Air Algerie flight AH5017 that crashed in Mali last month killing 116 people on board broke up only when it hit the ground after losing its air speed, say investigators.
The cockpit voice recording was currently unusable, said Remi Jouty, the head of France's Bureau of Investigation and Analyses (BEA) air safety agency.
He said that the tape was damaged and the recording device appeared to have been corrupted before the crash.
The black box recorder showed that there was a loss of air speed before the plane banked to the left and hit the ground.
According to reports, it took only around a second for the aircraft to fall from its last recorded height of 500 metres.
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