Investigators have successfully downloaded all the data from the flight recorders from Air France Flight 447 that were recovered two weeks ago, the French accident investigation bureau announced on Monday. The data includes two hours of cockpit voice recordings and all the information stored in the flight data recorder that monitored the systems of the Airbus A330, which crashed into the Atlantic nearly two years ago while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The recorders were found nearly two and half miles deep. An interim report on the analysis of the data should be published sometime this summer, according to BEA, the French accident investigation bureau.
Among other questions, the cockpit audio recordings may help explain why the crew didn’t choose to take a route around the storm as some other flights did (click here for an animation showing trajectories of several flights in the area), and which members of the flight crew were at the controls. AVweb’s Glenn Pew recently spoke with Mike Purcell, a leader of the search crew that found Flight 447’s voice and flight data recorders; click here to listen.
