AUTOPSIES ARE due to begin next week on the bodies of more than 100 victims of the 2009 Air France Rio-Paris crash after the remains arrived at a Paris laboratory yesterday.
Three young Irish doctors were among the 228 passengers and crew killed when Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic on June 1st, 2009.
Rescue workers recovered 50 bodies in the days immediately after the crash, and a further 104 in recent weeks. More than 70 could not be retrieved over the two years of searching.
The body of one of the Irish victims, Jane Deasy, a 27-year-old doctor from Rathgar in Dublin, was recovered during the original search operation. Dr Aisling Butler (26), of Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and Dr Eithne Walls (28), from Ballygowan, Co Down, also died in the crash.
The 104 bodies were retrieved from the wreck at a depth of 3,000m in recent weeks and were brought to France in two refrigerated containers on board a salvage ship. Experts at a medical facility in Paris will begin dental and DNA tests in the coming days, but police said it could take weeks or even months before all the bodies could be identified and handed over to families. Despite two years having passed since the crash, the bodies were preserved by icy temperatures and high water pressure.
Forensic experts will need to compile files on each victim containing medical, dental and DNA information from when they were alive. The data will then be compared to information gathered during the autopsies. It took more than two months to identify the bodies of 50 victims found floating off the coast of Brazil in the days after the disaster.
Pieces of aircraft wreckage, also brought back to France, will be examined at a military hangar near Toulouse as part of an inquiry into the causes of the crash.
Data retrieved from “black box” flight recorders this month showed that pilots wrestled with the aircraft’s controls for four minutes before the Airbus A330 crashed into the sea off Brazil, killing everyone on board. Investigators have yet to offer a definitive explanation, or assign blame to either the crew or machinery.
According to data from the recorders, released by the French air accident investigation bureau, the pilots saw conflicting air speed readings in the cockpit as the plane stalled and lost altitude. The bureau is due to deliver its preliminary findings next month.