Search for Air France Victims Is Over

The search is over.

Brazilian authorities say they have stopped looking for bodies from Flight AF 447 that crashed into the Atlantic nearly 4 weeks ago.

[Henry Munhoz, Brazilian Air Force Spokesman]:
„Even though we hoped to recover all 228 people, we feel that the navy and the air force have done the best they could. We have ended our operations with 51 bodies recovered.“

The Air France flight left Rio on May 31st bound for Paris – it never arrived.

The plane hit stormy weather just before it went off the radar several hundred miles off the Brazilian coast.

However the exact cause of the accident is not known.

The black box has not been recovered and time is running out as the recorder’s batteries may only last a few more days.

A French mini-submarine is using sonar equipment to try and pick up the sounds emitted by the box.

Experts fear the remaining corpses may have been devoured by sharks or sunk too deep to be recovered.

Meanwhile work is underway at the Recife morgue to identify those bodies that have not yet been named.

(NTDTV)