Air France crash plane was not destroyed in flight: investigators

Jul 2, 2009, 14:28 GMT

A hand out picture provided by Brazilian Navy shows a group of military men unloading a 14 meters section of the Air France Airbus A330-220 from the Constitution frigate in the city of Recife, Brazil, 14 June 2009. EPA/ALEXANDRE SEVERO / BRAZILIAN NAVY

Paris - The Air France Airbus A330-200 that crashed into the Atlantic one month ago was not destroyed in flight, an official with the French Office of Accident Investigation (BEA) said Thursday at Le Bourget airport near Paris.

Alain Bouillard, who is in charge of the investigation, said an analysis of the fragments of the plane that have been recovered suggests that 'the plane seems to have hit the surface of the water in the line of flight with a strong vertical acceleration.'

This conclusion appears to eliminate the possibility that the crash of flight AF 447, which plunged into the Atlantic in the early hours of June 1 with 228 people aboard, was caused by a terrorist bomb.

Terrorism was considered a possible cause of the accident because the pilot of the Air France plane did not send any distress signal before the plane vanished while on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The statements were part of the first interim report on the crash made public by the BEA since the accident.

The search for the plane's black boxes, which are seen as vital to the investigation, continued, though with little hope of success.

The black boxes - a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder - emit signals for at least 30 days after a crash. That period expired on Wednesday.