Black Box ‘May Not Be Found’

French aviation officials said today that they may never find the cockpit voice and data recorders from an Air France jet that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, en route from Rio to Paris; 228 people were aboard the flight when it went missing. Although debris from the flight has begun to surface about 400 miles from Brazil’s coast, officials say that—while they’ll conduct a thorough investigation—poor weather conditions and deep waters will make locating the recorders difficult. “This catastrophe—which is the worst that our country has witnessed in terms of aviation—took place in a very difficult region... so the investigation will not be easy... but we are not giving up,” said Paul-Louis Arslanian, chief of the French civil aviation ministry's bureau of investigation. Meanwhile, President Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni attended a memorial service for Flight 447’s lost passengers and crew at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral on Wednesday, featuring condolences from the pope.