The plane itself crashed nearly two years ago now. The flight was a regularly scheduled one from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The plane went down over the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009. The exact cause of of the accident has never been determined, but some have theorized that the plane went down due to the loss of its air-speed sensors.
Now, according to reports in the media, new data from the black box show that the captain of the plane was only in the cockpit at the start of the plane’s fateful and fatal 3 ½ minute descent began.
The findings were released by the French air accident investigation team. The black boxes in the airplanes track all of the on board sensors on the plane and track the plane’s level, speed and other indicators. There is also a recorder that picks up sound in the cockpit and transmissions between the cockpit and ground controllers.
The black boxes ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for nearly two years. The black box that contained the cockpit voice recorder was only recently found.
It appears as if the captain was in a different part of the plane, resting, when the plane began to get into trouble. The other members of the flight crew evidently thought that they could handle whatever problem had come up and the captain was not called back into the cockpit until the plane began its descent.
The airplane began to emit a number of automatic radio messages that stated there were numerous problems with the airplane as it descended into the ocean. Communications with the plane were lost shortly after those messages had been sent.
All 228 passengers on board the plane were lost. It is still the worst airline disaster in the history of Air France.
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