(haunting music)
- [Narrator] This is Le Bourget Airport.
Under close guard,
the two black boxes of the Rio-Paris flight,
are ushered into the offices of the BEA,
the Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis,
the French Civil Aviation Authority.
The boxes have just been recovered
from the depth of 3,900 meters,
and are ready to reveal their secrets
23 months after Flight AF447 crashed
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
For two years now, the world has been wondering
what caused this accident.
Two years, during which the families of the 228 victims
have been desperate to find out what happened
to their loved ones.
Two years, during which investigators
have tirelessly pursued what's already one
of the biggest inquiries in the history of aviation.
For the first time, using previously unseen footage,
we are going to tell you
about their search in the ocean depths.
(mysterious electronic music)
May 31st, 2009, 10:29 p.m.,
Flight AF447 takes off for Paris.
At 2:10 a.m., it reports its position for the last time,
then vanishes in a communication dead zone.
Within a few hours, the missing flight becomes headline news
all over the world.
- [Martine] (Speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] What's hard to grasp, is the word vanished.
How can a 21st century aircraft just vanish,
nighttime, the middle of the ocean, no witnesses,
just disappear without a trace?
Very quickly, the French Navy and Air Force
deploy considerable resources in the zone.
An international coalition begins to form around France,
involving Brazil and the United States.
Military frigates and nuclear submarines are sent in.
At this stage, the passenger's families
have not given up hope.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] I didn't cry at all the first week.
Until it was confirmed otherwise,
there was a chance they were still alive.
Someone in our family said, "Alexander is a good swimmer.
"So is Julia, maybe they survived."
Those are the kind of irrational thoughts you have
in that situation.
- [Narrator] In the days following the disappearance,
the Brazilians find the tail fin of the AF447,
as well as pieces of debris.
In total, 1,000 pieces are found floating on the surface,
amounting to about 5% of the aircraft.
These clues make one thing certain.
No passengers can possibly have survived.
(suspenseful music)
(helicopter blades whirring)
Among the floating debris, 50 bodies are found.
They are repatriated and identified.
But where are the other 178 victims?
Where is the wreckage of the plane?
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] We figured, since they'd found the aircraft,
they'd find people's remains, too.
But no, parts were found, people too,
but they didn't find the plane.
- [Narrator] In the days following the accident,
the investigation is taken up
by the Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis, the BEA.
It was in these offices that investigators mapped out
their strategy.
Their prime objective was
to find the black box flight recorders,
containing the secrets of what happened.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] By understanding this accident,
and its causes, could we prevent other similar accidents?
Are there other aircraft flying right now,
liable to suffer, maybe not an identical,
but a similar accident?
- [Narrator] What happened to this Airbus A330?
A technical breakdown?
A handling error?
Faced with such uncertainties,
something had to be done.
- A plane shouldn't fall out of the sky,
and no one knows why or where it is.
To many people fly every single day.
The rumors, of course, were,
it was a bomb, it was terrorism,
and until you find out,
everybody is more at risk,
because you don't know, is there a problem with the plane?
Is there a failure in maintenance,
or something nobody knows,
until you find out exactly what happened.
- [Narrator] What, exactly, was it that cost the lives
of 228 passengers and crew?
Where were they now, in the vastness of the Atlantic?
Although there was little to work on,
the investigators kept their cool.
They focused on the aircraft's last known position.
From that point, they traced a radius of 75 kilometers.
This was the designated search area.
Cliffs, mountain peaks, flat lands,
the uneven topography beneath the water,
makes it one of the most mysterious,
most hostile areas of the earth's surface.
- [Alain] (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] It was like trying to find a single piece
in an area the size of Switzerland,
or a large part of Switzerland.
We were looking for a needle in a haystack.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The BEA launched the first phase
of its investigation with a degree of optimism.
They were looking for the signals transmitted
by the black boxes.
To that end, the French Navy submarine, the Emeraude,
was deployed to comb the area.
The BEA also called into action two ships,
the Fairmount Glacier, and the Fairmount Expedition.
