A French nuclear attack submarine and two Dutch tug boats with U.S. Navy listening devices are trolling the Atlantic as the effort intensifies to locate flight recorders from the Air France jet that crashed this month.
While the “black box” recorders emit a signal that travels 3 kilometers (1.8 miles), the batteries last only a month, so searchers have two weeks left. They have to find signals from the wreckage of the Airbus 330 before two French mini-submarines descend from the oceanographic research ship Pourquoi Pas? to pinpoint the boxes’ exact location.
“The key is an immediate response,” said Tim Janaitis, director of business development at Largo, Maryland-based Phoenix International Holdings Inc., which is contracted by the U.S. Navy for deep water searches. “You don’t have much time and it’s incumbent to get the material out there as quickly as you can.”
Finding the flight recorders may be essential to explaining why Air France Flight 447 crashed in the early hours of June 1 as it flew into stormy weather over the Atlantic en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Moments before losing contact, the plane sent automatic messages indicating that its speed sensors were malfunctioning. The recorders may show if the flawed measurements misled the pilots into flying at the wrong speed.
Pinger Locators
The SNA Emeraude, a French nuclear attack submarine equipped with advanced sonar systems, arrived in the presumed crash zone June 10. Each day it covers an area about 36 square kilometers, said Christophe Prazuck, a spokesman for the French military. Debris and bodies from the plane have been found up to 120 kilometers apart.
The Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses, the French agency that investigates crashes, hired two tugs from Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Fairmount Marine BV.
The boats met up in Natal, Brazil, with a 19-person team sent by Phoenix, bringing with them two so-called towed pinger locators. They boarded the tugs June 10 and began trolling the area this weekend, said Patricia Dolan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy.
Each of the boats, traveling at no more than 9 kilometers an hour, trails behind it a 1.5-meter long, torpedo-shaped locator owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by Phoenix. The locators can descend as deep as 6,000 meters, though they usually are kept about 1,000 meters above the ocean floor.
The water’s depth in the area ranges from 1,000 to 3,000 meters, according to the French agency that is leading the investigation into the crash.
French frigate Ventose, amphibious assault ship BPC Mistral and several Brazilian Navy ships are also in the area to collect debris and bodies. They’ve recovered 50 bodies and hundreds of pieces of the plane, which had 228 passengers and crew on board.
Phoenix, the U.S. Navy’s prime contractor for deep water searches, in March recovered parts of a B-52 bomber that went down in 3,500 meters of water off Guam. Last year it found the black box from a Boeing 737-400 Indonesian Adam Air Flight that went down in 1,650 meters of water off Java.
“It’s a very rugged and mountainous zone,” said Prazuck, the French military spokesman. “It’s a slow and difficult job.”
source: Bloomberg