Submarine at air crash scene to hunt black boxes

A French nuclear submarine reached the crash zone of Air France Flight 447 today to comb the Atlantic depths for black boxes which should help determine what brought the Airbus down in the sea off Brazil with 228 people on board.

The slow-moving attack sub Emeraude will be able to trawl patches of about 13 square miles a day trying to pick up the boxes’ acoustic beacons or “pingers”, which are expected to start to fade 30 days after the crash, French armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck said today.