France resumes search for crashed Airbus black boxes

Air France Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic on June 1 killing all 228 people on board. The crash was the worst in the airline's 75-year history, and the world's worst for almost a decade.

"Without finding the recorders this investigation could never be conclusive and this accident could remain largely unexplained," Jean-Paul Troadec, head of the BEA French investigation agency, told a news conference in Brazil on Thursday.

The four-week operation will involve the U.S. Anne Candies and Norway's Seabed Worker ships, which have powerful sonars and deep-water robot vehicles to help with the search of the plane's debris at the depth of up to 13,000 feet (4,000 meters).

The new $13.3-million search is jointly financed by Airbus and Air France, and comes after two search attempts last year failed to determine what had caused the crash of a very reliable aircraft, such as Airbus A330.

A team of professional Air France pilots concluded last year that faulty air speed sensors were the main cause of the tragedy. Their report was based on automatic messages sent by on-board computers just before the crash; Kazinform cites RIA Novosti.