First Photos of Wreckage from Air France Flight 447

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 08:50 PM ET

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Key Takeaways:

The wreckage of Air France Flight 447 and its flight data recorder have been successfully located and recovered.
An extensive effort is underway to retrieve as many components as possible from the deep ocean, including engines, landing gear, and sections of the fuselage and wing.
The recovered wreckage and its distribution pattern on the seafloor are vital for investigators to determine the cause of the crash and the sequence of events.

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The wreckage from AF 447 has been located. The flight data recorder has also now been recovered — Click here to see photos of the black box search effort.

The team is moving to recover as much wreckage from the site as possible. Given the great depths involved, that won’t be an easy task. But every component, including the engines, has an important story to tell investigators.

The remains of a landing gear bogey situated alongside some associated structure.

Ghostly still in the deep, part of a landing gear assembly for the Airbus A330.

Battered remains of the trailing edge of the left wing of the A330 with flight controls gone.

Some components are nearly intact. Others are hard to recognize. These fuselage sections are heavily damaged, whether from the impact with the water or from damage while airborne will be up to investigators to determine.

A sonar sidescan of the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 on the floor of the Atlantic. The disbursement pattern will offer clues to investigators seeking to determine what went so terribly wrong in the last minutes of the flight.

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