2009 Air France crash returns to haunt SA family

The widow of the only South African aboard an Air France passenger jet which crashed into the sea, killing 228 people, will know within two months whether her husband's remains were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean.

Alet Heine, whose husband, Erich, 41, was among those who perished on board the Airbus A330, said she hoped his body remained in the Atlantic.

The engineering executive, a rising star with German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp, was among the passengers who died en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1 2009.

His widow said this week that the results of DNA tests to establish the identity of 75 bodies recovered during a search of the underwater crash site two months ago, would be revealed in October.

"They indicated that it would be better if all 75 families were told at the same time if the body of their loved one is among those found," she said.

The couple were living in Brazil when Erich boarded the Airbus for a business trip to Germany, via Paris. The family had moved to South America after living in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

After the tragedy, Alet moved to Somerset West in the Cape winelands to raise their three children. For the widow and her daughters, the next two months will be as agonising as was the initial search for survivors in 2009.

Alet said: "Some people might find this hard to understand, but a part of me wants his body to remain where it is, because if his body was found there will be a funeral and it will open so many wounds. Over the past two years I've been to so many memorials in honour of the victims.

"I flew to four continents to attend memorial services for my husband - in Germany, Rio, Paris, Alabama (in the US) and various towns in South Africa.

"A year after the accident, Air France unveiled a memorial stone in Paris. It was heartbreaking. I've just returned from another memorial in Paris and this time it was a little better."

Alet said she was particularly worried about the effect a funeral could have on eight-year-old Kirsten and seven-year-old twins Anje and Melissa.

"They've just started to recover, even though Father's Day and holidays still hold lots of tears. During school holidays Erich gave them 100% of his attention," she said.

"We were watching a movie, My Father the Hero, last week and Kirsten started to cry again."

Alet and the families of other victims have reached settlements with Air France, which reportedly paid à126000 in compensation to the next of kin of each victim.

In 2009 Erich had been in charge of two key ThyssenKrupp construction projects - a $6-billion steel plant in Rio de Janeiro and a $4.6-billion steel-processing plant in Alabama . After the disaster the US state named a training centre in his honour. I n Rio , a technical high school was named in memory of the engineer, who was considered one of the University of Pretoria's most brilliant alumni.

Search teams found the aircraft's flight recorders and main debris field in May, after an initial search recovered only 50 bodies.

The French Bureau of Investigation and Analysis said in a preliminary report at the end of May that the Airbus plummeted 38000ft in three minutes and 30 seconds after pilots lost vital speed data, which caused the aircraft to stall.

The Airbus went down in a thunderstorm, with experts suggesting that its sensors may have iced over and sent false speed information to onboard computers.