Air France jet plunged for three and a half minutes

The Air France jet which crashed on a flight from Rio de Janeiro in 2009 took a full three and a half minutes to plunge into the Atlantic after the engine stalled. 288 people on board the Air France flight died after the plane hit the ocean at the speed of 180 feet a second after a terrifying three-minute plummet from the sky.

Flight 447 malfunctioned in a heavy storm en route from Rio, killing everyone on board.

Details of the tragic Air France crash emerged today after data from the plane's recently retrieved black box flight recorders was analysed by experts, according to TNT Magazine.

The 2 black boxes or data recorders recovered from the crash site in early May have given the investigators an insight to the dying moments of flight 447.

France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said, Friday, that the aircraft ran into severe thunderstorm and the engine stalled, prompting the pilots to respond by pulling the nose up.

The aircraft climbed to 38,000 ft when "the stall warning was triggered and the airplane stalled," the BEA report said.

The report said speed sensors also failed as speed displayed on the left primary flight display was "inconsistent" with those on the integrated standby instrument system (ISIS), International Business Times says.

The initial findings also showed the captain was out of the cockpit for a routine rest period and arrived more than a minute after the emergency began. The two co-pilots wrestled with the controls for about 3 1/2 minutes in a bid to stop the Airbus A330 from spiraling into the sea, the report said.

The flight recorders were found along with bodies in the latest search of the ocean depths last month, Deseret News informs.