Robots to search for Air France wreckage

TAMPA - Military planes and ships have spotted more debris from the Air France jet that dropped from the sky Sunday.  They've found a 23-foot chunk of plane, and a huge oil slick off the coast of Brazil.

There are still no signs that any of the 228 people onboard Flight 447 survived.

The jet disappeared just after flying into a dangerous band of storms, but, it's still not clear if that was the real problem.

The answer might be in the "black box" cockpit recorders, and they could be miles below the surface on the ocean floor.

High seas and heavy winds are delaying the arrival of special equipment to dive that deep, and even when it arrives, it could be tough to find the "black boxes".

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Finding the answer to what caused the Air France plane to crash into the ocean off Brazil could depend on deep-diving, unmanned robots similar to one used by Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration.

The robot is called an R.O.V., or "remotely operated vehicle."

Odyssey's Roy Truman says the R.O.V. should be outfitted with a sonar that can detect the frequency that's being emitted from "pingers" from the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.

Those recorders are likely miles below the surface on a mountainous sea floor. Truman says that could make finding the so-called "black boxes" harder.

"If the wreckage is on the other side of a small undersea mount or ridge, then the signals can be masked," Truman said.

Before joining Odyssey, a company that's located millions of dollars worth of undersea treasure, Truman helped recover parts of the exploded space shuttle Challenger and two crashed airliners in deep ocean waters.

One report by a Brazilian newspaper says final messages from the Air France plane suggests that it broke up thousands of feet in the air. Truman says if that's the case, wreckage could be spread over miles of ocean bottom and the search could be lengthy.

Batteries that power the pingers in the black boxes last about 30 days.