air accident authority, noted that many sounds were picked up on the sea bed and investigators were not sure that what they had detected was from the flight recorders. An Air France spokeswoman also said she could not confirm the newspaper report. Le Monde said French naval vessels had picked up a weak signal from the flight recorders and that a mini submarine had been dispatched on Monday to try and find the "black boxes" on the bottom of the rugged ocean floor. The search has been focused on the black boxes which may contain vital information that could help explain what happened when the Airbus A330 crashed into the sea en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1. Locator beacons, known as "pingers," on the flight recorders send an electronic impulse every second for at least 30 days. The signal can be heard up to 2 km (1.2 miles) away. French vessels involved in the search operation include a nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment and a research ship equipped with mini submarines. The remote location in the Atlantic as well as the depth and surface of the ocean floor have made the search especially difficult and the wreckage could lie anywhere between 1 km (0.6 miles) and 4 km (2.5 miles) down. Jun 23, 2009

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