Search for Air France Flight 447 black box to continue till July 10

The French navy has kept their vessels to aid the hunt for the elusive flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder (commonly known as the black boxes).

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The black box continuously emits locator signals called "pinger" for up to 30 days. This acoustic (sonar) signals can be picked up by underwater listening or acoustic systems.

In the quest for the black box, France has deployed the hunter killer submarine "Emeraude" to complete the acoustic search system.

The interim report states that the BEA approached the U.S navy for its two powerful underwater pinger locator hydrophones which the U.S navy uses regularly for military and civil plane crashes at sea.

The pinger locators can detect signals up to 2km on average and can be submerged up to 6km.

Two ships were chartered by the BEA to optimise the use of the pinger locators from the Dutch company Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, the two tug ships are named as the "Fairmount Expedition" and the "Fairmount Glacier".

To further assist the search of the black box over an area that has some of the most rugged under sea mountain ranges in the world, the BEA contracted the oceanographic ship "Pourquoi Pas ?" from IFREMER (the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea). The ship comes with two specialized exploration and intervention tools, the Nautile submarine and the Victor 6000 ROV. These equipments can operate up to six thousand meters deep and also map the accident site.

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