The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) is denying that a French navy mini-submarine has traced the flight recorders of the Air France jetliner that crashed in the Atlantic three weeks ago.

On Tuesday, French newspaper Le Monde reported that a mini-submarine with advanced sonar equipment has been launched after a "very weak" signal was detected from the recorders. The BEA says no such signals have been received.
The search for the recorders is proceeding slowly, due to the fact that the seabed under the location of the crash is extremely uneven, with valleys, in some places, of up to four kilometres deep.
 
The Air France Airbus A330 carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris came down in the Atlantic on 1 June. The cause of the disaster has not yet been established. Fifty bodies have been recovered from the scene of the crash, together with hundreds of pieces of debris.
 
Photo of Air France plane by DosenPhoto (Flickr)