国际英语新闻：Phase 3 search of AF447 crash ends in vain

PARIS, May 26 (Xinhua) -- The French Aviation Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA) has confirmed that the third phase of maritime search, which stopped on Tuesday, had failed to find the black boxes of Air France flight AF477 that crashed into the Atlantic one year ago.

The latest undersea search, covered an area of some 1,500 square kilometers in a remote area far off the coast of Brazil, was officially wrapped off on Tuesday, said BEA chairman Jean-Paul Troadec.

The leases on the robot submarines carried by the search vessel Seabed Worker have run out and the robots will be returned to their owners in the United States, BEA spokesman Alain Guilldou told local media.

"We'll bring in our partners. It'll take at least a month or two to do this review and decide whether to continue the hunt," Guilldou was quoted as saying by French media.

BEA also announced that the undersea search for the Airbus 330- 200 would halt for at least a month or two because of a planning performance review over all the search operations. The review result would decide whether to continue the hunt.

The BEA's final report was supposed to serve as proper cause of action, and powerful proof for civil suits and criminal investigation.

Many relatives of victims complained the delay and opacity of BEA search, alleging that the BEA, Airbus and Air France use the unfinished inquiry as excuse to avoid admitting that the disaster was caused by a known problem of speed monitors and serious negligence of both the carrier and producers.

Never admitting the causation between the speed monitor's problem of iced-up at high latitude and crash, nevertheless, Air France has since replaced the French made monitor with an American new model, while carriers and producers still insist that their jets met all safety standards.

Flight AF447 en route from Rio to Paris, which was drawn to deep water on June 1, 2009, took with it away lives of 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board. The crash was the worst in Air France's 75-year history.