21 Aug 2009

Search for Air France flight recorder abandoned

3:24 pm on 21 August 2009

French investigators have abandoned the search for a flight recorder from an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in June.

The Airbus A330 crashed in a storm en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on 1 June, killing all 228 people on board.

Investigators have so far failed to determine the exact cause of the accident, the BBC reports.

Pieces of wreckage which have been recovered indicate that it broke up on contact with water, and not in the air.

Investigators also believe the plane's speed sensors had been "a factor but not the cause" of the crash.

There had been speculation that old-style sensors may have given the pilots faulty information.