Possible cause of Air France 447 crash
Air France flight 447 was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31, 2009 when the Airbus A330 jet when down in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people aboard.
Its last known communication was about four hours into the flight.
Officials are now investigating whether they can extract information from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
"If the card is in good shape it can be read in a couple hours," Christophe Menez with BEA's engineering department told the Associated Press.
Mendez said it's unclear what the timeline would be if the memory cards were damaged.
Before the crash, the pilot had sent an electronic text message to the airline to say that the plane was heading to an area known for stormy weather - Intertropical Convergence Zone.