Air France Plane Did Not Break Up In Flight

With the search for the missing black boxes still ongoing, investigators are using pieces of debris and the jumbled automatic signals sent in the final moments from the plane to determine - as much as possible - what likely happened to Air France Flight 447. Investigators seem confident at this point that the plane hit the water completely intact, but traveling vertically at a very high rate of speed.

There were no mayday signals sent and none of the flotation devices on the plane were deployed. That would indicate that the pilots were unaware of the danger they were in or that they were unaware until it was too late to respond.

As the days roll on, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the black boxes will ever be found, which may leave the final determination as to the cause of the crash as unknown. Even if the boxes are recovered, there may never be any absolute certainty as to the sequence of events that caused the crash.

All of the passengers and crew members on the flight were killed and at least 51 bodies have been recovered from the crash site. Brazilian authorities have performed autopsies on the bodies found, but French officials are still waiting to see the results of those autopsies. It is likely that the investigation into the crash will continue for several months, if not years.

The terrain at the bottom of the ocean where the plane went down is rocky and mountainous. Searchers are not confident that the black boxes will ever be found.