Agence France Presse — English
May 21, 2006 Sunday 2:08 PM GMT

Search continues for crashed Armenian plane’s flight recorders

Russian officials continued searching Sunday for the black box flight
recorders of an Armenian plane that crashed off Russia’s Black Sea
coast more than two weeks ago, but warned that they might be stuck in
the mud under the sea bed.

A submersible vessel was being used to search for the flight
recorders of the Airbus A320 that crashed on May 3, but “it is not
ruled out that they have sunk into the silt,” the ITAR-TASS news
agency quoted an official at the search headquarters as saying.

“If examination of the surface of the sea bed doesn’t yield results,
the underwater work will be reoriented to searching in the boggy
silt, which will significantly hamper the work,” the official said.

All 113 people aboard the plane died when it crashed on its approach
to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Eighty-five of the victims were
Armenians, many of them on family visits.

The flight recorders are thought to lie at a depth of 500 metres
(1,600 feet) below the surface of the water.

Specialists from France have been called in to help with the search.

As of May 10, 51 bodies had been recovered.