Little Hope In Retrieving Air France 447's Black Boxes

Paul-Louis Arslanian of France's accident investigation agency was "not optimistic" that the black boxes belonging to Air France Flight 447 would be recovered. Wreckage believed to be from the Paris-bound Airbus 330, which disappeared hours after taking off from Rio de Janeiro on Sunday and was carrying 228 people, was found in the Atlantic Ocean yesterday, about 410 miles from a chain of islands (map). The water in that area may be over 13,000 feet deep. Arslanian added there were no signs of plane trouble before take-off while Air France said the plane did experience heavy turbulence and its automatic message system signaled that "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down." A NYC couple, Yu Lan Xu and De Qiang Chen, are grieving because their son Charles Chen, who attended Seward High and graduated from Baruch, was on the flight. Xu, who runs a dry cleaning business on the Upper East Side with her husband, thought he might have flown on Saturday, but the airline confirmed he was on the Sunday flight, "I don't want to live anymore. There is no hope. I want my son back."