These two vessels boast unique hydrophonic technology
for sounding out the sea bed.
The objective was to pick up the locator beacon
transmitted by the aircraft's black boxes.
In aviation terminology, these are known as pingers.
Once underwater, they send out an ultrasound signal
every second.
But in a vast ocean,
detecting these pingers is a huge challenge.
First, the beacon needs to have survived the impact
of the accident.
Then, it has to be found within the 30 to 40 day period,
during which the signal is transmitted.
- [Arnaud] (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] It had to be found.
It just had to be.
We had no choice.
We had just 30 days,
and we had the best on-board resources at our disposal.
- [Narrator] To coordinate this armada of hardware,
the BEA also chartered an immense ship,
the Pourquoi Pas?.
(radio chatter)
The hunt for the black boxes has been going on
for almost a month.
The investigators work tirelessly,
but they have only a few days left
to pick up the sound of the pinger.
- [Captain] (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Okay, we'll go back up towards .63.
- [Radio Speaker] We are now at 2500 meters.
- [Narrator] Despite their concerns, the teams met up
each day around mission coordinator, Frederic Hervelin.
- [Frederic] (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] We kept on believing,
we were in the right zone.
We knew that potentially,
the pingers would keep transmitting,
so we couldn't give up.
- [Weather Announcer] Apparent wind speed, 13 knots.
- [Narrator] The investigators reached their deadline date.
In theory, the pingers were no longer transmitting.
They were now, undetectable.
To sum up this early campaign, for a month,
the zone was explored by American hydrophones.
In BEA jargon, it had been blanche, or cleared.
The wreckage must be somewhere else.
Before returning, the crew of the Pourquois Pas?
Gathered on deck.
A strange ceremony unfolded
around Captain Philippe Guillaume.
He decided to symbolically address the 228 victims
of the Rio-Paris flight.
- [Captain] (speaks foreign language)
- [Interpreter] As our mission moves on to the next stage,
I'd like to say one last farewell,
in the name of all the sailors aboard the Pourquoi Pas?.
I want you to know, that we aboard the Pourquoi Pas?,
have all done our utmost in our attempts
to solve the mystery of the tragedy
that took away your lives.
(haunting music)
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, the lack of progress
began to arouse suspicion among the victims relatives,
regarding the integrity of the investigation.
Questions were asked.
Were the BEA, Airbus, and Air France dragging their feet
in an accident investigation that may incriminate them?
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] There was a feeling that maybe
they were trying to hide things from people.
A great deal of suspicion arose around the idea
that there was too much at stake,
that the airline and aircraft constructor
were being deliberately secretive.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] The question was,
were they really looking, or just pretending?
So they could claim to have done what they needed to,
but failed to find anything.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Imagining that the BEA
didn't want to find the truth,
was like thinking, a doctor doesn't want to cure you.
Would I really sully 30 years of my career
for short-term, petty, interests?
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Despite the failure of the initial phase,
despite the rumors,
the BEA wasn't about to give up.
Since they could no longer count on the pingers,
some new hardware was towed in,
high resolution sonar equipment,
designed for geological study of the seabed.
The sonar was towed by a cable,
several kilometers long.
Every nook and cranny of the seabed had to by analyzed,
to discover where the aircraft wreckage was lurking.
But, after 22 days of searching,
there was still no trace of AF447.
At a cost of around nine million euros,
almost zero headway had been made.
During this second phase, only this small rectangle
had been cleared.
With the momentum now against the BEA,
new director, Jean-Paul Tradec, was convinced
that to systematically explore the entire crash zone
would be too costly, and take far too much time.
In order to more accurately target their next move,
the BEA called in the world's top researchers
in the field of ocean currents.
Starting from the point where debris was found
after the accident,
these scientists calculated the direction of drift
in order to pinpoint the site of the wreckage.
All calculations pointed
to this 2,000 square kilometer area,
northwest of the crash zone.
This is where the wreckage of AF447 ought to be.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] The interesting thing was,
several scientists from different countries,
using different models,
all seemed to be pointing in the same direction.
