The recovery of the second black box of Air France Flight 447 in mid-Atlantic on Tuesday reinforced the hope of discovering why the plane crashed into the sea with 228 people on board nearly two years ago.
The device that recorded the voices of the cockpit of the plane was found by the robot Remora 6000 and towed the ship 'Ile de Sein "in the early hours of Tuesday, said the French agency in charge of the operation.
Hours before this finding, Jean-Paul Troadec, director of the Office of French Research and Analysis (BEA by its French acronym), said the device would be complementary to the black box recovered over the weekend.
"These two recorders are complementary, because it is the analysis of both for understanding what happened," said Troadec speaking exclusively to BBC World.
However, he expressed doubt that the information inside can still be readable by the researchers, due to corrosion that may have been the electronic memory.
Two different cases
The devices recovered to 3,900 meters deep ocean are considered essential to understanding why the plane crashed into the Atlantic while flying between Rio de Janeiro and Paris the night of May 31, 2009.
All 228 people aboard the Airbus 330 were declared dead and the reasons for the tragedy have not yet been formally established in one of the greatest mysteries of recent history of aviation.
The second black box has just been recovered is a "registrar phonic" command of the aircraft, had explained Troadec.
Its function was to record "conversations of the pilots and different sounds can be heard in the cockpit, such as certain actions in the command," he said.
In contrast, the first black box was a "data recorder" of the flight, dedicated to recording "different aspects of the state of the aircraft as speed, height (o) of engine," he said.
Ten days
However, a doubt is the state in maintaining the equipment after having been submerged for nearly two years in the ocean north of the Brazilian coast.
In theory, the black boxes are designed to withstand at least a month submerged 6,000 meters at sea after an impact equivalent to 1,500 times the force of gravity.
"At the moment, what we saw is that the box that protects it is good," said Troadec recovered from the first apparatus.
"But that does not mean that within the electronic components of memory may be corrupted or have been corroded by sea water," he added.
Troadec recently said that these questions will be discerned when the black box arrives at the headquarters of the BEA, within eight or ten days, be opened and examined.
"Understanding the circumstances"
It was envisaged that both devices were sealed and escorted by a naval vessel to a port in French Guyana to send by air at BEA headquarters outside Paris.
Although the reasons for the tragedy are still not officially established, aviation experts and pilots have said Pitot sensors as the likely cause, based on previous similar incidents.
In March, the French judge Sylvie Zimmerman put Air France Airbus already under preliminary investigation for the alleged manslaughter of the people traveling on the flight AF447.
The Airbus chief Tom Enders said in a statement his satisfaction with the recovery of the second black box and hoped that the devices "are still legible."
"That alone will help to understand the circumstances that led to the accident," he added.
BEA hitherto denied that the crash only explain an inconsistency in velocity measurements Airbus and argued that only the discovery of the black boxes could allow the facts.
Asked on Monday if he believed that the mystery may be solved, Troadec was cautious and warned: "We can not sell the bear's skin before the hunt."
"If we can find the second recorder and read them, bearing in mind that we can overcome major aircraft parts to understand the events, I think we'll be able to understand what happened," he said.
