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French investigators say Air France plane broke up in the sea

Friday, 03 July 2009

French investigators say Air France plane broke up in the sea

A French investigation team, who have been working on finding out what happened to the Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean at the beginning of June, think the aircraft broke up when it hit the water, and not while it was still in the sky.

The investigators from the BEA accident investigation agency discovered that the plane's speed sensors had been a factor involved in the accident but were not the reason why the jet had got into trouble.

The Airbus A330 had lost control and crashed into the ocean after leaving Rio de Janeiro and on its way to Paris on 1 June. 228 people lost their lives in the disaster.

The plane's flight data recorders have still not been located and teams will carry on searching in the area for another 10 days having extended the time being devoted to this to 10 July.

Alain Bouillard, of the BEA, has explained that the accident had been extremely hard to investigate and piece together and he admitted that his team were a long way from knowing for sure why the plane had crashed as it did.

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