So, that was pretty convincing.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The port of Resife, in Brazil,
nine months after the accident,
two ships chartered by the BEA, the Seabed Worker,
and the Anne Candies weigh anchor.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet was handed the reins
for this new campaign.
His previous experience involved exploring the Titanic.
(suspenseful music)
Once in the area, the crew of the Seabed Worker
began to set up their new machine.
This was the REMUS, an autonomous underwater vehicle,
that would make research much more efficient.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] It's an almost surgical piece of equipment,
capable of very precise work,
with the advantage of being very fast.
Most of all, you can send it down to a certain depth,
and it will stay there, and get to work.
- [Narrator] Once on the sea bed,
the REMUS started its sonar scans.
It works like an underwater drone,
adapting to the relief, it sounds out the depths
with surgical precision.
Once near the seabed, its camera is triggered.
This gives the crew on the surface
visual contact with the seabed.
(mysterious music)
While the BEA search was at a dead end,
in the zone identified by scientists,
some astonishing news was breaking.
The Ministry of Defense made and announcement.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Good evening everyone.
In tonight's news,
people were beginning to lose faith,
but the French Navy has made significant progress
in the hunt for the Rio-Paris black boxes.
According to the Ministy of Defense,
the signal sent out by one of the flight recorders
was apparently pick up by French submarine, the Emeraude.
- [Narrator] To their very great surprise,
the investigators realized that the Emeraude
had recorded the sound of pingers a year earlier,
during the first stages of the search.
The signals were not heard at the time.
Analysis of the submarine's recordings a year later,
isolated the sound of the flight recorder's pinger.
The BEA's director called a press conference.
The families and journalists were baffled.
In truth, so was he.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] I would like to caution against jumping
to any conclusions.
First, we have not located the wreckage.
We think it's a good chance it's there,
but our misplaced optimism in the past
means we cannot say with any degree of certainty.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] We were totally baffled.
Everything seemed to go wrong,
and we didn't know which way to turn
to understand the situation.
- [Narrator] The crew of the Seabed Worker
had a decision to make.
Should they head for the zone identified by the Ministry,
several days sail away?
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Troadec said, what do you think?
Shall we go, or not?
I said, we have no choice,
we have to head up there.
If they said they'd found something, we had to go see.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Paul-Henri Nargeolet gave orders
to head southwest.
The Seabed Worker thus set off
for the other side of the search zone,
following up the Ministry's lead.
The AF447 black boxes, and their secrets,
were apparently right there.
(dramatic music)
After a few hours, the first pictures were in.
No trace of debris.
No trace of the black boxes detected by the submarine.
On the third day, a conference call was held
with the BEA in Paris.
Olivier Ferrante had some news.
(phone beeping)
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Young Interpreter] Hello, we'd like to inform you,
we'd like to inform you of the latest developments.
Are you sitting down?
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Older Interpreter] Sure, we're sitting down.
- [Young Interpreter] It's very likely that the submarine
recorded sound's coming from within the vessel, itself.
Probably, an operator was familiarizing himself
with the sound of pingers.
It's what we feared, and it seems to be the case.
- [Narrator] Incredible, but true.
When the BEA examined the recording,
they discovered that the signal had come
from within the vessel, itself, not from outside.
Very probably a case of sailors on board
listening to recordings of pingers,
so they could learn how to detect them.
Basically, the Ministry believed the mystery
had been solved, but it was a case of misinterpretation.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] At one point, some information was received,
and they said, we have a sound, it seems to match.
But in fact, it didn't, at all.
So, for the family, it was another slap in the face.
You think, they're just amateurs.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] On the Seabed Worker,
the atmosphere was heated.
A week had just been wasted on a horrendous mistake.
Around 21 million euros had been spent
over the three initial phases.
- Perfect shot.
Okay, slow and steady with that,
'cause you're hooked up to the line.
Yeah, just a little longer, then we're gonna just,
we're just gonna throw it when he's got most of it gone.
