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More remains have been found at the Air New Zealand Airbus A320 crash site off the French coast .
French authorities this week formally confirmed the names of the four New Zealanders and two Germans whose remains have been recovered from the crash site Airbus accident off the coast of Perpignan.
The New Zealanders were Captain Brian Horrell, 52, from Auckland; Christchurch engineers Michael Gyles, 49, and Noel Marsh, 35; and Civil Aviation Authority airworthiness inspector Jeremy Cook, 58, of Wellington.
The body of Murray White, 37, an Air New Zealand engineer, from Auckland, has not yet been recovered.
"There's I guess some degree of fear or anxiety about how difficult this process is going to be, and we all spent time talking about Murray White who's still missing, and that's pretty heavy on everyone's hearts as well," Air NZ chief executive Rob Fyfe told TV3.
"They're still searching - in fact they've found remains in the last week, so we do hold quite genuine hope that the site may still give up Murray," Mr Fyfe said.
The families of the New Zealanders have arrived in France to take the bodies of their loved ones home following a final memorial service on the beach near where the crash happened this weekend.
Caskets will be handed over to the families of the four men tomorrow.
The families will also be briefed by French authorities investigating the cause of the crash.
"Now that the information is being interpreted off both the voice recorder and the data recorder, that will be invaluable, and we remain very confident that they will be able to highlight the cause or causes that resulted in this tragedy," Mr Fyfe said.
A preliminary report is due by the end of this month.
The voice recorder, one of two black boxes recovered from the Airbus A320 after it crashed into the Mediterranean off the southern coast of France on November 28, was badly damaged and had to be sent back to the American manufacturers before it could be examined.
The French investigation team has now begun to analyse data from the voice recorder, which was hoped would contain vital clues about the crash, but it could take weeks to complete the examination.
New Zealand's Transport Accident Investigation Commission deputy chief investigator Ken Matthews, who was part of the investigation team, said some of the information on the cockpit voice recorder may never be released because of its sensitivity.
An interim report on the contents of the cockpit voice recorder could be ready in two or three weeks.
"But that timing is flexible, depending on what they have got," Mr Matthews told NZPA.
- NZPA
