Sub joins jetliner search

PARIS — A French nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment Wednesday began searching for the flight recorders of an Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic last week, the French military said.

The Emeraude was sent to hunt for the voice and flight data recorders, which may help explain the disaster and are believed to be lying on the ocean floor.

Investigators face a long search for clues to what went wrong when the Airbus A330 jet disappeared en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people on board, French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said.

“Up to now, the time frame for the search for victims and debris has been of the order of days or a week. Here, at the very least, it’s going to be of the order of weeks or months,” he told LCI television.

The jetliner is believed to have run into trouble when it hit a violent storm, and potential problems with speed sensors have become one of the focal points of the inquiry.

Brazilian military search teams using planes and ships have recovered 41 bodies and moved 16 of them to the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, off Brazil’s northeastern coast.

Planes have expanded their search to airspace controlled by Senegal because of ocean currents in that direction, Brazil’s air force said.