Air France Plane Crashed Vertically Into Ocean
Flight 447 went down so quickly that passengers had no time to react, says French head investigator
Air France flight 447 did not break up in the air but plunged vertically into the Atlantic Ocean, according to the French head investigator of last month's crash, which killed all 228 people on board.
Alain Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, indicating the accident happened so quickly that the passengers had no time to react.
Speed sensors on the Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were not to blame, he said, though "we are far from understanding the cause of the crash."
No information was being given out from autopsies of the bodies found, Bouillard told a news conference at the headquarters of the French air accident agency BEA in Le Bourget, outside Paris.
The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the accident may never be known. A burst of automated messages sent by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search.
Families of the victims had been briefed before the media on the findings so far of the BEA investigation.
Earlier, Christophe Guillot-Noel, head of an association for the crash victims' families said they wanted all the facts, "above all to be able to avoid this eventually happening again".
"We have just one demand: transparency. We have just one expectation: the truth," he said.
Alain Bouillard said life vests found among the wreckage were not inflated, indicating the accident happened so quickly that the passengers had no time to react.
Speed sensors on the Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were not to blame, he said, though "we are far from understanding the cause of the crash."
No information was being given out from autopsies of the bodies found, Bouillard told a news conference at the headquarters of the French air accident agency BEA in Le Bourget, outside Paris.
The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the accident may never be known. A burst of automated messages sent by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search.
Families of the victims had been briefed before the media on the findings so far of the BEA investigation.
Earlier, Christophe Guillot-Noel, head of an association for the crash victims' families said they wanted all the facts, "above all to be able to avoid this eventually happening again".
"We have just one demand: transparency. We have just one expectation: the truth," he said.
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