Black box may never be found

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Brazilian and French ships are searching for Air France Flight 447 plane wreckage as authorities and families of the victims seek answers to the cause of the crash that took 228 lives.

But officials warn that the plane's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder may never be found.

Military planes and ships located more debris from the downed Air France Flight 447 on Wednesday. But aviation experts are casting doubt on if the crucial flight data recording devices will ever be found.

A former US National Transportation Safety Board member says the condition of the data recorder would be critical. And that depends on whether Flight 447 was intact as it hit the water.

Dr Vernon L. Grose, Former Member, US National Transportation Safety Board, said, "The recorders have to survive whatever broke up the airplane. If the airplane went down, hit the water as an integral unit then there is a better chance that they might get the recorders because they might stay together. If the airplane broke apart before it hit the water, then they are going to be scattered. The wreckage is now scattered over several miles."

Grose says it is very unlikely to find the black box, for the ocean floor where the plane crashed drops as low as 7-thousand meters below sea level.

Members of the ground crew look on as an Atlantic Model 2 aircraft arrives at France's air base in Dakar, Senegal, from a mission seeking the site of the crash of a missing Air France flight Tuesday, June 2, 2009.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)