KEY POINTS:
Wreckage of the Air New Zealand Airbus A320 which crashed off the coast of France may lie forever on the seabed as a permanent memorial to the seven men who died.
Air accident investigators said if the two black boxes yielded the vital information needed to explain why the three-year-old aircraft plunged into the sea on November 28, there may be no need to recover all the wreckage.
Five New Zealanders and two German pilots died when the 150-seat, A320 crashed into the Mediterranean as it made an approach to Perpignan.
It was undergoing acceptance trials before it was handed back to Air New Zealand after it had been leased by the German company, XL Airways, for two years.
It crashed 29 years to the day after New Zealand's worst air crash when an Air New Zealand DC10 hit Mt Erebus in the Antarctic, killing all 257 passengers and crew.
The Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) sent deputy chief investigator Ken Matthews to France as part of the crash inquiry because the aircraft was a New Zealand aircraft and because five of the victims were New Zealanders.
TAIC chief investigator Tim Burfoot said the two black boxes had not yet produced any clues about what caused the crash and they had been sent to the manufacturers in America for more detailed study.
He said French authorities were mapping the seabed to get an accurate picture of where the wreckage lay.
The wreckage lay in water about 40 metres deep and Mr Burfoot said it was spread over a large area of seabed. Continued bad weather had hampered any recovery other than some sections of the tail fin soon after the crash.
"They still have a boat and a remote-operated underwater vehicle which is doing the mapping."
Mr Burfoot said the flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorders, known as an aircraft's black boxes, were crucial in determining why the Airbus crashed.
"Probably what comes out of those will determine the magnitude of the wreckage recovery.
"If all or most of the answers are on there, then there might not be a need to recover all the wreckage or they may just go and recover specific parts of it which are of interest."
He said recovering wreckage was "hugely expensive" and if it was not needed, it would be left where it lay on the seabed.
Mr Burfoot said authorities had "raw data" from the radar track of the aircraft as it approached Perpignan, including position, height, heading and speed, but no real clues about the cause of the crash.
"When you have nothing else to go on you speculate on everything, all scenarios and there are just hundreds of those. At the end of the day you have to discount every one of those," Mr Burfoot said. Six of the bodies had been recovered but had yet to be identified. DNA samples had been sent from New Zealand and some bodies were expected to be identified later this month.
Four of the five New Zealanders on board were Air NZ staff, Captain Brian Horrell, 52, from Auckland; engineers Murray White, 37, from Auckland, Michael Gyles, 49, from Christchurch, and Noel Marsh, 35, from Christchurch.
The fifth New Zealander was Civil Aviation Authority airworthiness inspector Jeremy Cook, 58, of Wellington.
- NZPA
