FRENCH AIR crash investigators have announced they will publish new information regarding a 2009 Air France crash on Friday.

All 228 passengers on board flight 447, including three Irish women aged in their 20s, were killed when the plane crashed into the Atlantic while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Jane Deasy, Eithne Walls and Aisling Butler were returning home from a holiday together at the time of the crash.

The French civil aviation accident investigation authority, the BEA, says that its report “will present the exact circumstances of the accident with an initial analysis and some new findings based on the data recovered from the flight recorders”.

The plane lost contact with air traffic control three hours and 40 minutes into the flight, Der Speigel reported, and a major search for survivors was launched. Brazilian, US and French authorities were involved in subsequent efforts to retrieve bodies and plane wreckage.

French officials investigating the accident located the flight data recorders earlier this year and, despite fears of damage to the devices after spending so long underwater, said that they were able to retrieve some of the information recorded during the flight.

Last month, the remains of 104 victims of the crash were brought to Paris for identification. The president of an association of Brazilian victims’ relatives, Nelson Marinho, said that some families want their loved ones’ remains to be left where they are, but that most of the families want to retrieve the bodies.

- Additional reporting from the AP