French Sub Joins Black Box Search

 

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Among them, weather consultant Tim Vasquez has determined the plane's flight path would have taken the jet right through a series of towering thunderstorms.

Air France 447: Airline Safety Initiatives

The push to replace potentially faulty sensors is one of several efforts under way to make sure travelers are safe.

In separate initiatives, the Federal Aviation Administration called on investigators Tuesday to immediately focus on pilot training required by smaller, regional airlines in response to a deadly crash this winter in Buffalo, N.Y.

Also, the National Transportation Safety Board began a three-day hearing Tuesday into the rare success story of US Airways flight 1549, which landed on New York's Hudson River in January.

The bodies recovered from Air France flight 447 will soon be identified and examined for any injuries that may help explain what happened.

Despite the progress in the search, Goelz said it remains a daunting task.

"This issue with the wreckage is it's been at sea for at least six or seven days," he said. "They've got to chart currents, wind."

On Monday an "ocean of debris" surrounded divers recovering wreckage and bodies from the Atlantic Ocean, and searchers recovered the stabilizer from the plane's tail, according to the Brazilian Navy.

It's still unclear whether the jet broke up in the air or on impact. But former crash investigator Gregory Feith said they may be able to tell from the tail.

"If it's on the backside or the furthest up the debris chain, then there's a high probability that could have been one of the first components that came off the airplane," said Feith.

The evidence is being flown to the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, some 400 miles off the country's coast.

The flight crashed with 228 people onboard en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after departing on May 31. As the hunt for clues picks up pace, searchers are scouring an area 45 miles from where plane last sent a burst of automated messages documenting failures in the flight's systems.

In the grim recovery effort, human remains will provide clues about what may have gone wrong.

Frank Ciaccio, who supervised wreckage recovery for Egypt Air and other underwater accidents while working for the NTSB, said full forensic examinations are "not going to solve all the answers," but can still provide crucial information.

"Identifying them is going to be the No. 1 priority," said Ciaccio, forensics specialist and vice president of commercial services for Kenyon International Disaster Management Services. "No. 2 priority is going to be to document any injuries the body sustains so that they can add to the investigation, and help with putting a final picture together."

"It's not going to solve why this plane went down, but it'll give something back to the family members that do find their loved ones right now, and it'll give some hope to the other ones that hopefully they will be able to recover more of their loved ones," he added.

ABC News' Zoe Magee, Ammu Kannampilly, Renata Araujo, Sonia Gallego, Joe Goldman, Christel Kucharz, Luis Martinez, Phoebe Natanson, Fabiola Antezana, Gabriel O'Rorke, Samira Parkinson-Smith, Kirit Radia and Christophe Schpoliansky, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.