Posted: 03 June 2009 0233 hrs
A French military personnel checking with binoculars the Atlantic Ocean for the missing Air France jet.
PARIS: A French research ship equipped with two mini-submarines is on its way to a stretch of the Atlantic where an Air France flight carrying 228 people vanished, officials said on Tuesday.
The "Pourquoi Pas" ("Why Not") will join the hunt currently being carried out by French and Brazilian air force jets hundreds of kilometres off the Brazilian coast, the ecology ministry said in a statement.
The mini-subs it carries can work at depths of up to 6,000 metres. The ocean area where the plane disappeared has maximum depths of 4,700 metres, French naval experts said.
The black boxes aboard the missing Air France jet can survive as deep as 6,000 metres underwater and emit a signal for one month, according to French air disaster investigators.
But none has ever been found this deep in the ocean, they said.
A French military spokesman meanwhile said he believed that aircraft debris found by the Brazilian air force "appeared to be a very serious lead."
The items include a seat from a plane, bits of white material, an orange buoy, a barrel and fuel slicks, according to the air force, which said it could not be immediately confirmed that the debris was from the Air France flight. - AFP/de
From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.
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