Reach Beyond Your Limits: Underwater Photos of Airfrance 447 Found

Air France Flight 447 was a scheduled commercial flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew members

The aircraft, an Air France Airbus A330-200 registered as F-GZCP, took off on 31 May 2009 at 19:03 local time (22:03 UTC). The last contact from the crew was a routine message to Brazilian air traffic controllers at 01:33 UTC, as the aircraft approached the edge of Brazilian radar surveillance over the Atlantic Ocean, en route to Senegalese-controlled airspace off the coast of West Africa. Forty minutes

later, a four-minute-long series of automatic radio messages was received from the plane, stating numerous problems and warnings. The aircraft was believed to have been lost shortly after it sent the automated messages.

Debris from the ill-fated flight that claimed the lives of all 228 people aboard are found at the bottom of the Atlantic

Landing Gear

At a press conference held on April 4, 2011, investigators from BEA, the French air accident investigation agency, present photographs of portions of Air France Flight 447, an Airbus 330 which disappeared en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, May 31, 2009, with 228 people aboard.

Engine

The investigators say that the bodies of some of the passengers have been found in the wreckage.

Wing

Thus far, search crews have been unable to locate the flight recorders that could yield clues as to what made the plane crash.

Murky

The search was carried out in a 3,900-square mile area of the ocean, several hundred miles off the coast of Brazil.

Bottom of the Sea

The pieces that were found lie approximately 2.5 miles beneath the surface of the ocean.

Twisted but Intact

The find indicates that the plane did not smash to pieces when it hit the sea, as previously thought.

Tragedy
In the days right after the accident, search teams struggled to find pieces from the plane, locating only parts of it in the area where the flight had gone down. This part of the aircraft body was recovered 745 miles northeast of Recife, Brazil, on June 7, 2009, a week after the crash.