French investigators have recovered all the flight data and cockpit voice recordings from the recorders of an Air France jet found in the Atlantic nearly two years after it crashed, they said today. The recorders were located by underwater robots and hoisted from depths of some 13,000 feet earlier this month, in one of the most expensive and complicated air crash investigations in history. Investigators and victims' families are hoping the recorders will shed light on what sent Flight 447 into the sea on June 1, 2009, as it traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
An international team downloaded the material from the "black box" voice and data recorders over the weekend, said French air accident investigators, including “all of the data from the Flight Data recorder, as well as the whole recording of the last two hours of the flight from the Cockpit Voice Recorder.” Investigators will now analyze the material, which will take several weeks, and will release a new accident report during the summer. (More France stories.)