Abstract :
When Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro disappeared over the Atlantic in the early hours of 1 June, search and rescue teams had to look for survivors in an area almost as big as Great Britain. Not knowing exactly where the Airbus 330-200 went down, French and Brazilian authorities turned to new software developed for the U.S. Coast Guard that uses the location of debris to look back in time to estimate the most likely site of an accident.
