Air France 447 Wreckage Found

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 09:01 PM ET

Verified

An engine from the Airbus A330 that
was Air France Flight 447 on the floor
of the Atlantic at a depth of approximately
12,800 feet. BEA

Key Takeaways:

Wreckage of Air France Flight 447, which disappeared in 2009, was recently located on the deep Atlantic seafloor after an extensive search.
The discovery, made possible by statistical analysis and led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, revealed 50 bodies and major sections of the plane nearly 13,000 feet below the surface.
A mission is underway to recover bodies, wreckage, and the crucial flight recorders, with the flight data recorder already having been found.

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The disappearance of Air France Flight 447 over the deep water Atlantic while en route from Rio to Paris on June 1, 2009, shocked the world and left a web of mysteries. What happened to bring the Airbus A330 with 228 people aboard down in the middle of the dark night? Theories, many of them speculative, abounded, including malfunctioning speed sensors or flight computers. Despite the lack of a clear cause, the crash is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in France. Other questions remain: What happened to the wreckage? Was it too deep to recover? Would it ever be found?

Last week, at least a few of those questions were answered. The BEA, France’s aviation investigation authority, announced that it had located wreckage on the sea floor, nearly 13,000 feet below the surface.