You can let that go.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] At the BEA, frustration was spilling over.
What if the zone identified by scientists
wasn't the right one?
The sea currents model had determined the search zone
for phase three.
What if the calculations were flawed?
At a meeting, Jean-Paul Troadec and Olivier Faurent
realized their strategy needed to be reassessed.
They decided to use concrete evidence,
and decide, in situ, how the sea currents actually worked.
To that end, the BEA dropped buoys equipped with GPS
into the zone, to analyze their drift.
Two weeks later, the results were astonishing.
Each buoy seemed to take
a completely unpredictable trajectory.
The unavoidable conclusion,
was that in this area of the Atlantic,
sea currents are completely random.
On the ground, the calculations that had directed the search
for several weeks, were worthless.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Now, it's tempting to think
that experts at that level could have said,
you know, in that zone, it's completely random.
Making retro drift calculations is pretty much impossible.
I'll say no more.
- [Narrator] One year to the day after the accident,
the victim's families called their own press conference.
After all the diappointments, U-turns, and dashed hopes,
the wrangle with the BEA had become poisonous.
Were the investigators at the mercy of politicians
and industrialists?
The lawyer acting on behalf of the victim's families
expressed his outrage.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] We are forced to wonder
if there is an agenda here,
inasmuch as victim's families
are being treated with contempt.
Once again, we are told nothing.
All our information comes through you.
It's just unreal.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Desperation set in.
We'd had enough.
But you still have to get up in the morning,
go to work, get on with your life.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] We were pretty sure that the BEA
hadn't done everything in their power.
To us, the strategy was all wrong,
and we made no bones about it.
(haunting music)
- [Narrator] After a long, 10 month interruption,
the search resumed.
Jean-Paul Troadec, Director of the BEA,
had managed to obtain more funding from Airbus
and Air France to launch a fourth campaign.
A press conference was called
at the Ministry of Ecology and Transportation.
After phase three, we are more confident than ever
that we can work in these terrains,
and that the strategy that we have developed
to look at every place twice, at least,
we have a confidence that, if the aircraft
is in this area, we will be able to identify the wreckage.
I want to emphasize that none of this is easy,
none of this is routine,
working at these depths in the ocean,
again, is at the very cutting edge of research
and exploration on the planet.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Starting out from the Suape Port in Brazil,
phase four got under way.
The ship heading this new operation was the Alucia.
The objective was to search around
the last known position of the plane,
and then explore the whole of the circled area,
come what may.
It was basically a return to square one,
exploring zones, that had already been cleared,
maybe erroneously, during the first phase.
(dramatic music)
This new misssion was lead by BEA investigator,
Jean-Claude Vital.
He would unwittingly become one of the key figures
in the AF447 mystery.
On the ninth day, there was a new twist.
Mike Purcell, the man behind the REMUS,
went to see Jean-Claude Vital.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] I was having dinner,
and Mike came along, and he said to me,
Jean-Claude, we have something that might be and echo.
A level of trust builds up.
I trusted him, and I knew that he wouldn't be calling me
for no reason.
All the images from the bottom of the sea are very murky,
are very gray, you can barely see anything.
But in this picture, you could make out a shape,
and we thought, ah, we might by on to something.
- [Narrator] On the sonar,
a strange shape was clearly visible on the seabed.
Seizing this glimmer of hope,
Jean-Claude Vital immediately sent the REMUS down
to photograph the zone.
But things became more difficult.
- [Jean-Claude] (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] And then the weather turned.
A storm blew up, conditions worsened,
we couldn't bring the REMUS up.
We had to wait several hours until the sea calmed down,
to recover the robot.
(mysterious music)
Once we had it on board,
we had to recover the data,
something like 18,000 photograhs.
So there we were, all in the room,
watching and waiting.
All we could see is gray.
Gray and more gray.
Then suddenly, bang.
We could see an aircraft part.
It was weird.
So, we wound it forward a little,
and then saw more and more parts.
So, at that point, I said,
right, stop everything, I need to alert people.
