The bodies of New Zealanders killed when an Air New Zealand flight crashed off the coast of southern France last year may be brought home this week.
French authorities will convene an Identification Commission tonight (NZ time) to formally identify the six bodies recovered from the wreckage.
Their remains were expected to be released to families within two days.
Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe will travel to Perpignan tomorrow evening with representatives of some of the families to bring the remains home.
General manager airline operations David Morgan will also fly to France to meet French authorities and Airbus representatives who were investigating the cause of the crash.
Seven people died in the crash on November 28, including the two German pilots and five New Zealanders.
The 150-seat Airbus A320 was on its final approach to Perpignan Airport when it crashed into the Mediterranean. There was no mayday call from the flight crew and nothing to indicate anything was wrong.
Investigators were today expected to hear the last words of the pilots and crew. The plane had been undergoing acceptance trials before being handed back to Air New Zealand following a two-year lease to German company XL Airways.
The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were both badly damaged and had to be sent to America for analysis.
Until this point investigators have had little hard data to assist their inquiry other than the radar track which showed the plane's position and speed.
Ken Matthews, from New Zealand's Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC), said he was confident good data would be recovered, although some background noise may have to be filtered out from the recorder.
The investigators did not know what they had, "but they have got something".
The four Air New Zealand staff who died were Captain Brian Horrell, 52, from Auckland; and engineers Murray White, 37, from Auckland, Michael Gyles, 49, from Christchurch, and Noel Marsh, 35, from Christchurch. The fifth New Zealand victim was Civil Aviation Authority airworthiness inspector Jeremy Cook, 58, of Wellington.
