No. 9 on our Top 10: Air France jet crashes into Atlantic

The Air France crash June 1 in the mid-Atlantic is terrible for more reasons than just the loss of life.

The deaths of 228 people on the Rio de Janiero-Paris flight is sad enough. But so is the fact that the cause is still not known, and may not ever be finally determined.

The depth of the ocean where the plane went down is helping hide the black boxes that could shed more light on what happened in the deadly accident.

The Airbus A330 sent a series of 24 automatic messages over five minutes in its last minutes to Air France computers. The messages indicated a cascade of failures and problems, and problems with speed readings from the Pitot tubes that measure aircraft airspeeds.

"These messages show an inconsistency in the measured speeds as well as the associated consequences," says a report from French investigators last Thursday.

But investigators really need that cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder to know what really did happen in the flight's last minutes. Investigators are talking about a new search of the crash site in February 2010.

Keep reading for the findings from the Bureau d'EnquĂȘtes et d'Analyses report issued Dec. 17.

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Filed Under: Airline News

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