MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

French team retrieves all salvageable bodies from 3.900 metres deep Atlantic

The remains of Air France A447 held 104 bodies strapped to their seats

The French search team has retrieved all salvageable bodies from the sunken wreckage of an Air France airliner which crashed in the sea off Brazil two years ago, victims' families said on Tuesday.

An official representing the families said the remains of 104 victims of the Air France flight A447 crash had now been recovered and the search vessel was headed to France for investigators to work on identifying them.

Each body had to be painstakingly hauled up from a depth of some 3,900 metres. The first bodies, brought up in early May, were still strapped into their airline seats.

Philippe Vinogradoff, an official appointed by the French government as liaison for the victims' relatives, said the last body had been retrieved on June 3.

“All the bodies it was deemed could be recovered ... have been brought to the surface,” he said in a statement, adding that the search team had prepared a commemorative plaque to leave with the sunken wreckage before departing.

All 228 passengers and crew aboard died when flight A447 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2009. In the days after the crash, rescuers recovered about 50 bodies floating in the sea but the main wreckage was only found this year after extensive searches.

In what has been an emotional few weeks for the families, data recovered from the flight recorders late in May showed the aircraft plunged out of control for four minutes before crashing into the ocean. The revelations have raised questions over how the crew handled what appeared to be a “stall alarm” emergency.