French authorities have published the first official report into the Air France plane crash in the Atlantic last month.
The Air France plane did not break up mid-air but hit the water while accelerating sharply downward, France’s Office of Investigations and Analysis reported today.
Alain Bouillard, who is leading the investigation on behalf of France's BEA air accident board, maintains that ‘the plane was not destroyed while it was in flight. The plane appears to have hit the surface of the water in flying position with a strong vertical acceleration', he added, explaining that the plane hit the water belly-first.
Mr Bouillard said that control of the flight was supposed to have passed from air traffic controllers in Brazil to their counterparts in Senegal, but that never happened.
The pilots of flight AF 447 had tried three times to connect to a data system in the Senegalese capital Dakar, but had failed because Dakar had never received the flight plan.
Investigators are also trying to find out why it took six hours after the plane disappeared before an emergency was declared.
The search for the black boxes, from the Airbus A330 aircraft will continue until 10 July. The recorders emit a signal for a limited time.
Three Irish women were among those travelling on the Airbus A330 aircraft, which went missing on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in the early hours of 1 June.
A massive search operation was mounted after the plane went down.
51 bodies and 600 pieces of wreckage have been recovered.
Aviation experts believe the report, carried out by France's air investigations and analysis office, may be able to draw conclusions from the examination of the wreckage and the state of the bodies.
