A specialist US underwater team was brought in to try to locate the missing flight recorders from the lost Air France flight 447 today.
The Airbus went down in a remote and deep part of the Atlantic hundreds of miles off the Brazilian coast.
Search teams are struggling to find the “black box” flight recorders which will broadcast a locator signal for up to 30 days.
The US Navy team uses special underwater listening devices which can detect emergency beacons to a depth of 20,000 feet.
Meanwhile Brazilian and French military ships, which have so far recovered 17 bodies and large amounts of plane wreckage from the sea, resumed their search amid the floating debris.
What caused the Airbus A330 to crash May 31st with 228 people on board may remain a mystery unless searchers can locate the plane’s flight data and voice recorders.
France is leading the investigation into the cause of the crash, while Brazilian officials are focusing on the recovery of victims and plane wreckage.
There is “no more doubt” that the wreckage is from Air France Flight 447, the Brazilian Air Force said.
Flight 447 disappeared and probably broke up in midair in turbulent weather on May 31 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
The search is focusing on a zone of several hundred square miles 400 miles north-east of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast.
Brazilian authorities have refused to release the precise co-ordinates of where they are looking, except to say the area lies south-east of the last jet transmission and could have indicated the pilot was trying to turn around in mid-flight and head back to the islands.
The investigation is increasingly focused on whether external instruments on the Airbus A330 may have iced over, confusing speed sensors and leading computers to set the plane’s speed too fast or slow - a potentially deadly mistake.
The French agency investigating the disaster said airspeed instruments on the plane had not been replaced as the maker had recommended, but cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions about what role that may have played in the crash.
The agency, BEA, said the plane received inconsistent airspeed readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm.
AP