A mini-submarine that explored the undersea wreckage of the Titanic is being whisked
across the Atlantic to help retrieve the flight recorders of Air France Flight 447.
The French marine research institute Ifremersaid Thursday it has pulled the ship
Pourquoi Pas? (Why Not?) off a research mission in the Azores to help find the
remains of the Airbus plane. Flight 447 disappeared Sunday night en route from Rio
de Janeiro to Paris after flying into a dangerous band of thunderstorms over the
Atlantic Ocean.
On board the research ship is the Nautile, an 8-meter (26-foot) long deep ocean
submarine that has made multiple dives to the Titanic and a remote-controlled robot
called Victor 6000.
"The priority for us is to find the black boxes," said Vincent Rigaud, head of Ifremer's
underwater system department. "We will do everything we can to find them."
Search teams have a month to locate the plane's two black boxes -- the cockpit voice
and flight data recorders -- before they stop emitting signals. They could be scattered
nearly anywhere across a vast undersea mountain range below the surface of the
ocean.
The French ship will dock in the Cape Verde Islands off Africa's western coast on June
8 to pick up equipment -- including a hydrophonic microphone -- and personnel.