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First Body Recovered From Air France Crash Debris On Seabed

Nearly two years after Air France Flight 447 mysteriously crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil, crews are raising the first victim's body from the ocean floor. The debris is about two and a half miles below the water's surface and crews have located some wreckage, including the two critical flight data recorders that might indicate what caused the plane to go down in a violent thunderstorm.

CNN says the victim's body is skeletal and still strapped to an airplane seat. Eleanor Beardsley told NPR's All Things Considered last month not all relatives of the victims want the bodies raised to the surface. Fifty-one bodies were recovered after the accident and Eleanor says another 50 bodies were discovered by underwater cameras.

This is France's fourth search for the Airbus jet, which crashed on June 1, 2009. The BBC says the hunt fanned out over 10,000 square miles of seabed; submersible vehicles stayed underwater for up to 20 hours at a time.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Korva Coleman is a newscaster for NPR.
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