So, that moment was, who do you call?
Alain, Alain Boullard.
(suspenseful music)
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Jean-Claude Vital called me,
I think it was Saturday morning at around six a.m.,
on April second.
Jean-Claude said, "Alain, I think we found it."
That moment was such a rush.
Everybody was still in bed.
My wife was sleeping.
I immediately called Jean-Paul Troadec
and Martine, to tell them, I think we found it.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] I remember arriving at the BEA,
I think it was about eight in the evening,
Alain was at his desk,
still looking at the photos he'd just received.
And when I saw him,
he said, we've got it,
so I said, are you sure?
He said, yes I'm sure.
I've got photos showing the plane's registration.
So then, I thought, right, so now we're moving on,
into another phase.
- [Narrator] The anger of the victim's families grew
when they heard that the wreckage was almost right
in the center of the crash zone circle,
only 12 kilometers from the aircraft's last known position.
A zone that the investigators had eliminated
from their search, after phase one.
Having trolled the sector with their hydrophones,
without any positive result,
the zone had been declared, clear.
Still today, certain members of the victim's families
are baffled by what happened.
Many had said that the area
around the aircraft's last known position,
should be prioritized in the search.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] If a needle slips through my fingers,
where do I look for it?
Over there, or here?
Here, right?
Why didn't they do the same with the aircraft?
I've never had an explanation from the BEA on this point,
as to why they didn't look in the area where the plane
was last seen.
It's a complete mystery to me.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] It's easy with the benefit of hindsight,
when you know where the plane came down.
I'm sure some people say, they're stupid,
it was right there, why didn't they look there first?
It could have been to the south, to the west, anywhere.
We didn't know.
The plane may even have done a U-turn and turned away
from the clouds, gone through the clouds.
We had no idea.
Nothing.
- [Narrator] They had no idea.
But the investigators were caught up
in a hunt for the pingers.
It's possible that they were damaged,
and never transmitted any signal at all.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] What happened?
Why didn't we hear it?
That's a whole scientific process.
The evidence suggests that the pingers
were not transmitting.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Rightly or wrongly,
later, we were proved to be wrong,
we decided that the aircraft could not be in the zone
scanned by the hydrophones,
so we moved away and searched in other areas.
We never had a case of pingers not working,
so when the aircraft wasn't there,
we looked somewhere else.
- [Narrator] Alain Boullard's job was far from over.
Now, he had to locate the key to the whole investigation,
the flight recorders.
(haunting music)
This time, the investigators knew exactly where to look.
They went to the precise spot
where the wreckage had been found,
the scene of the tragedy.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Every time I do a search at sea,
I'm struck by the same thing.
On the surface, there's absolutely nothing.
The sea swallows everything, then forgets.
When I was on the surface where the aircraft crashed,
it was just incredible.
There's nothing left.
But if you go down, it's all there, waiting.
It's been there for two years.
- [Narrator] At the crash zone,
the crew sent down the submarine robot, the Remora.
This allowed the investigators to explore the wreckage site,
scouring the seabed for the AF447 flight recorders.
The robot is controlled by a team of technicians,
linked to it by a cable several kilometers long.
- After you look at this, you gotta take those turns,
so you can see all the stuff in a minute, in the zone.
- Okay, now it's interesting. Roger that, headin' out.
- [Narrator] But at a depth of 3,900 meters,
the only available light is supplied by the Remora, itself.
Alain Boullard knew that at this rate,
locating the black boxes could take weeks.
- [Radio Speaker] 45 meters.
- Thanks, 45 meters, then let me know
when you get a visual on it.
- [Narrator] Some parts of the final stages of the search
are etched in the memories of all those involved,
such as this message, transmitted to the reseach team.
- Alain brought this email to me,
and it was the husband of one of the flight attendants,
and said, please tell all the people on the boat,
the investigators, the technicians, the seamen,
thank you for your efforts in this,
and that he and his children prayed for us every day.
Which was very emotional to me,
that in his grief, he is thinking of others,
and that he was thinking of us and thanking us.
