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Air France jet crash's cockpit voice recorder found
[Updated at 6:23 a.m.] The cockpit voice recorder from an Air France plane that crashed mysteriously nearly two years ago, killing all 228 people on board, has been found, the head of the company announced Tuesday.
The announcement came "only hours" after the recovery of the flight data recorder's memory unit, Air France chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said, citing the official French air accident investigation agency, the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA).
He called it "another decisive step forward in the inquiry" into the cause of the crash, which remains unknown nearly two years after it happened.
Air France flight 447 crashed in stormy weather en route to Paris from Brazil on June 1, 2009. It took nearly two years and a massive undersea search to locate the bulk of the wreckage deep in the Atlantic Ocean.
Only about 50 bodies were ever found, but investigators announced last month that the fuselage still contained human remains.
The discovery of the two data recorders may finally explain why the Airbus A330 dropped out of the sky and bellyflopped into the ocean, falling so quickly that air masks did not have time to deploy.
The cockpit voice recorder was brought to the surface by the Remora 6000, the same remote-controlled submarine that brought the flight data recorder memory unit up from the Atlantic on Sunday, the BEA said.
Investigators find debris from 2009 Air France crash
French investigators said Sunday that they have found pieces of the Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people on board.
Air France Flight 447 disappeared after taking off from Rio de Janeiro on its way to Paris.
France's air accident investigation agency, the BEA, said that a team - led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - discovered parts of the aircraft during an underwater search operation conducted within the past 24 hours.
The agency did not immediately say what parts of the jet the team found.
FULL STORYPentagon: Missing military jet 'believed to be crashed'
An Alaska-based Air Force F-22 that went missing on a training mission is "believed to be crashed," a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.
Col. Dave Lapan did not immediately give other details about the situation.
The aircraft lost contact with air traffic control Tuesday evening, officials from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson at Anchorage, Alaska, said Wednesday.
Gary Strasburg, an Air Force spokesman, told CNN that a pilot was in the single-seat aircraft during a routine training mission.
Contact was lost with the F-22 at 7:40 p.m. Alaska time (11:40 p.m. ET) on Tuesday.
- CNN's Larry Shaughnessy contributed to this report
4 aboard small plane missing in Wyoming
Authorities in Wyoming are searching for a small plane that dropped off radar Monday afternoon after leaving Jackson Hole Airport, a police spokesman said.
Det. Sgt. Ryan Lee of the Fremont County Sheriff's Office said searchers are working in a very remote area of the county with elevations around 13,000 feet. Four people were on board the plane, he said.
A helicopter flew to the search area earlier Tuesday, and searchers expect to get another over the area later in the day. A four-person search crew is on the ground and will spend the night in the area before more ground searchers are deployed Wednesday, he said.
Snow storms, high winds and low visibility have hampered the search, he said. Lee said authorities would not release the identities of those on board pending notification of family members and also would not say whether there were children aboard.
But the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the plane carried the president of a Twin Cities web development company and three children.
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