Air France 447: How Much More Will We Learn?

With the recent discovery of the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 almost four kilometres beneath the surface of the mid-Atlantic Ocean, we may soon discover the truth about how this plane was brought down – something which has so far been not much more than a complete mystery.

What we do know has been gleaned from the small amount of wreckage found at the time of the crash, and some telemetry received from the plane before it crashed.

This incident has always resonated with me – I was booked on an Air France flight from Paris to Singapore little more than two weeks after this incident in June 2009.

Whilst I never felt unsafe at the prospect of flying with an airline which had just suffered a major loss such as this, I do remember seeing and being touched by tributes laid out at Charles de Gaulle Airport after arriving in Paris about a week later – (via a combination of Qantas and British Airlines flights).

The search for the wreckage has apparently yielded a “large intact portion of the main fuselage”, bringing forth the possibility that the black box flight recorders – (which are normally attached to the fuselage) – might still be attached, and therefore found when the wreckage is brought to the surface, as is planned by the French government.

Below is a documentary produced by the BBC entitled “Lost: The Mystery of Flight 447“, about the initial theories and investigations into the crash.

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It will be most interesting to see if the black boxes are found, and a definitive explanation for the crash is determined, just how close to the mark this investigation carried out by the BBC was. How much more than we already know, will we actually learn?