- There's a line there.
It looks like two things.
There's another one there, on the right.
(chilling music)
- [Narrator] Among the debris,
the investigators discovered recognizable pieces
of aircraft,
parts of the fusilage,
sections of the cabin,
even the copilot's seat.
- There, we have two straps,
one there, up here we can't see much.
- The copilot seat has the arm rest on the right.
The captain's is on the left.
- [Narrator] Despite all the doubts,
the disappointments, the exhaustion,
the teams did not give up.
Then the tide turned.
Their tenacity finally paid off.
- It might be on there.
- That's it, isn't it?
- Yes, we've got it, that's it.
- Can someone call Alain?
- That definitely looks like it.
It has the label.
- [Investigators] Yay!
- Where's the phone?
- Which phone?
- To call Alain?
- Right up here, by the powder.
- Oh, yeah.
- Alain, we found one.
Can you come down?
Okay.
- [Narrator] Once the flight recorder had been found,
it had to be identified.
Was it the FDR, the Flight Data Recorder,
or the CVR, the Cockpit Voice Recorder?
Both are obviously very important,
but each plays a different role
in the investigation.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] PN is 617-6096-014.
I'm pleased to announce, we have the Flight Data Recorder.
- Good teamwork! - Real teamwork!
You gotta have teamwork.
- Thank you, appreciate it.
And good job.
Captain!
- [Narrator] Aircraft trajectory, altitude,
engine perameters,
this small orange cylinder, potentially contains
over 1,500 pieces of data about the flight.
It should answer the question everybody has been asking
for the last two years,
what happened aboard the Rio-Paris flight?
- [Director] Come down, come down.
Either that, or show that, but I'd just come down.
Drop it.
Money in the bank.
- [Narrator] Three hours later, the flight recorder
had been recovered from the sea.
A few hours after that,
investigators located the second recorder,
just a dozen meter,s or so, from the first.
Faces lit up with excitement.
For two years, the BEA, the aeronautical industry,
victim's families, and the world's press
had been waiting for this moment.
Right in the middle of the Atlantic,
the black box flight recorders had finally been recovered.
The FDR, the Flight Data Recorder,
and the CVR, the Cockpit Voice Recorder.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] A recorder is only this big,
and it was in the middle of the ocean.
That little box will tell us a lot about the fate
of 228 people.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] When the wreckage was located,
when the black boxes were discovered,
I felt a great sense of relief,
and thought, at last, a calm and rational assessment
of things can be made.
And we can set aside all the irrationality.
(haunting music)
- [Narrator] It took 176 days at sea,
and no less than 31 million euros
to find these two black boxes,
and maybe, finally understand what caused the tragedy.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Yes, it's in pretty good condition.
- [Narrator] It was, of course, essential to recover
the flight data,
but Alain Boullard sensed that an explanation
for the accident would probably come from this recorder,
the one that captured the pilot's final conversations.
The Gendarmes immediately placed the boxes under seal.
They were a vital piece of evidence in the judicial inquiry
opened against Airbus and Air France for manslaughter.
(applauding)
At this stage, Alain Boullard remained cautious.
Nothing had yet been established.
If the black boxes turned out to be unusable,
some pieces of debris could provide precious information.
(suspenseful music)
The robot, thus brought several pieces of wreckage
to the surface.
(energetic music)
- Okay, quick place.
- We've got right and left lap strap.
(exciting music)
- [Narrator] Was there a mechanical failure?
An examination of the engine would reveal a great deal.
At this stage, though, no theory could be discounted.
But the biggest hopes were pinned on the black boxes.
A French Navy patrol boat was sent out to return them
to the BEA in Paris, as quickly as possible.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Finding the black boxes was the first step,
but a thorough examination of their contents
was the crucial part.
There's always a doubt with flight recorders,
and here, those doubts were increased by the fact
that they spent two years under water,
at a depth of over 4,000 meters.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] From the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,
the truth behind AF447 was finally making its way
to Paris.
