Sub to hunt for air crash black boxes

RECIFE – A French nuclear submarine reached the crash zone of Air France Flight 447 yesterday to join the search for the plane’s black boxes, the key to determining what brought the Airbus down in the sea off Brazil with 228 people on board.

The attack sub Emeraude plans to trawl 35 square kilometres a day, using sonar to try to pick up the boxes’ acoustic beacons or ‘pingers,’ French armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck said yesterday.It’s a race against time, because the beacons will start to fade 30 days after the May 31 crash. If the boxes are spotted, the Emeraude will work with the mini-sub Nautile, which can descend to the ocean floor and was a key part of the search for the Titanic.’There are big uncertainties about the accident site, the ocean floor is rugged … so it’s going to be very difficult,’ Prazuck told France-Info radio. ‘It’s going to be very complicated and we’re going to need a lot of luck’ to find the black boxes.The French submarines will be aided by two US underwater audio devices capable of picking up signals even at a depth of 6 100 metres. One of those devices was being loaded Wednesday onto a ship off Brazil’s northeastern coast.A total of 41 bodies have been recovered so far from the scene of the crash, about 640 kilometres northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast. The remains are being flown daily to Recife, where investigators hope to identify them and uncover clues into the crash based on the victims’ injuries.Prazuck told Associated Press Television News that a French frigate, the Ventose, had already gathered 130 pieces of debris, including big and small pieces. – Nampa-AP