A large piece of the tail section of an airliner bearing the logo of Air France was found on Monday. Undoubtedly from the ill-fated flight 447, it's hoped the tail section will help narrow the search area for the black boxes which could hold the key to the reason airliner's crash.
While without those black boxes, the cause of the crash may never be known, Air France pilots have made up their own minds. BEA investigators are looking at the possibility that external speed monitors iced over and gave false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm. Airbus, maker of the A330-200 involved in the crash had previously recommended the monitors be replaced, but Air France had not done so. A union is urging pilots to refuse to fly Airbus A330 and A340 planes unless the monitors, known as Pitot tubes, are replaced.
Air France said it began replacing the Pitot tubes on the Airbus A330 model on April 27th. Unfortunately, the monitors had not yet been replaced on the plane that crashed. Air France said it will finish the work in the "coming weeks."
Acoustic pingers on the black boxes begin to fade 30 days after crashes, so time is of the essence. While France has sent a nuclear submarine, scheduled to arrive this week, two U.S. Navy devices capable of picking up the flight recorders' emergency beacons on the ocean floor are also on the way.
The two towed pinger locators the U.S. is sending are expected to arrive in Brazil late Monday. They will be dropped into the ocean near the debris field no later than Thursday. The search is focusing on several hundred square miles of ocean roughly 400 miles NE of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.
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