A few days later, at the BEA,
it was the moment of truth,
as the flight recorders were opened,
an operation that investigators,
the aeronautical industry, and the world press,
had been waiting for for 22 months,
a moment the families of the 228 victims
had been fighting tirelessly for,
since June 1, 2009.
- See, guys, we'll want to kind of take the puck in layers.
Don't get too greedy, going too deep right off the bat.
Just kinda work your way down.
- And we'll go layer by layer - Just later by layer,
work your way down until you see the surface of the--
- [Frederic] (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] We were all struck by the odor emanating
from the recorders.
The smell of mud, which filled us with foreboding,
concerning the state of the electronic cards,
which we couldn't see yet.
- [Narrator] The BEA investigators began
with the Flight Data Recorder.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] It is 6:37 p.m.
- [Narrator] Next, was the cockpit voice recorder.
(moving cello music)
After many hours of drying, to remove moisture,
several examinations and repairs,
it was time to power up the recorders.
The tension was palpable.
At the BEA, everyone was holding their breath.
- 25, 23, 21.
- [Narrator] The verdict was in.
Despite all that time spent under water,
the data on the two recorders could be accessed.
The download could be launched.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] The real highlight,
was when they told us, they worked.
That really was a landmark moment.
It was our objective from the start.
Finding the black boxes with their data intact
was the culmination of a two year battle.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] After 22 months of suspense,
the truth would finally be out.
Hard data was now accessible,
and the flight could be analyzed,
minute by minute,
to reveal any potential mechanical failures.
And, there was a sound recording.
Investigators could now hear what happened in the cockpit.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] We were petrified,
white as a ghost,
and after listening, we sat in stony silence
for maybe 15 minutes,
not daring to look at each other or say a word.
We had just heard a live recording
of the Air France 447 crash.
(chilling music)
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] The families, who for 20 months
had to accept the loss of their loved ones,
without any tangible proof of their death,
were forced to create a scenario for the accident,
otherwise they couldn't cope, couldn't accept the loss.
I remember someone saying, it's awful,
now I have to change everything in my mind.
Meaning, their scenario didn't necessarily match the one
the investigators produced from the flight recorders.
I thought that must be dreadful.
- [Narrator] On July 5, 2012, the BEA finally delivered
its findings to the press.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Here we are,
after an extraordinary investigation,
that has lasted over three years.
Extraordinary, first of all, by the international scale
of the disaster.
Extraordinary, too, by the mystery that has surrounded
the exact circumstances of this accident.
- [Narrator] According to the BEA's final report,
as is often the case,
many different causes triggered the accident.
A few hours after take-off,
ice crystals formed on the pitot probes,
which measure flight speed.
Speed indications were, therefore, erroneous,
which dis-activated the automatic pilot.
At that moment, alarms went off in the cockpit.
The surprised copilots then nosed up to an excessive degree.
This triggered an aerodynamic stall,
causing the aircraft to lose lift, and go into a dive.
In the complete darkness, the pilots couldn't see anything.
They didn't understand what was happening,
and didn't know how to react.
Four minutes later, the aircraft hit the ocean.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Thanks to the cockpit recording,
I realized that right to the end,
the pilots didn't understand what was going on.
That encourages me to believe and hope
that at least the passengers didn't suffer in the cabin.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Air France flight 447
was all about the distress of families,
and was maybe the first investigation
to be in the media spotlight to such an extent.
But air disasters are always shocking,
a human tragedy,
and this accident was all of that.
We solved the technical riddle,
but we didn't solve anything else.
Did we enable people to understand the event?
We didn't replace their husbands.
We didn't replace their mothers.
We didn't achieve any of that.
- (speaking foreign language)
- [Interpreter] I went through stages of uncertainty,
suspicion, and even violent criticism.
I know,
because there was no result,
and there was a stack of information showing
that things weren't going in the right direction.
But having analyzed it all,
I think they did as much as they could.
Mistakes were made, but they did as much as they could.
So, there it is.
I changed my mind.
(dramatic music)
(moving cello music)