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© AP, ReutersMarc Dubois, an Air France Airbus A330-200
The captain of the doomed Air France flight that plunged into the Atlantic two years ago killing everyone on board, was not at the controls when the plane ran into trouble.

German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel quoted an expert who said Captain Marc Dubois, 58, could be heard on the black box recordings rushing into the cockpit when the plane hit bad weather.

Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew perished.

Plane wreckage was finally found last month at the bottom of the ocean about 1,000 kilometres off the north-east coast of Brazil.

Until now it was thought the crew of the Airbus A330 had flown directly into a bad weather front while other aircraft skirted around it. But according to Der Spiegel, information from the recently recovered flight data recorder - which was found with the other black box, the cockpit voice recorder - proves otherwise.

The flight path showed the crew had tried to chart a smooth course through the storm. The report said: "It looked initially as if they had been successful because there were no indications that they encountered increased turbulence."

The data also showed that ice crystals caused by the bad weather had clogged up the pitot tube, an instrument used to measure airspeed, the expert told Der Spiegel. He added that after the pitot tube malfunctioned the plane rose steeply, which could have caused the engine to stall and the Airbus to crash.

The expert said: "The data recorder indicates an abrupt heaving of the machine shortly after airspeed indicators failed."

An investigation into the crash is being carried out by the French Transport Ministry's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis.

French newspaper Le Figaro recently reported that the black box data had put Airbus in the clear, by showing the plane had experienced no electronic or mechanical failure.

The BEA air-accident investigation team says it will release details of the circumstances of the crash on May 27. But it warns that what caused the tragedy will take longer to establish.