Investigators deny that Air France black boxes were found

Jun 23, 2009, 13:18 GMT

Paris - French investigators looking into the June 1 crash of an Air France plane into the Atlantic and the captain of a ship looking for the aircraft denied Tuesday a media report that the plane's black boxes had been located.

'There are always signals detected that must be analysed. We can not confirm that the black boxes have been found,' said Martine del Bono, spokeswoman for the Office of Accident Investigation and Analysis (BEA) in Paris.

That denial was confirmed by Philippe Guillemet, commander of the ship Pourquoi Pas, which is part of the fleet of boats searching for the remains of the plane and its 228 passengers and crew in the Atlantic, about 1,200 kilometres off the Brazilian coastline.

Asked on Europe 1 radio if it was true that the black boxes had not been detected, Guillemet replied, 'Absolutely.'

Earlier Tuesday, the online edition of the daily Le Monde had reported that signals from the plane's black boxes had been detected.

According to the Le Monde report, the weak signals emitted by the beacons of the two recorders were detected by French ships Monday. Guided by the signals, the French mini-submarine Nautile was diving to try and recover them.

Guillemet said he regretted that what Le Monde had published was not true.

'I don't know where (the information) came from. We are still in a search stage,' he said. 'We detect signals every day. Afterwards, they must be analysed. That was false information that was passed on.'

The black boxes - a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder - are considered essential to the success of the investigation into the crash of the Airbus A330-200 aircraft, which killed all 228 people aboard.

The search to recover them has turned into a race against time, since the signals are emitted for only about 30 days, or until the end of June.

The search for the airplane and the black boxes is made difficult by the mountainous terrain of the seafloor and depths in the area of up to 4,800 metres.

Since the plane plunged into the sea, the bodies of 50 victims have been taken out of the waters, and 11 of them have been identified.