Black box signals from AF Flight 447 are a false alarm

Paris: Reports emanating earlier in the day that French military ships had detected signals from the black boxes of the doomed Air France flight 447 that crashed into the Atlantic last month have been denied by French officials, who now say that sounds detected by search teams are not those of black boxes.

Brazilian Air Force shows a Brazilian Air Force jet searching for the possible survivors in the air crash over the Atlantic Ocean

An aide to France's transport minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, said the "black boxes have not been detected." She acknowledged that military ships had ''heard sounds'' but that those signals were not from the voice or data recorders.

The aide refused to be identified.

Earlier in the day reports suggested that French military ships had detected signals from the black boxes of the doomed Air France flight. Without revealing its source, the French newspaper Le Monde said this morning that a research mini-submarine, the Nautile, had dived to search for the flight recorders based on a "very weak signal".

The black boxes will continue to emit signals only until the end of the month. They send out an electronic tapping sound that can be heard up to 1.25 miles away.

The boxes are now the only source of information as to what transpired on board the Airbus A330, which crashed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people on board.