WORLD BRIEFING / ATLANTIC OCEAN
A Dutch ship towing a high-tech U.S. Navy listening device was set to troll the Atlantic in search of data and voice recorders that are key to determining what caused an Air France jet with 228 people on board to crash into the ocean.
The device, called a towed pinger locater, will try to detect emergency audio beacons, or pings, from Flight 447’s recorders, which could be thousands of feet below the ocean surface.
Without the recorders, it may be impossible to determine what caused the Airbus A330 to crash several hundred miles off Brazil’s coast May 31.
The locater can search to a depth of 20,000 feet. The first of two devices was towed by a Dutch ship contracted by France, said U.S. Air Force Col. Willie Berges.
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