black box news stories on Newser

Recordings Recovered From Crashed Air France Jet

Mon, 16 May 2011 08:02:40 CDT

French investigators have recovered all the flight data and cockpit voice recordings from the recorders of an Air France jet found in the Atlantic nearly two years after it crashed, they said today. The recorders were located by underwater robots and hoisted from depths of some 13,000 feet earlier...

France to Hunt Again for Vanished Rio-Paris Flight

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:45:05 CST

The French government will conduct a fourth search for the flight recorders of the Air France jetliner that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris 18 months ago, it announced today. The initial search for Flight 447 found 50 bodies and hundreds of pieces...

Ethiopian Jet's Black Box Recovered

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:12:18 CST

Lebanon's marine commandos today recovered the black box of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, a Lebanese army officer said. The Boeing 737 crashed Jan. 25 minutes after takeoff from Beirut during a fierce thunderstorm. All 90 people on board died. The officer said the...

Yemenia Air Black Boxes Too Deep for Divers

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:11:02 CDT

Investigators have concluded that the black boxes from Yemenia Airways Flight 626 that plunged into the Indian Ocean are too deep to be reached by divers, a French official said today. French investigators are trying to determine the exact zone where the boxes can be found using equipment that allows...

Sub Reports Signal from Yemenia Black Boxes

Katherine Thompson — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:10:01 CDT

A submarine has located the black boxes from Yemenia Flight 626 in the Indian Ocean, a French investigative agency said today. Divers and search crews are still working to find debris from the plane, and have recovered parts of the fuselage, reports the AP. Officials did not say when the...

Computer Crash May Have Doomed Air France Flight

Rob Quinn — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:15:09 CDT

Investigators trying to piece together the fate of Air France Flight 447 in the absence of its black boxes are focusing on possible computer failures, the Wall Street Journal reports. The evidence suggests a problem with the sensors quickly snowballed into widespread computer outages, leaving the crew struggling to manage...

Signals Detected, but Officials Deny They're Flight 447's

Matt Cantor — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:28:40 CDT

Rescuers are hot on the track of signals picked up deep in the Atlantic that could be from one of Air France Flight 447's black boxes, Le Monde reported today, but a French official denied that the signals could be originating from the doomed plane's flight recorder. “The black boxes...

Air France Tail Found

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:33:42 CDT

Brazilian searchers found a large tail section from an Air France jet today, one of the biggest pieces yet recovered from wreckage that could help narrow the search for Flight 447's black boxes. A US Navy team is bringing in high-tech underwater listening devices to detect pings from the data...

Intense Winds May Have Doomed Plane

Kevin Spak — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:03:46 CDT

Extremely high winds may have set off a chain reaction of mechanical problems that took down Air France Flight 447, the Wall Street Journal reports. The series of automated messages sent by the plane, typically intended to alert maintenance crews to mundane issues, reveal a cascade of failing systems—flight-control...