PARIS — A remote-controlled submarine yesterday removed a body from the deep-sea wreckage of the Air France flight that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean two years ago, raising the remains 12,000 feet to the water’s surface, the French recovery team said.
The victim was still strapped into the seat, making the recovery difficult, according to a statement from French police, which had experts on the recovery boat. It is unclear if all bodies found in a recent search can be recovered.
The recovery of the victim comes two days after the cockpit voice recorder was pulled from the ocean. The data memory unit had been found days earlier. If in good shape, the two “black boxes’’ could reveal the mystery of why Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into a remote area of the mid-Atlantic, several hours from the Brazilian coast.
A tissue sample from the newly raised body will be sent back to France along with the black boxes. They are expected to arrive early next week. Investigators hope to use DNA testing on the tissue sample, but it is uncertain those tests will allow them to identify the body.
Fifty bodies were found during the first search effort, shortly after the June 1, 2009 crash.
The remainder of the bodies and the wreckage of the Airbus 330 jet have been at the bottom of the mid-Atlantic, in a flat sandy plain amid huge underwater mountains.
The police stressed the difficulty of raising the remains from such a depth, calling the operation “particularly complex and unprecedented.’’