Retrieval of Air France Black Boxes Expected to Lead to Liability Claims

May 5, 2011

After 700 days, five searches, and $135 million spent in recovery efforts, both black boxes belonging to Air France Flight 447 were finally recovered on the seafloor off Brazil’s northeast coast earlier this week.

Family members of victims now hope for answers they’ve been denied since the plane crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, taking the lives of 216 passengers and 12 crewmembers.

The BEA—France’s air accident investigator—says that it remains to be seen whether or not the black boxes (which contain the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder) will yield any answers after having been waterlogged and subjected to intense pressure for nearly two years. If available, readings from the boxes can be expected within the next three weeks.

If the contents of the boxes are in sufficient shape to indicate the cause of the crash, a flood of liability claims will likely follow, the Huffington Post reports.

Conclusions drawn from the black boxes will also be supplied to an in-progress judicial probe investigating both Airbus and Air France.

Flight 447, which was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, is the deadliest plane crash in the history of Air France.

If you or someone you know has had their safety compromised on a commercial or private aircraft, contact the  aviation lawyers at Nurenberg, Paris, Heller & McCarthy.

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