Bodies May Provide Clues To Cause Of Crash

(CBS)  Divers off the coast of Brazil made an important discovery today in the flight 447 investigation - a large portion of the jet's tail. That could help them locate the black box flight recorders, which are also kept in the rear of the plane.

Sixteen bodies have been recovered as well. And they, too, could provide valuable clues into what happened, reports CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian.

For the families of flight 447, the recovery of bodies in the waters 400 miles off the northern coast of Brazil provides a step toward some kind of closure. But the bodies also have the potential to provide valuable clues as to what doomed the massive jet.

"They are important pieces to the puzzle," said Tom Corrigan, a chief investigator into the crash of TWA Flight 800, which exploded over the Atlantic shortly after leaving John F. Kennedy Airport in 1996. "They have to be examined thoroughly."

First medical examiners will attempt to identify every victim from DNA, photographs or dental records. Experts will then likely reconstruct the seating chart of the plane, pinpointing each passenger's location and searching for a pattern of injuries or cause of death.

Did, for example, the passengers in one section of the Airbus A-330 suffer burns, broken bones or concussions? Autopsies will reveal whether the victims died instantly, in the air, or drowned in the ocean, helping investigators determine whether the plane blew up, broke apart in the sky or on impact.

"Where they are located in the flight path? if they're in the rear of the flight path, they could be important because they can tell you where the aircraft broke up first," Corrigan said.

For example, in TWA 800, the absence of bomb residue on the victims helped rule out a terrorist act. Burn patterns revealed crucial evidence that the plane was brought down by an explosion in the center fuel tank.

In the end those who were lost, providing clues to help solve the mystery behind what really happened to Air France flight 447.

[amsron1]

It's time to make black boxes redundant by backing up their information via satellite to land based servers. Their information is ultimately the most reliable concerning the events leading up to an accident other than the physical evidence left by the crashed plane. In cases like this where physical evidence is severely limited the flight data records and cockpit voice records become even more important. Even if we are not able to do this for all flights, those that run the risk of losing the flight data recordings forever like AF447 MUST be protected...because inevitably other lives are in danger from the same causes and business suffers in the wake of unexplained tragedies such as this.

[novamba]

Example 1: "Where they are located in the flight path?"

this is a quote, no editing required, the last sentence though.....

[rrozsa]

Example 2: "In the end those who were lost, providing clues to help solve the mystery behind what really happened to Air France flight 447. "

======================================

That is not a sentence. If they dropped the comma and changed the word "providing" to "provided" it would be a sentence. As it is, it's just a subordinate clause. I change my earlier statement. I think it is an Elementary School journalism class, not a Middle School class, maintaining the CBS site.

[rrozsa]

Is it me, or do several sentences in this piece make no sense??

Example 1: "Where they are located in the flight path?"

==========================

Do they mean that the bodies were strewn over a significant distance, perhaps indicating that some were ejected earlier along the flight path (actually "crash path") than others? It's the only way the statement makes any sense to me.

[rrozsa]

Oh, and the caption for the video clip says "six bodies" have been recovered. What the....?

[rrozsa]

In addition to the errors sited by the posters below, I was clicking through the photos, reading the captions. One caption says "twenty-four bodies have been recovered"; the next photo states it is sixteen. Which is correct, and why is there a discrepancy? Is the CBS News site being maintained by a Middle School journalism class for extra credit? That might explain why so relatively few stories are being covered and why they aren't updated very often. These little kids have to work around PE class and recess!

[mecury69]

Ditto. I posted on another article that was poorly written.

If little is being done to proof read, you can surmise that little is being done to fact check as well.

[christopher_ahn]

djberson,

Nope. I see it too.